Spelling And Vocabulary Strategy In The Migrant Classroom

During the summer of 2015 I chose to use a Spelling and Vocabulary strategy in my first grade Migrant School room. Migrant School lasts for six weeks. Most of the students that were in my class experienced some sort of school interruption and all are ESL students whose parent(s) are migrant farm workers. During the regular school year I teach second grade, however, during Migrant School I teach first grade because these are the students who will be in the second grade when the new school year begins.

Each week I0 Spelling words and a Rhyme Family are introduced. Since these students are ESL practice and repetition are extremely vital to their understanding and learning. We practice the very basic words in a particular Rhyme Family many times enabling the students to read them fluently when

On Tuesday a student gave a word belonging to the family, each student wrote the word on their own using the color code, it was checked as a whole group and corrected as needed. On Wednesday the students wrote and illustrated silly sentences containing at least two Rhyme Family words. The words were written using the color code. On Thursday two of the harder words were used for vocabulary practice. These words were two and three letter blend onsets. Knowing that words that two and three letter blends are not only difficult for ESL students to read but their understanding is not usually clear. After discussing the two words in great length and giving many examples students demonstrated their understanding by using the word in a sentence and illustrating the sentence. Of course, the vocabulary word was written according to the color code. On Friday students partnered up with the help of the teacher and challenged one another to a speed reading game. One student reads the words or a small Rhyme Family booklet and the other times how quickly they can complete the