Saying GOODBYE to the traditional Spelling Test

What if you never had to give a traditional spelling test again?! This is a question that Heather Hess, instructional coach, and I posed to APR elementary teachers. To accomplish this, Heather and I have been working on a "Words Their Way" Solution, based on a plan put in place at a neighboring elementary school through Instructional Coach Cindy Petty and Instructional Technology Coach Jennifer Arey (Thank you, ladies! You rock!).

In this strategy, students are placed in various spelling groups to match their needs.  Then, the groups rotate to three different stations over a five day period (which is independent of the days of the week). On the group test day, students are given a video file, allowing the student to test at their own pace. Check out this chart*, to help understand the breakdown of our day-to-day:

*Originally created by Ms. Petty and adapted by Ms. Hess

A	B	C	D	E
Introduce to: No group, teacher interacts among differentiated groups as they work	Introduce to: BLUE GROUP	Introduce to: RED GROUP	Introduce to: GREEN GROUP	Introduce to: PURPLE GROUP
Practice: RED GREEN PURPLE	Practice: GREEN PURPLE	Practice: PURPLE BLUE	Practice: BLUE RED	Practice: RED GREEN BLUE
Test: BLUE GROUP	Test: RED GROUP	Test: GREEN GROUP	Test: PURPLE GROUP	Test: No group

My role was to research potential video/recording applications that would easily be uploaded to Google Drive, create a shared folder, teach instructors how to use the tools, and then help implement them in the classroom. To record, we used Native Recorder, suggested by Instructional Technology Coach Liz Thomas, found in the Chrome Web Store.  I knew that teachers did not have a need (or wanted) to be "seen" in the video, so we placed a post-it note over the camera and used all other features.  The app easily downloads video clips and which then can be dragged into our shared Google folder where teachers distributed the video through Google Classroom using the choose selected student when creating an assignment or announcement.

Side Note:  I tried using the Google Team Drive to house all of the videos, but teachers could not pull them over from classroom to view.  We continuously received an error when students tried to play it back. 

After training, teachers can complete video, uploading, and distribution in 10 minutes or less. Once the teacher has all of the videos, he or she can continue to use them the next year in practice. Our group of teachers started dividing and conquering the lists. Basically, after the first nine weeks or so, the lists should all be uploaded! Teamwork makes the dream work!

Three Biggest Takeaways 

1. At first, Murphy's Law was in FULL effect, "Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong." 

I'm not going to lie....the first day of implementing this strategy the video would not work.  The students were confused, and Mr. Gass, a third grade teacher, and I were pulling our hair out! However, by the end of the lesson, we were laughing and I was singing T. Swift's Shake it Off song in my head.  Now, it's easy to step into a class and complete the procedure because we worked out kinks.  By day three, Mr. Gass had students up and running without any help and has implemented the process daily.

2. Students controlling their own pacing is good instructional practice.

Students complete work at different rates.  With this strategy, students have control over how fast the words are said and can review words go back and double check their work.  In addition, because students are given different lists, the students benefit from having more small group instructional time with the teacher to hone their own skills.

3. Working together puts SO much less pressure on every individual 

One of the most impressive parts of this ongoing journey was watching the initial three teacher volunteers collaborate on building the videos. This collaboration allowed all of us to feel like we were figuring out this new strategy together, and the task became really fun!