Reflection: Word Work

For a few years, I have been doing spelling once a week in my classroom. The words come from my weekly article, and they have to complete a series of activities across a given week. This includes skimming and scanning, finding definitions and synonyms, putting them into alphabetical order, and translating into different languages. These activities focus mainly on vocabulary and referencing skills rather than the structure of words, so I have been falling short on being explicit with scope and developing sequence. 

This is the generic spelling task that I have been giving to my learners:

Speaking to my mentor, we looked at how I can extend and expand this task. I made changes to my spelling task, and added a section where learners can work with prefixes and suffixes. I also have multiple new posters around the classroom where they can see what high frequency prefixes and suffixes, along with their descriptions. As time goes on, I will make more changes as I teach. This way I can explore not only vocabulary and referencing skills, but scope and sequence too.

This is the new spelling task I will be giving my learners: