Last year I ordered these awesome spiral dictionaries from Butterflies. I thought that they would be a perfect addition to our writers tool box. Unfortunately I put them in a safe place and only found them again at the beginning of this year.
I like these spiral dictionaries because of their simplicity. The letters are easy to see and the pages are easy to flip through. Each page only includes common sight words and high frequency words so it's a great start for students who have difficulty scanning.
To familiarise my Year One students with the dictionaries I set up a few different activities which they completed during reading groups.
Firstly I gave my students a template of a word similar to an acrostic poem and my students simply had to find a word in the dictionary that began with the given letter.
The next activity involved students searching for incorrectly spelt words that I had written on the board. Once they had found the word they re wrote it correctly.
Once they had a handle on searching and finding I had them find words that they had circled in their writing books. Circled words are words that they think may be spelt wrong. They then used the dictionary to correct their words.
This has become an activity to be completed once a week during reading groups, however I am finding now that they are editing their writing as during guided writing time and this extra time is become increasingly unnecessary, which makes me one very happy teacher!
Beck xx
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