Show & Tell: Spelling Style!

My school uses the Fundations phonics program as our spelling curriculum.  Our district is somewhat Fundations-crazy about making sure it is taught every day within our Tier I setting and that Tier II and Tier III students are provided with a double dose of it during our RTI time.   While I understand the need to follow a program as it was designed…

….after 9 months….5 days a week….30 minutes a day….Every. Day……Lately…

I want to fall asleep on my manual. 

I’ve been trying to mix things up these last couple months of school by turning the repetitive process of writing sounds, words, and dictated sentences into a time of the day that we are not starting to loathe. 

Today, during the middle of my lesson, as I was drilling words and sounds while trying not to fall asleep standing up, I told my kids to put their magnetic boards away.  “Let’s play a game with our words today instead.” 

This is how we played “Show & Tell” with our Fundations words.  I’m not sure why, but my kids loved it.  You could play this game with ANY spelling word list or sight words.  Tomorrow, we’re using this game and having a Sight Word Battle with our partners. 

First, I had my kids find a partner with their whiteboards and markers and sit back to back.  I told them a word, and they tapped it out and wrote it down on their whiteboards.  When they were done, they had to give me “marker head” to show me they were finished with their word. 
(Marker Head is fancy for “Hold your marker vertically (with the cap-end down) so that it looks like the marker is growing straight out of your head because it’s way more fun than just putting our markers down on our desks to show we’re ready.”)

When I said “Show and Tell!” they had to turn around and show their word to their partner.  Then they had to tell each other if the word was spelled correctly or not.  (Today, they also had to make sure they marked the word up to show the base word and the suffix.)
If BOTH partners spelled the word correctly, they each got a point and put a tally mark in the corner of their boards. (We didn’t really keep score, but they didn’t know that. 🙂
That’s it! “Show and Tell: Spelling Style.”
Give it a go if you need a new way to practice sight word spelling or your kids are driving you crazy during these last few weeks of school.  
🙂 Thanks for stopping by!
Happy Learning,

Similar Posts

7 Comments

  1. I love this idea! I had to do fundations when I student taught, and at first, I hated it…but now the district I teach in does not have a phonics program at all and I can really see the difference in the kids' abilities. :/

    Sarah
    teachingiscolorful.blogspot.com

  2. Did this today with our "oh so lovely" phonics program. They loved it. Played it as a game and let each pair compete against the other pairs for the most correct words and syllable types. Way more fun!! Thanks for the idea!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *