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Erin
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Jenn
Thank you so much for this advice, some of your ideas hadn't occurred to me.  For now I have decided to really get him to concentrate on every word, not just the ones he thinks he doesn't know. You mention finding a pattern of misspelt words and to be truthful I don't know if there is a pattern except, lots!
We have only two weeks of our school year to go, so in February I'll put these ideas into place, less noticeable then.
I'm debating whether to write to the editior of Spelling Wisdom, whilst they have done a wonderful job of changing to the British spelling they have not changed to British punctuation. Lots of hyphens and commas before the word 'and', it is annoying me 
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Erin
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SeaStar
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| Posted: Sept 26 2011 at 11:39am | IP Logged
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BUmping this thread up, as I am finding it very helpful at the moment.
My ds has long lamented that he is not a better speller. (Though he is only eight! He's the lamenting type, sigh). Anyway, I started him in the CHC spellers to help him feel like he was making progress, and for awhile that worked well.
Now he is starting to really dislike the spellers- and I agree, since just memorizing a bunch of words from a list is- no matter how you dress it up- still just memorizing list words.
But I have been holding off on Spelling Wisdom since he is still young. He will be nine soon, so I bought a copy, and his eyes popped out of his head when he saw the differences between the speller and the SW book  .
Anyway- I am planning to start him with SW and just go very, very slowly; no more than a line or two at a time. I hope I am not jumping the gun...
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Melinda, mom to ds ('02) and dd ('04)
SQUILT Music Appreciation
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Mackfam
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What grade is he in Melinda and how is his writing? I mean, not really neatness, though it should be neat enough to read, but is doing well forming his letters just fine?
And how about cursive? Are you starting a cursive program anytime soon? Working on cursive AND introducing dictation lessons at a young age would likely be really overwhelming.
IF....the skill of writing comes fairly easily to him now, and you're NOT working on cursive penmanship right now, then it could be ok to very gently ease into SW, but keep your eyes wide open for instances of him being overwhelmed, frustrated, anxious. He's very young to start dictations.
It is also ABSOLUTELY fine to drop the workbooks and just work on some good copywork for the year and have that be it for his language arts. It would give him some space between the workbook and dictation lessons which could start later...maybe after Christmas, or even next year....just a little break, and it might be nice for him. And copywork is a great training ground for learning spelling! They DO pick up on spelling through simple copywork without you having to point out a single thing!
A nice in between might be to download the 2nd grade ebooks that are free to print and use that Eva linked earlier in the thread:
pmeilaen wrote:
| I found a free online dictation series that is much shorter. here for second grade. |
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Your son may be noticing his spelling inconsistencies more because of following the weekly quiz route; you naturally notice how many you're missing. The break from workbook and weekly quiz in this area might also be a nice break so that he doesn't notice and dwell on his mistakes in spelling quite so much.
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Jen Mackintosh
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SeaStar
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| Posted: Sept 27 2011 at 10:04am | IP Logged
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Hmm...
He is in 3rd grade and has been working on cursive for about 18 months. He has been fascinated by cursive writing since he was a little guy. Last year he started learning to write the letters on his own and has been practicing ever since. He's pretty good now- reading cursive as well as writing it.
He enjoys writing, and I have him write one page a week in his journal on the topic of his choice. Sometimes he write only 2-3 lines. Sometimes he fills the page and illustrates his work. His writing has improved so much just from doing this- sentence flow, etc. I don't correct anything he writes in his journal.
However, he knows he is misspelling words, and it bothers him greatly.
I am stumped. The CHC speller is frustrating him. I wonder if I should go to something like Sound Beginnings and review all the phonograms so that he can logically build words? Would that be helpful or just tedious for him? He learned the basic phonics rules and is a good reader. He likes the looks of SW, but I don't want to overwhelm him.
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Melinda, mom to ds ('02) and dd ('04)
SQUILT Music Appreciation
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Mackfam
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I don't have Sound Beginnings, so I can't make a fair or accurate review of the approach or program. My guess is that in 3rd grade, he would be bored and find a focused review of phonograms tedious and dry. There's nothing there to make a connection to, nothing to relate to...and thus....you're likely to get the eyes glazed over response. Just a guess though.
Sounds like he's doing well writing cursive, so that's a variable that can be eliminated.
I'd probably give SW a try, Melinda. Perhaps it helps to consider whether or not SW was something you had always planned on using as a tool to assist with dictations. If you knew that you always intended to move into dictations at some point, then even if you try SW right now and find it not quite a good fit, or not quite the right time for dictations, you could shelve it temporarily, not having wasted the money spent...because you know you'll be using that tool eventually.
My thought is that he'll probably do fine moving gently through some simple dictations, and they ARE quite simple in the beginning of book 1. Within the context of a dictation lesson, with the words used in the selection, I review the phonograms and their rules. This provides a context for that review, and I only ever review one at a time, so it's not overwhelming. It's quite short, and the whole studied dictation lesson takes no more than 10 minutes.
One of my kids was very aware of spelling shortcomings, still is to some extent. I play it down, don't dwell on it, or allow the child to dwell on it, and just reassure(d) that spelling will improve as we practice writing! And it has!
My oldest child was/is dyslexic, with ATROCIOUS spelling in her early years, which is quite indicative and characteristic of dyslexia. Again, I allowed it to be a non-issue (so that it didn't define her or her spelling), and instead treated it simply as any other challenge we would work on. The only thing we did was consistent studied dictation, and her spelling is amazing now!!! Every now and then, and really quite rarely, she will reverse two letters....but this happens so rarely I haven't noticed in some months. I do remember her saying some time ago as she was looking at her writing that something didn't look right with a word, it didn't match the word picture she had in her mind...and she was right (and changed it to the correct spelling)!! I really credit the slow and steady progression through dictation lessons! It teaches a student to visualize, it moves gently at a pace that is not boring, frustrating nor overwhelming, and is founded in good literature!
