August 20, 2010
Dear Parents/Guardians,
Your child will be bringing home a collection of spelling words weekly that have been introduced in class. Each night of the week your child is expected to do a different activity to ensure that these words and the spelling principles they represent are mastered. These activities have been modeled and practiced in school, so your child can teach you how to do them.
Monday| Materials needed: spelling list, pencil, notebook paper
cat, bat, date, rat, state, slate -at | -ate | cat bat rat | date state slate |
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- Students will be completing a word sort at home. For this exercise, students should create a T-chart like in the example to the right with the word pattern at the top. Then students are to read the spelling words out loud and write them in the correct column based on each one’s pattern.
- After sorting the words, students should answer the following question in a complete sentence: What do you notice about your words this week?
Tuesday | Materials needed: spelling list, pencil, notebook paper
- Repeat Monday’s homework, but students need to write 3-5 additional words that they have come up with on their own that would follow the patterns for each column.
Wednesday | Materials needed: spelling list, pencil, notebook paper
- Students will create their own sentences that contain their spelling words. Each sentence should contain one spelling word and should be numbered.
- This assignment will change later to include more than one word per sentence. Eventually, this homework will turn into paragraph writing. You will be notified when the changes occur.
Thursday | Materials needed: spelling list, pencil, word scramble worksheet (provided in class)
- Students will be given a word scramble worksheet containing their list of words all scrambled up. Students are to rewrite the words, spelled correctly, in the appropriate column.
One very important item to note is that different students will be receiving different lists. These lists will be made to meet your child’s spelling needs, so your child may not have the same list as another classmate. We encourage your child to write their new spelling words in their planner each week in case they lose their list.
Thank you for your support. Together we can help your child make valuable progress!
Sincerely,
Ms. Barnhardt