Once in a while you are blessed with a wonderful class that challenges you, not with your classroom management skills, but with the depth and scope of your lessons. I am lucky in that I have a class like that this year. I can honestly say that I have enjoyed this year more than any other year due to the level of their sense of humor, their eagerness to learn, and their creativity. So, I figured I would show and tell you about a few 'cool spelling' activities that I've seen this year.
I have been very lucky this year in that my kids are SUPER creative. Once a week I assign a 'Cool Spelling Activity' <which was originally thought of by my students!!!>. A Cool Spelling Activity can be anything that the students make <which usually results in a game or art>. Above you can see the game Spelling-word-a-saurus which was created by one of my kids. Basically, from the description I was given by my student, it is not for the faint of heart, but only for those that DARE to put their hands into the dinosaur's mouth. hehe I loved the imagination of it almost as much as I loved the presentation. Basically, students would pick a word from the dino's mouth and tell their partner to spell it. If the partner was correct in the spelling of the word, he/she got a tally mark. At the end, the student with the most tally marks was the winner.
I have gotten 'Guess Who' spelling games, spelling chains, memory games, crossword puzzles, word finds, word art, marshmallow words, spelling necklaces (words hole-punched and put on string), hats with words taped all over them, wikki-stick words, words built with chenille stems, glitter words, rainbow words, etc.
Just thought I would share that! I am so proud of them. I think I probably have the only kids in the world who go on to Teachers Pay Teachers to write down the name of a lesson or game that they would like to print. I love it that they are so driven and taking charge of their learning!!!
sOnce I put out the first bottle and recording sheet, the wheels started turning in my kid's heads and they started bringing in 'Cool Spelling Activities' in bottles. We had spelling words in bottles with beans, rocks, beads, and even peanuts!!!
Here is our full range of bottle games. Some are from Denise at Sunny Days and the rest were created by my students. We have math bottles with problems and an answer sheet for the sums or differences, and even a prefix/root word bottle.
Tomorrow is our 'Cool Spelling' Activity night, so I can't wait to see what they bring in this week!
My best to you and yours!
