Third Grade, Spelling, Set Two

I discovered the activities I was creating for K.'s climbers, although fun, were not really helping her learn to spell the word and were taking a lot of time to make. So, I have changed tactics. When I give her the pretest, I write her climbers on the page for her to copy. Then I have her put dots between the syllables and we talk about what the word means. On another day, I write the word in large letters on a scrap sheet of paper. We observe things about the word, such as:

• patterns of letters; did you know that "imitate" has a VCVCVCV pattern, and the first two vowels are "i" and the last two consonants are "t"?
• find smaller words in the word; "use" in "amusement"
• see if we can make at least 10 words (with 3+ letters) from the letters of a word; "resurrection" -- sure, rest, ties, cure, etc.

She will also trace the word with her finger and write it in cursive. This method seems to be helping K. learn to spell the words.