Spell Around is a spelling drill activity for a small group.

Each student has a spelling notebook (or a sheet of paper) and a pen. A 6-card packet is handed to each person and the timer is set for one minute. The goal is to correctly spell all six words in the deck within the time limit. Then the decks are passed to the right, and another round begins. 3 or 4 rounds at one sitting is optimal.

On each card is a base word and an ending to be added. The word list below and the accompanying picture were designed for practicing the final y rule. Whether the ending begins with a vowel or a consonant, the y preceded by a consonant changes to an i; except when adding -ing because we don’t use two i’s together in English. (I am told that skiing comes from Norwegian.)

At a later session of Spell Around, cards with base words with a vowel before the y will be added in to the decks, so the children have to discriminate between instances where they change the y to an i and situations where they don’t.

 

WORD LIST:

 h a s t y   +   n e s s               b u r y   + i n g

p l e n t y   +   f u l                 h a p p y   +   l y

w i n d y   + e s t                    s h a d y   +   e s t

m e s s y   +   e s t                 f l y   +   i n g

d e n y   +   i n g                    s i l l y   + e r

f u n n y   +   e s t                  a n g r y   + e r

l a z y +   n e s s                     c o p y   + e r

f r y   +   i n g                          s m e l l y + e r

c o z y   + e r                           e m p t y + n e s s

p e n n y   + l e s s                  m a r r y   + e d

h u r r y +   i n g                     c a r r y   +   i n g

f u r r y   +   e s t                    t i n y   +   e s t

f l i m s y   +   e s t                  d i r t y   + e r

w o r r y   + i n g                     f u s s y   +   e s t

s h i n y   +   e r                       m u d d y   + e s t

VARIATIONS:

You can make decks to practice doubling the consonant before adding a vowel ending, or dropping the e before a vowel ending. For practicing verb conjugations in a foreign language, you can put a pronoun + a verb infinitive.

TO CONSIDER:

If the kids have the job of checking each other, they get additional practice in applying the spelling rule. But it slows down the process. I have kids raise their hands when they’ve written all their words so I can quickly check them, and then they head into the next round.