How much time should teachers and kids spend on spelling?
I’d recommend, at most, one strategy topic and one pattern topic each week, depending on what you think your kids already know and need to learn. The lessons vary somewhat in length; many can be done in fifteen minutes or so, while others may run longer or can be carried out over two days. I’ve also suggested follow-up ideas, often involving just a brief return to the idea as part of writers’ workshop later in the week. I believe that in most classrooms today not much time is spent on spelling, in contrast to classrooms as recently as the 1980s, when traditional spelling textbooks were close to universal. Those programs typically had about 20 minutes of activities a day in a one-week unit, in practice mostly done as seatwork, although they all recommended active teaching as well. Most teachers don’t use them anymore, and, in my experience, often don’t have much of a spelling curriculum because they aren’t sure what to use instead of a textbook. Yet many teachers believe that they shoul
