Unit 5 is all about writing outside of the word study workshop. The biggest complaint I hear from writing workshop teachers is that the skills don’t transfer into their writing. It often sounds like, “They got a perfect score on their spelling test, but spelled the exact same words wrong in their writing piece…what gives?”
I think that that is the beauty of this unit, and the word study workshop in general. The transferring won’t just happen. We have to be intentional about teaching our spellers what that looks like. They have to be reminded and taught to be mindful of spelling during writing workshop, homework, journaling, and…well, always. This unit will provide the opportunity to pull the word study notebook alongside their writing pieces as a tool to reference and a place to continue collecting words. Spellers will be exposed to more traditional and authoritative sources for spelling- dictionaries and thesauruses as well.
