Spelling Centers

Something new I've been doing this year is Spelling Centers. My students complete six activities weekly to practice their Spelling words. Multiple intelligences definitely play a role in selecting the activities every week. My students particularly enjoy Spelling Centers time because they're allowed to collaborate with peers and work together in small groups to complete the activities. Two of the six centers are workbook page centers, so my students manage to complete the four workbook pages included with the literacy curriculum every week plus four extra practice activities!

Here's a list of the activities I've used as Spelling Centers:

• graffitti writing (freely writing their words on large bulletin board paper with coloring tools)
• typing the words with different fonts
• making Kidspiration charts to categorize phonics patterns
• typing contractions and what they stand for using Excel spreadsheets
• writing the words with colored chalk on black paper
• invisible words (writing the words on white construction paper using white crayon, then painting over the words with watercolor paint, thus revealing the words)
• word stenciling
• playing a group game on the Smart Board
• using macaroni to write our contractions (the macaroni functions as apostrophes)
• painting the words with watercolor paint
• magnetic letters on the dry erase board
• writing the words using Microsoft Paint (this one is SUPER DIFFICULT for second graders, so the list was reduced for the activity)
• word art (This one turned out REALLY cool! I printed up some blown up, simple, black-and-white clip art, and students placed a blank piece of white copy paper over it and traced it using the words instead of pencil lines. After the paper is taken off, the words take the shape of the image!)
• write the words on the Smart Table
• play games on our classroom computers on Spelling City
• create connect-the-dots of each word using markers
• glitter words (each child had a glitter shaker and a plastic tub at-the-ready to avoid a huge glitter mess)
  

I REALLY want to buy a few letter stamp sets to incorporate this as a spelling center, but I cringe every time I price check them! I've also heard of teachers writing letters on big, dried beans (like lima beans, for example) and kids can spell the words using the letter beans. I want to try that one! I think I'd call it "Spelling Bee-ns!"

Happy Easter!

The time before Easter is a great time to incorporate hands-on Math. I love to use jelly beans to review sorting, graphing, and to introduce probability. My students work in small groups and are given a fresh, new bag of jelly beans (I get mine from Dollar General - they're the perfect size for a group of three). They sort them on laminated sorting sheets, like this:

Sorry for the blurry pic!

After the kids get to nibble on some jelly beans, we reuse the beans to practice creating bar graphs with a scale of 2. We later used our bar graphs to describe what fractional parts each color represented, and that was a great segue into probability and talking about which color they would most likely pick if they were to reach in their bag and pick only one out. I also put several handfulls of jelly beans into a paper bag and let students reach in a take a set number and then we make pie charts of the colors they picked. We did all of this in one afternoon, but in future, I'd like to spread it out over the course of a week. My students really enjoyed the activities!

In case you'd like any of the files, just click the thumbnails below.