Spelling Clouds

I hated learning spellings as a child. My mother would despair of me, because I would learn 7 of the pre-requisite 10 weekly spellings, as I figured out that my teacher would accept 7/10.

I hated the boredom associated with lists. Some people thrive on lists (my wife is the casing point) but I am more visual.

It was a tweet from @halfpintgill that sparked my interest.

I thought that was a fabulous idea - and one that I could turn into an ongoing record for the children.

At my school, we use Learning Logs for our homework, as a lot of schools do. I encourage the children to complete the work in a lot of different ways, online, through models, practically and so on.

This is an 'add on' to their homework where we will create a word cloud of the half termly spellings, where each week they gain another part of the puzzle. The idea is they can see their knowledge building 10 words at a time and can identify the amount of work that can be built upon gradually. 

All I ask is that they learn the spellings and create at least 5 sentences that incorporate as many different words as possible.

Here's what I mean:

In class, I separate children into 3 spelling groups in the traditional mode. Each group would be given their spelling list as a small image 5cm x 7cm (ish), that could go into their learning log on a designated spelling page.

Each week, the design is different, so that a collage of spellings can be created over time that will be eye catching.