Brief Description
Students hunt down the spelling errors in a short passage
of high-interest current events text.
Objectives
Students will
- read a passage of high-interest, grade-appropriate text.
- learn about current events.
- locate ten misspelled words in the passage.
- edit/correctly spell each word.
Keywords
Spelling, news, current events, newspaper
Materials Needed
- grade-appropriate current events (resources provided)
- student work sheets
Lesson Plan
In this lesson, students become spelling detectives as they seek out the spelling errors in current events news stories. This activity can be done independently or in pairs; the activity can be teacher- or self-corrected.
To prepare this activity, select a text passage of high interest to students. The resources listed below are great sources of high-interest, grade appropriate current events news stories for students. Simply copy the text into a work sheet and edit the text to include ten or 15 spelling errors; misspelled words should be words students should be able to spell, since the emphasis is on finding/editing errors of spelling in text and learning about current events. Each passage should be of appropriate length for your students. You might double-space the type so students can correct the spelling directly above misspelled words; or students might circle misspelled words and write the correct spellings in the margins of the work sheet.
Current Events Sources
You could use news of interest from your local newspaper or from one of the following Web sites:
Education World's News for KIDS
TIME for Kids
Scholastic News
Kidsnewsroom.org
ChannelOne.com
Student Connections (New York Times)
Sample Student Work Sheet
The following news article, adapted from an article that appeared
on the Scholastic
News Web site, serves as an example of what a work sheet
for students in Grade 4 might look like. The key to this activity
is to select word spellings students should be able to self-edit
and current events news stories that are worth discussing.
Note: In this sample, students will be asked
to find 15 spelling errors. For the purpose of the sample,
all spelling errors have been underscored. Of course, they
would not be underscored on the student work sheet.
Navy Dolphins Clear Port four
Humanitarian Ships
Wendsday, March 26 -- Too Atlantic bottle-nosed
dolphins were put in to active duty today by the Navy.
The two specially traned dolphins are searching the
waters for explosives around the port citty of Umm
Qasr.
Makai, 33, and Tacoma, 22, both mails, use their natural
abilityes to locate explosives and mark them with floats.
The dolfins are working to clear a path for ships carrying
humanitarian aid to Iraq.
The Navy has 20 trained dolphins as part of the Marine Mammal
Project based in San Diego, California. Nine of those dolphins
where flown to the Persian Gulf recently. They are
staying in specially bilt tanks abord a U.S.
warship.
The Navy dolphins are taught to avoid touching the explosives.
According to won bomb expert, the dolphins are more
at risk from local dolphins than the explosives. Dolphins
are territorial an cud drive away the two newcomers.
Adapting the Activity
Following are some ideas for adapting the activity for use in all grades:
- Prior to handing out the activity, introduce new vocabulary
to students. For example, in the sample above you might
introduce and talk about words such as explosives, Iraq,
Persian Gulf, dolphin, and humanitarian.
- The above passage might be adapted for older students
by misspelling some of the more difficult words.
- Expand the focus of this activity to include editing for
errors of spelling and errors of punctuation or word
use.
- This activity could be set up in the classroom as a Spelling
Learning Center. Change the story each week. Students cycle
through the center during the week. Students read the story,
which is glued to a sheet of colorful construction paper
and posted in the center or displayed inside a sheet protector
that can be tacked to the center's wall. Students might
simply list the 15 words that are misspelled in the story
- using the correct spellings, of course. As an alternative,
students could mark errors with crayon on the sheet protector.
This could a self-correcting activity; correct responses
might be listed on the reverse side of the story text.
Assessment
From time to time, introduce a similar activity that will
be graded; students should find at least 80 percent of grade-appropriate
spelling errors in any passage.
Lesson Plan Source
Education World
Submitted By
Gary Hopkins
National Standards
LANGUAGE ARTS: English GRADES K - 12 NL-ENG.K-12.2 Reading for Understanding NL-ENG.K-12.6 Applying Knowledge NL-ENG.K-12.12 Applying Language Skills
SOCIAL SCIENCES: Civics GRADES K - 4 NSS-C.K-4.4 Other Nations and World Affairs GRADES 5 - 8 NSS-C.5-8.4 Other Nations and World Affairs GRADES 9 - 12 NSS-C.9-12.4 Other Nations and World Affairs
SOCIAL SCIENCES: U.S. History GRADES K - 4 NSS-USH.K-4.1 Living and Working together in Families and Communities, Now and Long Ago GRADES 5 - 12 NSS-USH.5-12.10 Era 10: Contemporary United States (1968 to the Present)
SOCIAL SCIENCES: World History GRADES 5 - 12 NSS-WH.5-12.8 The 20th Century
Find more great spelling activity ideas in Education World's
Spelling Activity Archive.
Click to return to this week's spelling activity lesson plans,
Spotlight on Spelling.
Originally published 05/23/2003
Last updated 04/24/2009
|