This year, students will be assessed for their spelling developmental level using Words Their Way. Each student will be monitored and coached to achieve the next developmental milestones through Words Their Way Word Work, Weekly spelling tests, and Chunk Spelling.
Chunk Spelling (spelling by analogy)
Each week, our whole class will focus on a "chunk." This passage explains it well.
Chunk for August 31- Sept. 4: op
The basis for "chunk spelling," as you might imagine, is the "chunk." This is the rime (word family) that we focus on all week. Students are given a small strip of paper with the week's rime. They use a sound board that contains beginning consonants and blends/digraphs. They place the rime next to each onset on the board and say the word aloud. If it's a real word (cop, not dop), they write the word in their notebook.
After listing all the words they can make with the onsets, the students set the sound board and chunk strip aside. Then they are challenged to think of any "big words" that have the week's rime.
The "big words" are where the magic happens. 2nd graders are supposed to work with compound words, prefixes, and suffixes. This gives them a real-life reason to do so. For -ake we might list baker, bakery, snowflake, mistake, retake, taken, etc. And when someone suggests "bakeing," we can have a quick little lesson right then about the e-drop rule.
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