Analyzing Spelling, Phonics, and Conventions By Looking at Writing–Then Teaching with New Clarity as a Result

Date: Tuesday, January 14, 2025

Time: 11:00 AM - 3:00 PM ET

Location: Online, via Zoom

Led by: Kara Arnold

Who Should Attend: Grades K-2 teachers and coaches

Cost: $150 per person

On this day, you’ll learn to look through a stack of your students’ writing to see patterns and next steps in their spelling. This will help you to understand what has–and hasn’t yet–stuck in their phonics development. You’ll find your knowledge of phonics comes to life as you notice your students’ patterns and sticking points. You’ll begin to grasp the obstacles and misunderstandings and knowledge gaps that your kids are showing, and you’ll also understand the control of phonics and the resilience and problem-solving behaviors they are showing as well. 

All of this will make it very clear that some small groups will make a big difference for your kids, and that you can use interactive and shared writing, as well as your phonics instruction, to help to accelerate your students’ progress. 

Part of the day will address ways to support your students’ use of snap words (high frequency words) and their command of punctuation, as well as spelling. They’ll enjoy learning from mentor sentences, admiring mentor authors, working in creative new ways with partners, establishing new spelling routines in the classroom, and using peers to support phonics. 

Across this day expect to:

• Learn to look analytically at students’ writing to see patterns and next steps. 

• Consider stages of phonics development in relationship to students’ spelling development. 

• Hear about rituals, methods, charts that teachers are using to spark kids’ enthusiasm for spelling and punctuation. 

• Discover ways to help students use more complex sentence structures as they write. Ponder writing development and think through what points in development are most appropriate to address these areas.

• Discover all the places in a Unit of Study that support conventions and grammar.

• Think about the role of phonological awareness in spelling, and develop methods to support the growth of phonological and phonemic awareness as preparation for more developed writing.