Developmental Spelling Routine for 2nd Grade
Have you been struggling through how to teach developmental spelling? Did you school adopt this method of instruction, and you’re feeling a little lost? Or does your school still teach whole group spelling lists, and you want to make a shift but don’t know how to organize things so it makes sense?
Today I’m sharing the developmental spelling routine I used with my 2nd grade class. Following this rhythm made things so much simpler for my weekly teaching life, while also growing my students as spellers and writers. My data from the beginning of the year to the end of the year showed that keeping things neat, organized, and structured really helped things click for my students!
How to Get Started with Developmental Spelling
My experience with developmental spelling has always been Words their Way. So, everything I’m talking about in this post is based off of that experience. But, I know that there are other programs out there, and some reading curriculums now that differentiated spelling lists that you may opt to use. These steps will also work for other programs.
The first thing that needs to be done is determine what your students’ developmental levels of spelling are. This decision is data-driven. If you use Words Their Way, there is a spelling assessment to give at the beginning of the year to determine groupings. Give the assessment, score them, and place students into groups.
In second grade, the majority of your class will likely fall in the ‘within word’ spelling range. This is on level for this age group, so having a developmental spelling group below this range is approaching grade level, and scoring above within word is considered above grade level.
Weekly Routines
Monday
We start the week with our new sorts. The kids walk in on Monday mornings with two copies of the sort lying on their desks. One copy goes straight into their backpack to take home and practice. The other gets cut and sorted on their desks during morning work. At this point, I haven’t taught the students their new patterns for the week, so they simply are sorting the words on their desks and trying to determine what patterns link the words together. After morning work time, they store the words in a plastic ziplock bag that I keep stapled into the front cover of their word work notebooks.
During small group instruction that day, I pull spelling groups briefly before I dig into reading groups. These groups don’t always align, but sometimes they do. My lowest and highest spellers were sometimes in the same reading groups, so I could simply kick off their small group lesson with a quick intro to their sorts for the week. The middle-ground spellers were sometimes higher readers, so I may have to take a few minutes to pull those spelling groups independently of reading. This meant that on Mondays, my small group reading instruction was reserved for my lowest groups, while my highest groups may only get a spelling lesson that day.
Tuesday
My morning work on Tuesdays was always for students to pull their words out of their plastic bags, re-sort, and glue them into their notebooks in the correct groups. After they had finished that, they could use extra time to think of and add words that fit the same patterns to their lists.
On Tuesday-Thursday during centers, students have word work in their weekly rotation. You can read about how I organize my center rotation HERE. The activities and manipulatives are the same throughout the year. I simply rotate them out to keep the novelty alive. This keeps them working with their words in different chunks throughout the week.
Wednesday
Morning work on Wednesdays is for students to write 10 sentences using different words on their list. The ‘words in context’ piece is important to me. The purpose of developmental spelling is of course for students to move through different tiers of understanding when it comes to word parts. So they aren’t simply memorizing spelling with no understanding of why spelling happens the way it does. That alone helps with retention. But using the words in sentences helps a lot, too!
Thursday
Morning work on Thursdays was for students to rainbow write their words in their notebooks. They liked this because of all of the different colors of markers and crayons they could use. But for me, it’s simply a repetition exercise. I wanted the rainbow writing to happen in the proper groupings, because the point of their lists is for them to notice the patterns.
Friday
Friday was spelling test day! We kicked off the reading block with the weekly reading test from our curriculum. I talk about this routine a bit in my grading post HERE. After all students were complete with the reading test, students would move into ‘center catch up’, and move on to an activity they did not finish that week.
While students were spread out in their centers, I would call spelling groups to my small group table and administer the test. This was just done on looseleaf paper, and I would grade and instantly pass back for students to log in their data folders. This testing time took the place of small group instruction on this day.
FAQ’s:
How do you decide when kids need to switch groups?
I re-administered the main test at the end of the first semester, and again at the end of the year. The students are constantly leveling up in their spelling lists form week-to-week, so staying in the same group does not mean that their instruction is stagnant. But, when I re-test before Christmas, there is sometimes a kid who has just skyrocketed several levels past where they were practicing. There is also sometimes a student who is testing at the same exact spot that they were at during the first week of school. This helps me determine my new groups, and to decide how to change up my small group instruction for those kids who aren’t moving.
What if a student fails a spelling test?
After all of that work with a list, I’ll admit that failures aren’t common. But it happens. My rule was that if the majority of the group did not pass the test, then they needed to stay with that pattern for another week, but just change up the sort so there were different words. If it was only one student in the group, they could privately re-test on that same list the next week if they chose to. I would move them on with the group, but their morning work and word work centers would involve practice with two lists. On the following Friday, I would re-test that child at the end of the testing time.
If the same student is consistently failing tests, they may need to be lowered to a less advanced group.
