Here’s some spelling data that may be of interest: this year, for the first time ever, I did not give weekly spelling tests to my students. After giving the students one spelling assessment at the beginning of the year, I taught brief spelling minilessons throughout the year based on the words I saw the students frequently misspelling in their writing. Some of these spelling minilessons were whole-group (if the problem was fairly prevalent); others were small-group, and others were one-on-one.
Just recently, I gave the students an end-of-year spelling assessment. When I compared their growth to that of past classes, I found that the students made the same amount of growth as they had in previous years, when I had done similar minilessons but had also employed the weekly tests.
So I managed to get rid of the weekly spelling tests (and the dreaded spelling homework!), saved some class time in the process (which we used to do more actual reading and writing), and got the same exact results as before.
Can someone remind me again why spelling tests exist?
Posted by mpullen 
