Here is my solution to tackle all of the above in one simple swoop. Each week students will focus on a vowel pattern. All students will take a pretest with this basic vowel pattern. If students get them all correct, they can select 10 words from the 3 areas (bonus vowel pattern, high frequency and/or content vocabulary). This will be their differentiated spelling list for the week to focus on. But what if they get 5 right? Then those 5 words will be part of their 10, with the remaining 5 words self-selected from the 3 areas (bonus vowel pattern, high frequency, and/or content vocabulary). On Friday, there will be a dictation activity using words from these lists. The dictation sentences will actually come directly from student work during the week to provide a more authentic writing assessment.
Take a look at a sample pretest page and the Making/Sorting Words station that I use to complement this during my Word Study block.
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