Dear 4th Grade Families,
Mrs. Rencher and I have been impressed with the improvements our students have made in their grammar and spelling, but we have a long way to go! We thought it would be a good idea to share our weekly plan for Word Study this year.
On Mondays, we will have our weekly word sort. Each word sort teaches the students a spelling rule, and sorting the words allows the students to construct the rule and to discuss it as a class. The students will copy these sorted rules into their language spirals.
Throughout the week, we will do activities in class to apply the word sort rules. Through daily in-class oral language assignments, we will combine these rules with punctuation practice. We will also spend the year mastering the parts of speech and the parts of the sentence.
On Fridays, students will be assessed on their ability to spell some of the words correctly and to apply the rule to words they were not exposed to during the week. The spelling test will include 25 words: eight will be words from the word sort; eight will be words that test the knowledge of the week’s rules; the remaining nine will be Core Words and Personal Missed Spelling Words.
Students have glued a list of “Core Words” on the final page of their language spiral. The Core Words List has hundreds of words that they should know how to spell. We are working in class on identifying the core words individual students cannot spell. Students also created a Personal Missed Spelling Words List in the back of their language spiral. Students have begun a running list of the words that they misspell. They will place the word spelled correctly on the Personal Missed Words List.
Mrs. Rencher and I encourage you to work with your child on their Personal Missed Words List. Starting next week, we will post the week’s rules and words on the blog. The language spiral will come home on Thursday nights for the students to study.
Cheers,
Mr. Merritt
