Procedure for Independent Word Study
About once a week, you will select five (5) words from your personal spelling list. You will copy these words onto the first column of a weekly word study sheet. Make sure you have the correct spelling for each word, and then copy the correct spelling exactly so you don't learn misspellings.
Please print, rather than using cursive, so the individual letters are separate and distinct. Use upper and lower case letters correctly. Capitalize words that should be capitalized.
Show the list to me. Your partner test will be given, not during the following class period, but during the class period after that. Before the test you will study your five words by following each and every step of the procedure described below. You will put in about twenty minutes (usually as homework) to complete the following steps with your five words:
1. Read the first word: look at it and say it.
2. Spell the word to yourself: touch each letter with your pencil and say the letter softly aloud to yourself.
3. Close your eyes. See the word in your mind. Say each of the individual letters softly aloud to yourself.
4. Now, put your memory muscle to work. Carefully print the word in the next three columns, and say each of the individual letters to yourself as you write it.
5. Take a break of four or five minutes to give your long-term memory time to process the look of the word, its letters, and their order. Leave behind your spelling and do something else for those minutes: read, do other homework, watch TV, listen to the radio.
6. Then cover the correct spelling with your hand and print the word in the "Spell" column.
7. Proofread: check the word you just wrote letter for letter against the original, using the tip of your pencil.
8. If you spelled the word correctly, put a star in the final column and go on to the next word on the word study sheet. If you misspelled it, repeat the process above, steps 1-6, this time printing the word in the "Spell Again" column.
9. Repeat the procedure with each remaining word. Again, the study process for five words should take about twenty minutes.
