Spelling, part 2

Spelling, part 2
Last time, I introduced the idea of spelling being a difficult subject in our house, but I didn’t really give you any solutions. This time I hope to present a couple of ways that we seek to spell better in our fifth grade homeschool. One of the methods we use for spelling is actually the one she suggested in first grade. We start the lesson in spelling with a pre-test. The words she can spell she only has to write one more time before the spelling test. The words she gets wrong on the spelling pre-test go on to round two. She must do four kinds of practice on the word before she can test on it again. She does word finds, she must find the incorrect words within a paragraph and spell them correctly, and she must use it in a sentence, spelled correctly. If she misspells it on any of those occasions, then she must write the word five times. Just the threat of repetition causes her to work harder at learning how to spell the words that are assigned.

I have also discovered word games. Somehow learning to spell words by means of a game makes it all a little easier to swallow. There is a site out there, Spelling City, that allows you to put in your own spelling lists and then do activities and games with those lists. My child is an avid reader and because of that she can recognize a word if it is spelled wrong, even if she can’t spell it correctly. What we do with this ability is to let her proof read paragraphs with spelling words spelled incorrectly within the text. I figure recognizing the incorrect spelling is half of the battle. We tackle the other half of the battle by writing the word correctly.

Another thing that we do to improve spelling without a lot of repetition is to do word ladders. I have not found a place yet that will allow me to make my own word ladders with our spelling list, but I have found books from Scholastic that offer about one hundred word ladders. One book is second and third grade, the other is fourth and fifth grade level. I do believe that they offer one more at a higher lever. Even if they don’t you can find word ladders on line. Not familiar with word ladders? It is a list of 10 clues, and the process works like this. The first word might be “well”. The next place is a blank with a hint like, “home for a clam, take away one letter, add two letters.” “Shell” would be the answer. The next hint might be, “fall, past tense, take away two letters, add one letter.” “Fell” would be the resulting word. This not only works for spelling word family words, but it makes her use her brain in critical thinking, sequencing, and the meaning of words.

Spelling time used to be filled with tears, dug in heels, and butting heads. I won’t say that it is sunshine and roses every day now, but it is getting better, thanks to trying different methods than the tried and true repetition, things are improving. If you are encountering problems with your fifth grader in spelling, try thinking outside the box, it just might work for you.

Spelling, part 1

Spelling, part 1
If your child is anything like mine spelling time is a real struggle. My child is smart enough and able to do the spelling that I ask her to do, the problem arises when I ask her to practice or review. Somewhere along the way my fifth grader decided that if she was asked to do any subject, any assignment more than once the teacher obviously thought she was stupid. I say “Somewhere along the way” but I can pin it down to spelling lessons in the first half of first grade. I know this is where the problem started because my then first grader came home and announced that she was stupid. For a moment I didn’t even know what to say to her. I quickly pulled myself together and reassured her that she was far from stupid, offering as proof that I had paperwork that indicated that she was plenty smart. She insisted that she must be the stupidest kid on the planet. Why did she think that you ask? Well, it seems that spelling words had been presented on Monday, revisited on Tuesday, practiced on Wednesday, studied on Thursday and reviewed one more time on Friday morning in preparation for the dreaded spelling test on Friday afternoon. I tried to explain that repetition was a valid way of cementing knowledge but she would have none of that. She even asked if she could just take the test on Monday, cold, and then only review the words that she didn’t know how to spell.

As you can imagine, my suggestion to the teacher was met with horror. That was not how spelling words were taught and learned and there would be no deviation from the tried and true method. And I can understand the refusal to offer learning alternatives. What if every one of the twenty five students in the class had to be taught the same fifteen words in a different way? My child then figured out that certain work, particularly on spelling words, was not for credit. She refused to do the work if it was not for credit. Even though she was maintaining an ‘A’ average, she was labeled difficult and oppositional. And I can see that actually. Eventually this, and nine hundred seventy five other reasons, led us to become homeschoolers.

And so, the dilemma, how was I supposed to teach her spelling, vocabulary or arithmetic without repetitions? I’m still working on that but I do have a few things that we have tried and that work, sometimes. You have heard of the television show “Are you smarter than a Fifth Grader?” Some days, at my house, I’m not sure that I am. The trick is to stay ahead of her. Stay tuned, next time I will discuss some things that we use in our quest for the correctly spelled word!