Preparing Resources My colleague uses Differentiated Instrucfion to do spelling with her students. Students get different handouts based on their spelling competency. You can see how weaker students get more support because a greater portion of each word is laid out clearly for them.

I made two changes to her handout. Specifically, I substituted imaginative and inspiring with incomplete and inaccurate. That’s because I did some Googling and ascertained that imaginative and inspiring don’t comprise the in-/im- prefix that means not.

Laying The Groundwork I tested two good spellers on the 8 words beforehand: Immature, Immediate, Insensitive, Insecure, Improbable, Incomplete, Imperfect, Inaccurate

Showtime I get the two students to come up to the front of the classroom. One of them will be the caller of the spelling words; the other person will be in charge of saying aloud the definitions aka the explainer.

Under my guidance, the explainer will recite the definition of immature. The purpose is to see whether the mid- and low-progress students are able to guess the spelling word based on the letters already found on their spelling sheet. When a student guesses immature correctly, the caller will affirm him or her and say it again.

The explainer and caller will then take turns to go through the remaining words. Their teacher will walk around and provide prompt feedback to the students. Possible pain points that I anticipate include 1) students don’t know when to put in-, as well as when to go with im-, 2) students are not familiar with -are, -ure and -ble. Hopefully, some students will remember the finer points of spelling better when I point them out to them on a 1 to 1 basis.

Some high-progress students will be able to speed through all 8 words. My step up activity for them is to get them to fill in the blanks with words that begin with ir-. Examples are irresistible, irresponsible and irregular.

Consolidation After going through all 8 words, I will highlight how we use im- when the root words start with either a ‘n’ or a ‘p’. Otherwise, they use the in- prefix.

In another lesson, they have written a journal entry on What I am insecure about. They will be tasked to use the PEE framework and write on Immature Behaviours to apply their understanding of the in- and im- prefixes.