Spelling Planner

Lesson Plans from a Guide or Tools

Natural Speller and other books by Kathryn Stout provide us with tools for making and teaching lessons. We are empowered with and sometimes overwhelmed with the freedom of customizing our children's lessons. Below is an illustration of a general way to harness the material that is provided in Natural Speller so that you can present the material thoroughly.

Related at donnayoung.org: What is Natural Speller? Book Review Archives: Natural Speller

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The information on this page demonstrates only one way to make lesson plans for spelling. Certainly their are more ways and many ways that are more simple than this one.

The main resource is Natural Speller. Other resources are listed in the Reference Materials Column. The forms used to make these plans are the goals forms, a quarter or semester planner and finally a weekly planner. I suggest that you use your word processor to make the spelling plan. To do that, make a table that is 6 columns wide and add rows as you need them or use 6 columns of a spread sheet program. See the spelling plan to see what the table looks like.

The Steps

1. The first thing to do is to find out what activities should be done. Natural Speller supplies this information.
2. Divide the activities into 5 groups.
3. Give the individual activities reference numbers.
4. Copy all the lists that you will need and place them in your planner book.
5. Assign one of the 5 groups of activities to one of the days of the week see example
6. Choose which word lists that you will use for each week. If you have more than one child using the program, try to coordinate the patterns which they have in common. Example: All of your children study the 'tion' words on the same week.
7. Make the daily schedule

Spelling Planner (an example)

Name: Holly

Year: 2000-01

Event: Spelling

#	Activity List (these are the chosen activities split into 5 groups)	Reference Materials
Group 1	1. Prefixes: Learn the meaning of and use of the following prefixes: un, in, re, pro, pre, im, dis, a, an (Greek) a, be, bon, post, ultra, tele, micro See Handy list 2. Review and continue to study all plural forms and rules. back to spelling plan	Peterson's SAT Success
		Natural Speller
		Natural Speller
Group 2	3. Practice using the following endings and spelling rules that apply and learn how the endings affect the words part of speech: adverb: ly, ily verb: en, ise, ize, ify, ate, ish adjective: able, al, ful, ible, ive, ous, ious noun: ar, er, or, ance, ence, ist, ian, ion, sion, tion, ation, ment, y, ity, ty back to spelling plan	Natural Speller
		Dictionary

Group 3	4. Review and continue to practice basic dictionary skills: entry word, guide words, phonetic respelling, synonyms, antonyms, and etymology.	Very Good Dictionary
		Thesaurus

Group 4	5. Write spelling words in syllables. Use the pronunciation key. Review the different parts of speech in terms of the different definitions for the same word. back to spelling plan	Very Good Dictionary
		Thesaurus
		Petersons SAT Success (root words)
Group 5	Review and continue to study: 6 capitalization 7 punctuation 8 abbreviations 9 homophones 10 contractions 11 personal letters back to spelling plan \| back to top	Easy Grammar level one (or other capitalization, punctuation, and abbreviation source) for #s 6, 7, and 8
		Natural Speller for #s 9, 10, and 11
		Dictation for #s 6, 7, and 11

Comments to You:

On the goal planner above, I have listed what I will incorporate into Hollys spelling this coming year. I have given the activities reference numbers for the sake of simplicity. I will use the reference numbers to make a basic spelling activities plan.

day 1: do activity 5
day 2: choose from activities 1 and 2
day 3: activity 3
day 4: activity 4
day 5: choose from activities 6-11

Handy list:

Prefixes to be learned this year:

a (AS)(Angelo-Saxon)	on, in, up, of, to	aboard, astride, asleep
a, an (Gr) (Greek)	lacking, not, without	anarchy, atypical, anonymous
be (AS)	to make (intensive)	bemuse, beset, besiege
bon (L)(Latin)	good	bonus, bona fide
dis, dif, di (L)	away, down, off, opposing, apart	digress, distrust, differ, disagree
in, im (Gr)	not	impossible, inefficient
il, ir (Gr)	not	illiterate, illegal, irradiant
in	in, on, into, toward	intrude
post (L)	after, behind, following	postpone, postscript
pre (L)	before	prepare, prevent
pro (Gr)	before, forward	program, produce,
pro (L)	forward, forth, favoring	proceeds, profess
re (L)	again, and backward, back	retract, reappear
micro (Gr)	small	microfilm, microbe, microscope
tele (Gr)	far, distant	telegraph, telescope
ultra (L)	beyond, excessive	ultraviolet,

Note to you: The master plan below is not complete, there is just enough listed for you to get an idea of how to make the master plan. In the master plan decide which spelling list to cover each week. Look over the words and decide which activities best suit those words. The upper yellow bar shows the basic daily work.

Master Spelling Plan

Holly 2000-01 5^th / 6^th grade level back to lesson plans

Use spelling words in all activities if possible. Use this section of the page to develop more detailed weekly plans. back to top

	Day 1 Test, study missed words, do activity 5	Day 2 Write missed words 5 times Choose from activities 1 and 2	Day 3 Choose from activity 3 Make up sentences	Day 4 Choose from activity 4 Have a practice oral or written test.	Day 5 Test and choose from activities 6 - 11
	The Lists to use	Activities day 2	Activities day 3	Activities day 4	Tentative schedule:
wk 1	5^th ant restaurant, elephant, important, merchant, currant, vacant, pleasant	add prefixes to some of the words: unpleasant	add suffixes to some of the words and tell the part of speech of that word: vacancy, merchandise	Look up the words in the dictionary, read the definition and write a synonym and an antonym for each of the words: important - significant - trivial	homonyms: currant current and others. review contractions: youre, hell, shell, thatll, theyve, weve, youve
wk 2	5^th un				continue to review contractions and homonyms as needed
wk.3	5^th ous
wk 4	5^th final o
wk 5	5^th able				began study of common abbreviations, continue studying homonyms
wk 6	5^th in
wk 7	6^th ue
wk 8	6^th ad				review calendar words and continue with common abbreviations
wk 9	6^th dis
wk 10	6^th ous
11	6^th en				review capitalization rules
12	6^th one vowel
13	6^th et
14	6^th kn
15	6^th on
16	6^th ary
17	6^th sub / ch
18	6^th final y
19	6^th or
20	6^th de
21	6^th al
22	6^th in
23	6^th im
24	6^th ex
25	6^th ion
26	6^th compound word
27	6^th ory
28	6^th mn / ate
29	6^th ish / un
30	6^th vowel-y

Use the master plan to produce weekly plans as shown below.

Lesson Plans back to top

Week of: August 2000

		Spelling spelling plan
Monday		word list: ant Test Study missed words. Write the words in syllables.
Tuesday		write missed words 5 times add prefixes to some of the words and write the plural form of all the words
Wednesday		Add suffixes to pleasant, merchant, vacant, and important. Tell part of speech that word is before and after the suffix is added. Make a sentence from each word before and after the suffix is added.
Thursday		Oral or written practice test, review study techniques. Look up the words in the dictionary, read the definition and write a synonym and an antonym for each of the words.
Friday		see spelling plan