Literacy Center- Galster

Here is a writing sample from Sammie, a second grader in my placement :"On Friday me and my friend I* are going to have a sleep over at my house it will be fun. We will wach a move called shreck the finly chapter and dicpicile me and when we are wachin it we will have pop corn and candy. then in the morening we are going to play outside it will be fun when we come in we will play house and school" After reading Tompkins chapters 5&11 and reviewing Sammie's writing sample, I would say she is in the late third or early fourth stage of spelling development. I say this because it seems she has mastered stages one and two, and also is very strong in long-vowell spelling words such as: my, friend, sleep, house, and school. She has also showing strong understading (with some spelling flaws) of inflectional endings such as: called, wachin (watching), morenin (morning), and going. She is aware of the rules for adding inflectional endings since she shows signs of being aware of the many different tenses she uses. To help Sammie improve her spelling, I would design a spelling center to support her learning. Although there are many things I could choose to center this center around, I do not want to overwhelm the student with several disconnected things she could improve on, but instead have her focus on one new idea at a time. I noticed she is unable to complete -ing suffixes as seen above in morning and watching. To help her with more than just these two words, and to show her there are many words that end in -ing, I would design a center on word clusters all ending in -ing. This might consist of the following: Have Sammie and other students in center work on writing and saying different words that fall into this grouping. I would have a list of words for them to copy and then read to each other that consists of words such as: morning, watching, running. king, swing, playing, ring, and flooring. I would then ask them to write the words out in word pyramids so it ring would look like:
r
ri
rin
ring
Next, for the -ing practice, I would have them come up with and write 3-5 more -ing words. Lastly, I would ask the students to draw pictures for as many ing words above as they can. This would help them connect meaning to the word, so they can have help remembering the spelling and the word in their vocabulary for future uses in and outside of school. I think that this center would support students' learning in a couple of ways. First, it is important that there are several tasks, not just one or two, since students need practice with this spelling concept, however not repetition they will easily grow bored with. In addition, the many tasks will help give all students an opportunity to really "own" this topic, since no one student learns in the exact same way. Lastly, I think this center supports students' learning by allowing them to make real world connections to their work. They are able to do this when they think of additional -ing words and when they make drawings that represent what the definition of the -ing words are.