Taking over the learning process = differentiated instruction!

Hatija comes to me during my 6th hour, and lately we've been reading together and doing sight words. However, when I asked her why she doesn't seem to like writing, she explained that she doesn't know how to spell a lot of words and is self-conscious about it; she wants to know more words so that she's more comfortable with spellings and meanings. So we came up with a solution together, and she wanted me to share it with her other teachers in the hopes that she could continue this in their classrooms. (Literally, she came up to me today and said, "Do you have Mrs. Kerber's (et cetera) email address? Can you tell [them] what we talked about yesterday?").

Here's the plan we concocted together:

1. She tells me the words she really wants to know how to spell. I write them down (it's a list of 26), then give her the list to repeatedly write out over and over again every day. At the end of the week she'll take a quiz, and whatever words she passes gets replaced with new words, and the words she misses will be re-put onto the list.

2. She will also write the words in sentences, define them, draw what they mean to her--all to give her more background on the words.

3. Each week we will alternate between doing spelling words and reading a book. This week is spelling. Next week will be reading.

She's really enjoying it right now, because she's literally taking control over her own learning process, plus these are words that she WANTS to know, not that I think she should know. At the moment they're random words like teacher, relationships, few, and all 12 of the months. But, she is excited, which makes me excited. : )