Second Grade Spelling Tools

     Second grade writer's need tools.  Practical tools.  When I am writing, whether it be an email, note to parents or my SOL I either have a dictionary handy or my web browser open and ready to search for that word whose spelling escapes me.  I try to point this out to my students regularly.  When I make a mistake or know I am not certain of a words spelling I bring it to my students attention and model how I go about fixing or learning from my mistake.  

     Here are a few of the tools I have found motivate and encourage second grade writer's to move past their fear of misspelling words (which seems to stop them dead in their tracks so many times!) and get down to the business of putting their incredible stories on the page.

1. I teach students to break the word into syllables and write one syllable at a time.  I also encourage them to write a word three different ways (using the different letter combinations they know for making the same sound) and choose the one that looks best.  I have a cute poster I made with these strategies on it to remind students to use them.  Of course it is on my work computer so I will have to post a link to it tomorrow.

2. I give students a form called "I'm not afraid of my words!" to keep in their writing folders.   When they have a big "juicy" word they are trying to spell they write it in the left hand column of their paper.  When I come to conference with them they show me any words they tried to spell and then I write the word correctly in the right hand column.  Afterword we discuss the smart things they did as a speller and the part they have to work on for next time.  I believe this is a Katie Wood Ray strategy.

3. An office.  Students can grab an "office" anytime they need one.  The office has the first 100 sight words they learned in first grade, long and short vowel sounds, beginning blends, word families and our second grade sight word/vocabulary word list which includes number words, days of the week and months of the year.  

What kind of spelling tools do you provide your students?