Personal Word Collector for the Teacher

I am so excited about our spelling program this year. We are using Fountas and Pinnell principles to generate words that follow that principle (with the students’ help). But, the best part, we are using the students misspelled words to generate personal word lists.

We plan to do a week of principle words and a week of personal words. Here is an example:

Week 1: Introduce Principle #1. Find words and compile a list by Friday. On Friday, choose words for the next week. While we are teaching a principle the students will be completing the Word Work stations with their personal words from their list. No assessment this week unless you want to assess the students on their personal words. If you wish to assess personal words, I recommend you do this through buddy tests.

Week 2: The students will practice Principle #1 words in the Word Work stations. No new principle lessons.  Assess students at the end of the week on Principle #1 words.

Week 3: Introduce Principle #2. The students will be using personal words for word work stations. Assess personal words, if you wish.

Week 4: The students will be practicing Principle #2 in stations. No new principle lessons. Assess principle #2 words.

So, the students’ words will rotate from a teacher chosen principle list to a personal list.

I think it is GENIUS!

However, I was having a hard time wrapping my head around when the students will collect these personal word lists. I started circling the misspelled words on their paper and writing the correct spelling in the margin. When the students got their papers back, they would record their misspelled words on their “Personal Words List” But, that was wasting instructional time, grading time, and was not very organized.

So, I had a moment of wisdom and created a Personal Word Collector for the Teacher. I keep this on my clipboard as I am grading papers. When I find a word misspelled,I write the correct spelling in the student’s box. I do this the entire time until I am finished grading for the week.

Then, I will cut the student’s section off for them and place it on their desk for Monday morning. Their morning work will be to write their personal words in their personal word list.