Writing Samples

The last time I went to my placement was Wednesday and I was very sick. Since I didn’t have a contagious type of illness I decided to go to my placement and make the best of it, however, during my dizzy, out-of-it spell, I completely forgot to grab or copy some of my students’ writings. Having spent so much time in the classroom so far this year, I can definitely recall some commonalities and specifics of some of the writings.

I would say that most of the students in my second and third grade classroom are at the third stage of spelling development: the within-word pattern spelling stage. It is common for the students to confuse spelling patterns and reverse the letters in their words. I noticed that specifically on a student’s spelling worksheet when they put “gril” instead of “girl.” Was it because they were filling out the worksheet too fast so that they could read their book or color? Or was it because they were stuck in stage three and just confused the letters?

I notice a reoccurring mistake in one of my student’s writing with the word “and,” as well. He insists on writing “and” as “in” because those are the sounds that he hears. Last Wednesday when I was there I corrected him on it again while he was writing a paper about things he likes to do with his family members. A few minutes later I went back and checked on him again and he had written “and” as “in” again, not connecting his last correction to every instance in the future, too.

I notice in my classroom that there isn’t a word wall for the students and that really bothers me because I think there should be at least common words up for the students so they can have somewhere to look to when they aren’t sure. Instead, they have gotten into the habit of asking how to spell something. I am also a firm believer in spelling like it sounds or how you think it is spelled at first and then learning how to spell it the correct way. Often times the students will ask me how to spell something and I will challenge them to write down how they think it’s spelled and then I will check it and many times they have spelled it right anyway.