The “Don’t and Do” spelling strategy is very simple, effective, and quick.  It works something likes this:

  1. When your students are ready to start editing their piece of writing ask them to make a T-chart titled “Don’t” and “Do” on a sticky note, white-board, notebook, or whatever you/they prefer.
  2. The students then read through their piece of writing on the lookout for words that they think are not spelled correctly.
  3. While reading through students add those words to the “Don’t” column and when they have five words or so on the list they use whatever resources or tools you gave them to figure out how to spell those words correctly.
  4. The students write the correct spelling of the word on the “Do” side of the T-chart.
  5. Finally, they go back to their piece of write and edit their spelling as per their “Do” list.

This strategy comes courtesy of Dr. Gini Rojas and I was introduced to it by my awesome co-teacher Yuka Kominato @YYteach.  The beauty of it is that it can be adapted across grade levels and with students along all bands of English proficiency so that all are growing at their own differentiated “just right” spelling level.  Give it a try!