I'd say give it a go, Melinda, and see how he does. 
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Jen Mackintosh
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Grace&Chaos
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Hi Melinda, I used the Modern Speller Dictation Day by Day that Jen linked to last year with my dd just as copy work. This year (third grade) we are using Spelling Wisdom. Since she is still young for dictaion I thought we would start very slow with Book 1. I only have her do one exercise a week for now. They are short and very doable that way. We are also using PLL so when it calls for dictation there, I ask her to just copy it. I'm not doing the dictation in that book so we can concentrate on the SW gradually.
BTW: there is a dictation day by day for older than second grade too. Because we had already made our book purchases last year and I decided to drop our spelling workbook with my oldest dd, I used the upper grade book for her. It worked wonderfully. Now that she is doing SW Book 2 it has been a very smooth transition.
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SeaStar
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Thanks, Jen.
I have been planning all along to use prepared dictation, so even if the book does not work out now, I will hang on to it. I love the idea of making spelling a nonissue. Eliminating the workbook should help with that. It is very encouraging for me to read how much your daughter improved just over time.
When ds brings up the subject, I will try (even) harder to make it a nonissue. Right now I tell him that he is just learning, same as everyone else. The more he reads and writes the more he'll learn. Even Jesus had to learn things!
Jenny- I do like your idea of doing only one lesson a week right now. I had been thinking of that this morning... make it once a week, make it simpler, give lots of praise.
I appreciate everyone's help. I wish this boy came with an instruction manual!
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Melinda, mom to ds ('02) and dd ('04)
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ekbell
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My children are also greatly disturbed by misspellings in their creative works (I have children who refuse to write down 'guesswork' spelling). A practical suggestion that's worked for them is to make individualized spelling 'dictionaries'.
We start with a small notebook with at least 26 pages and assign a page for every letter. Then we add every new word that that particular child wants to use in their writing but can't spell on the appropriate page of their spelling book. This reduces the demand on me as I'm no longer asked for the spelling of the same word, yet again.
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Angel
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Melinda, have you thought about giving him an electronic speller? When he's writing he can just type in the word the way he thinks it is spelled and have it checked so he can write it down correctly. I put off buying one of these for my oldest ds for a long time because I thought it would be a crutch and his poor spelling would never improve, but I was wrong. I saw improvements in his spelling after he began using it, and he wrote more as well. We still worked on spelling as a separate subject, but it kind of took the heat off his writing because he didn't have to worry about it so much then and could just get his thinking onto the paper.
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jawgee
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Angel wrote:
| Melinda, have you thought about giving him an electronic speller? When he's writing he can just type in the word the way he thinks it is spelled and have it checked so he can write it down correctly. I put off buying one of these for my oldest ds for a long time because I thought it would be a crutch and his poor spelling would never improve, but I was wrong. I saw improvements in his spelling after he began using it, and he wrote more as well. We still worked on spelling as a separate subject, but it kind of took the heat off his writing because he didn't have to worry about it so much then and could just get his thinking onto the paper. |
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What a neat invention!!! I've never seen one of those. My oldest is a good speller, but I'm going to keep that in mind. Amazing.
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Monica
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SeaStar
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Angel wrote:
| Melinda, have you thought about giving him an electronic speller? When he's writing he can just type in the word the way he thinks it is spelled and have it checked so he can write it down correctly. I put off buying one of these for my oldest ds for a long time because I thought it would be a crutch and his poor spelling would never improve, but I was wrong. I saw improvements in his spelling after he began using it, and he wrote more as well. We still worked on spelling as a separate subject, but it kind of took the heat off his writing because he didn't have to worry about it so much then and could just get his thinking onto the paper. |
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Wow- I never knew there was such a thing! My ds would love this... he could be independent and able to write what he wants correctly. I think knowing that he had a tool like this to help him (rather than having to ask me all the time or come up with the right answer himself) would relieve a lot of his spelling anxiety.
I saw in the reviews that the letters on the keyboard are fairly small. Has that been a problem for you?
I was also looking at this version for kids. It has bigger letters, but it also has other things that I'm not necessarily interested in.
I would love to combine a tool like this with the notebook idea. He could look up the words on the Speller and then write them on the right page in his notebook.
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Melinda, mom to ds ('02) and dd ('04)
SQUILT Music Appreciation
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Angel
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SeaStar wrote:
I saw in the reviews that the letters on the keyboard are fairly small. Has that been a problem for you?
I was also looking at this version for kids. It has bigger letters, but it also has other things that I'm not necessarily interested in.
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We actually have an older version with more features (that are really overkill) so I can't speak to the size of the letters on this particular one, but on ours it wasn't a problem. My ds was older than your son when he got it, but he also had some fine motor difficulties. We didn't go with an elementary version because I figured it might not have the sorts of words a child who has been raised on really good literature sometimes wants to use, kwim?
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Angela
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ekbell
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By the way, just as general encouragement for your son, when I was eight I had trouble spelling even the simplest words (even three letter words gave me problems).
When I was switched out of the remedial spelling lessons focusing on basic phonics rules to lessons which discussed roots, prefixes, suffixes- basically breaking the words down into chunks and building them up again, I realized that it didn't matter how I remembered the proper spelling of a word (just that I did) and my spelling ability improved dramatically. Copywork or as I thought of it 'getting the spelling into my fingers' worked really well when coupled with really studying the word - much better then going over phonics rules and them being expected to spell words by their sound, something I'm still horrible at.
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4Real Forums : Language Arts Come Alive
Topic: advice re: Spelling Wisdom
