Spellen Divelopmint

Discuss the ‘stages of spelling development’ evident in each sample (see Tompkins, p. 169) and give examples. Design a ‘literacy center’ activity that would help your students improve their spelling and explain why you think it would support students’ learning.


I am in a fifth grade classroom, and I collected a couple of samples from two different students. In one sample I noticed that she spelled "because" like "becouse", and she spelled "hurt" like "heart". This seems to be stage three because she is mixing the vowels up within the word. The other sample I have, I noticed he spelled "take" as "tack", and "been though" like "bin threw." This seems to be at stage three as well with mixing certain words up like "meet" as "mete." 


I would have them read the week's spelling words in sentences that show what they mean, and have the spelling words sound similar to each other to show the distinction. Such as hurt and heart, and been and bin, threw and through. Then they would have to write two sentences for each spelling word (about 10 words) that shows the correct definition.