Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Bounce and Spell

The BEST student teacher in the world showed me this (I love you Megan!). This is an awesome way to orally practice spelling your Word Wall words. Each time I pull the balls out my kiddos cheer and have HUGE smiles. Today is the first time for my kiddos this year to bounce and spell and they did an awesome job. How you do it in your classroom is up to you and I have done it many different ways depending on my group that year.

All you need is a set of bouncy balls (Mine are from Target). We go over the rules first. We do only one person bouncing at a time and EVERYONE spelling and pretending to bounce. I have done everyone bouncing but then you have balls rolling everywhere when someone doesn't catch it (We even tried staying in our place when we lose our ball and getting it when everyone finishes but that was still too much time getting the balls back). We practice bouncing the ball with 2 hands, close to our body and no higher than our chest.. You learn very quickly who has good hand eye coordination! You bounce and say each letter of the word as you orally spell it. If the word is like, you bounce l, bounce i, bounce k, bounce e, and bounce and say like ( I have had kiddos when we are taking our dictated sentence spelling test bouncing a pretend ball before they wrote the word!).

Later on in the year after OODLES of guided practice, this is one of the choices for them to practice their words in ABC/Word Study center.

Sorry the picture is upside down.

Please leave me a heart note and let me know what you think. Happy Bouncing!

5 heart notes:

Christine said...

I love this idea! I think I might use the smaller tennis balls that I have seen either at Target in the pet section or in a pet store for my kindergarteners though. I think the bouncy balls you use might be a little too small for them.

Heather's Heart said...

Christine, mine are about the size of a tennis ball too. I agree that small balls would not be good for K or 1st.
:)

Patty said...

LOve your idea!!! Love your site! Love your theme . . must reach their hearts before you can reach their minds!. Thanks for all of your love and dedication to your students and to teaching!
Patty L