Mrs. Fry

Fifth Grade Spelling Skills

A fifth grader's spelling experience should include:

spelling by analogy (measure, pleasure, treasure)

short and long vowel spelling patterns (long a: baby, race, straight, maybe)

consonant spelling patterns (/j/: object, general, giraffe, gymnasium)

soft/hard consonant spelling patterns (c: circle, cyclone, copy, caught)

consonant blends ( str_: street, stretch, destroy)

irregular spellings (whose, guess, island)

silent letters: (listen, sign)

spelling digraphs (brother, shape, whether, teacher, atmosphere)

spelling diphthongs (/ou/ thousand, downhill; /oi/ soil, joyful)

r-controlled vowels (/or/ forward, shore)

multisyllabic words (especially)

spelling soft-syllable endings (/əl/: single, travel, natural: /ən (t)s/: difference, distance)

spelling contractions correctly

spelling roots, prefixes and suffixes correctly

Students will learn strategies that enable them to anticipate the spelling of a word, such as the addition of a prefix never changes the spelling of the base word (mis + spelling + misspelling), but the addition of a suffix may change the spelling of a base word, particularly for words ending in silent e, one vowel and one consonant, or consonant-y.

These strategies should be integrated with opportunities for language growth. This might include identifying and spelling antonyms (reasonable/unreasonable), synonyms (maybe/possibly/perhaps), homophones (your/you're. its/it's), homographs (present), possessives (woman's, birds/ yours), regular and irregular plurals (hearts, geese), contractions (shouldn't), multiple meanings (check), idioms (mark time), compound words (baseball), analogies (woman: women:: party: parties), often confused words (cease, seize), abbreviations (mountain/mtn.) Greek and Latin roots (form/uniform) and sorting words by meaning, phonetic analysis and structural attributes.

Students should explore other word forms of high-use writing through the addition of prefixes and suffixes and the basic rules that govern their use. Students should have opportunities to explore irregular verb forms.

Explicit instruction in visual skills is essential. This is done in every spelling unit during the Word Preview. Students are then expected to apply these skills in writing and proofreading.

Students need abundant writing opportunities to work toward the mastery of Core Words 1-675, to grow them into many more words and to maintain 100% accuracy in all everyday writing for Priority Words 1-100 by the end of the school year.