a) The teacher is at the chalkboard,
the children are at their desks, ready to write.
b) The teacher tells the children they are going to see if they
can remember how the author wrote the text, and to see if they can
spell the words they have learnt.
c) The teacher leads conversation, aimed at getting children to
reply in meaningful groups of words from the text.
For example, 'How does
Morris Lurie tell us that something can be seen that couldn't be
seen before?'
'There came into view'.
d) The children now write
this in their books
e) The teacher will also write it on the board.
The conversation around, and the timing of, these two steps are
important.
The conversation might
then go like this:-
"You all know how to write 'there' - who can remind us how
to write the first word of a sentence? That's right, with a capital
letter."
The children write 'there'
and the teacher writes slightly later, thus giving everyone a chance
to spell independently but supporting those who still need help.
"You all know how
to write 'came into' - who can remind us what the last letter of
'came' is? That's right, 'e'.
The children write 'came'
and the teacher writes slightly later.
"Now, we haven't learnt
to spell 'view' and it's a bit tricky. What is the first sound we
hear? (Response.) That's right. And what letter makes that sound?
That's right. Let's write 'v'.
"Now, what is the
next sound we hear? That's right 'you'. Now in 'view' that sound
is spelt with three letters - 'iew' - teacher writes - see the 'ie'
letter pattern that we've learnt before - indicates chart (see #7
above) - we write that and then a 'w'.
(You may disagree with
the way I hear 'view'. Please remember, to scaffold children from
where they are to where you want them to be, it is important to
match letters to what the children think they hear and to get them
to look at the letter pattern. It is also important that the teacher
doesn't change her pronunciation to match the way she knows the
word is spelt.)
f) To proceed, the teacher
asks another question
For example, "How
was Sebastian coming?"
"Travelling fast".
"Yes, and remember this was a separate part of the sentence
so we need a comma before 'travelling' and after 'fast'."
g) Because these words
were learnt in chalkboard spelling, the teacher now waits for the
children to write them before writing them herself.
h) On completion of the
passage, the teacher checks through spellings so that children can
check, and correct, their own work. This gives children another
safe opportunity to think about spellings.
i) The teacher then visits
each child, listens to them read, and checks their spelling. Children
often illustrate the text at this time.
j) Easy Spelling can easily
be combined with a handwriting lesson.
