Noteblog (everyone posts on this topic): Study the writing sample(s) you collected from your classroom.  Discuss the ‘stages of spelling development’ evident in each sample (see Tompkins, p. 169) and give examples. Design a ‘literacy center’ activity that would help your students improve their spelling and explain why you think it would support students’ learning.

From the writing sample I acquired and from I have seen so far this school year, the students in my class are having difficulty spelling. This is their biggest problem. I am in a 4th grade classroom and they are still having trouble spelling words a 4th grader should know. Their biggest problem is understanding the sounds in words. Their phonemic awareness is quite poor. A big part of this is because I am in a classroom with ELL students. There are a total of 11 of them. Even in 4th grade they are still having trouble sounding out words. I can honestly say about 5 times every time I go into class they ask me for help on spelling a word. I usually don't just give them the correct spelling. I have them sound out the word and have them figure it out themselves. I hope from continuing practice of sounding the word out themselves, they can learn to read sounds better in each and every word.

A good writing center I could use for this particular issue would be to give the student who is struggling a worksheet I have created for them. At the top of the worksheet would be a specific topic. This topic should have some relevance to them so they can understand the words. Under the topic word will be a bunch of words listed with one or two missing letters in the word. The child is responsible to fill in those letters to correctly spell the word. This hopefully will enhance the child's spelling. Using words of relevance will keep them engaged to sound out words in the future so they can correctly spell any word at their level of understanding.