Procedures for Independent Word Study
1. Copy no more than five words from your personal spelling list into the
first column. Copy exactly as the words appear on your list: don’t
learn misspellings. And print, so you can see the individual letters.
2. Now, read the first word: look at it and say it.
3. Spell the word to yourself: touch each letter with your pencil and say
each letter to yourself.
4. Close your eyes. See the word in your mind. Say each of the
individual letters to yourself again.
5. Take a short break to give your long-term memory time to process the
new word.
6. Now cover the correct spelling and print the word in the second
column.
7. Proofread: check the word you just wrote, letter for letter, against the
original.
8. If you spelled the word correctly, put a star in the third column and go
on to the next word. If you misspelled the word, repeat the process
above, this time printing the word in the third column.
Procedures for Spelling Reviews in Pairs
Tester: Say the word, use it in a sentence, and say it again.
Speller: Print the word.
Go through the whole list. THEN:
Tester: Spell each word out loud, slowly.
Speller: Proofread by touching each letter of each word with your pencil.
Circle any errors: just the part you missed. Then, with a star or checkmark
highlight the words on your personal list that you spelled correctly in the
review. Circle any words you missed, and study them again next week.
Created by Nancie Atwell