Funky differentiation--Making many levels work (Spelling edition)

This year has been an incredible journey of figuring out how to meet the needs of many different learners. My ongoing question has been, "How do I make sure that I am challenging each one of these little brains, while being mindful of what they need and how they learn?" Most times, I do this on the fly--each day comes with new and different challenges to address.

But some things can be carefully planned for (yikes dangling preposition). Like spelling. Spelling is one of those subjects that can be so cliche in the classroom. I envision the cute teacher in a denim jumper leading her entire class through a choral spelling of arbitrary words for which children have no use. I had to move beyond this vision in order to do what my kidlets really needed. And they need to learn how to spell. Duh.

I set up a system to help the kids work on particular spelling families during the week. They begin by taking a spelling pre-test on Monday, which is followed up by various different spelling activities during the week (word sorts, spelling trains, sentence and definition work, etc.). In hopes to keep the number of times I give a spelling test to a minimum (it seemed like giving 6 to 8 spelling tests in one week was a bit excessive), I started recording the "tests" on our Mac. It has turned out to be a glorious system. Spelling is now just part of their normal routine. It is completely independent, and they go to the computer whenever their schedule allows. The spelling folder is leveled by color. So you click on your color, go to the video for this week, and then open the word document with the correct spellings to check when you are done.

Just in case you want to test your spelling skills, or see how things run in our little classroom, here are a couple of our videos. I am really putting myself out there. Most of my spelling videos are pretty embarrassing. And my kids have contests every week to see who can get my face to pause on the weirdest, distorted expression. I have no shame. You gotta do what you gotta do.  Enjoy!