How many times do you hear "How do you spell ____?" at the beginning of the year. To encourage my students to phonetically spell, we do weekly spelling practice in our reading and writing notebooks. I give them two words a week to stretch out and spell on their own. One word is always a cvc word. We talk about how 5 and 6 year olds spell words differently because they hear different sounds. When they ask me "Is this how you spell ____?" I tell them "That is exactly how a 5 year old would spell that word." After we do this for a few weeks I no longer hear "How do you spell ___?" throughout my room during writing workshop. I also use these weekly spelling practice pages as assessments for things to work on during reading or writing workshop.
)
