dearluc bryela appollonia
Maureen Quartaro
Once your child is past the beginning-reading-lessons stage and is just reading aloud to practice, and is past the learning-how-to-write-the-letters stage and is just doing copywork to practice and gain fluency, you can use his copywork to continue encouraging him to look at how words are spelled.
An easy way to do this is, when he has finished copying the line (or two lines) for today, ask him to spell one or two of those words. Let him know beforehand that you will be asking for a spelling or two. You can allow him to spell any word he likes or you can select a word for him to spell aloud.
That consistent, gentle expectation will do much to motivate him to keep alert and notice spellings of words even as he practices beautiful penmanship. It is a simple technique that will continue cultivating that important habit of learning spelling in context.
Once he is sure he knows how to spell all of the words in the passage, dictate it to him a phrase at a time (saying each phrase only once) and watch as he writes to make sure he is spelling every word correctly. As he gains experience in prepared dictation, you can add the responsibility of learning the capitalization and punctuation too.
You can watch a video of a prepared dictation lesson on the Spelling Wisdom page of our website. The Spelling Wisdom series contains pre-selected dictation passages that cover the 6,000 most frequently used words in the English language.
Sonya, it makes sense that you mention to slow down the reading to pay attention to the spelling of the words. What happens if you have a child already struggling with comprehension and now they need to watch the spelling too? Any thoughts? Thanks for your time.
Good question, Leslie. Some of it depends on the stage of the child in the reading process. But one principle that would probably work across the board is to reduce the amount of material the child is working with. If comprehension is a chore, back off the length of the passage and take it in littler chunks. And you might read first for comprehension (tested by narration), then choose one sentence to focus on and do the spelling exercise with. Small consistent efforts can pay great dividends.
It sounds like you are moving in a good direction, but I would encourage you to take the next step and try to make sure they see the correct spelling as much as possible. When they ask how to spell a word, tell them the correct spelling, rather than having them guess at it first. Also, go ahead and do the three steps above with your various aged children. If your 6yo is still in the beginning stages of reading, do the Build the Words step with him/her. Your 8yo would probably be ready for the Notice the Spelling step. Do Prepared Dictation with your 11yo and 13yo. All of those methods will encourage them to look at how words are spelled as they see them and read them, which is what makes a good speller.
How many times a week is recommended for Spelling (dictation) for an 11 yr. that has trouble spelling. I also am wondering in other areas of her work that she gets wrong like just writing and she spells it right if I point it out to her and if so how just pointing out the correct spelling?? thanks!
This handout provides some tips and strategies for revising your writing. To give you a chance to practice proofreading, we have left seven errors (three spelling errors, two punctuation errors, and two grammatical errors) in the text of this handout. See if you can spot them!
Not exactly. Although many people use the terms interchangeably, editing and proofreading are two different stages of the revision process. Both demand close and careful reading, but they focus on different aspects of the writing and employ different techniques.
Editing is what you begin doing as soon as you finish your first draft. You reread your draft to see, for example, whether the paper is well-organized, the transitions between paragraphs are smooth, and your evidence really backs up your argument. You can edit on several levels:
Have you done everything the assignment requires? Are the claims you make accurate? If it is required to do so, does your paper make an argument? Is the argument complete? Are all of your claims consistent? Have you supported each point with adequate evidence? Is all of the information in your paper relevant to the assignment and/or your overall writing goal? (For additional tips, see our handouts on understanding assignments and developing an argument.)
Does your paper have an appropriate introduction and conclusion? Is your thesis clearly stated in your introduction? Is it clear how each paragraph in the body of your paper is related to your thesis? Are the paragraphs arranged in a logical sequence? Have you made clear transitions between paragraphs? One way to check the structure of your paper is to make a reverse outline of the paper after you have written the first draft. (See our handouts on introductions, conclusions, thesis statements, and transitions.)
Does each paragraph have a clear topic sentence? Does each paragraph stick to one main idea? Are there any extraneous or missing sentences in any of your paragraphs? (See our handout on paragraph development.)
As you edit at all of these levels, you will usually make significant revisions to the content and wording of your paper. Keep an eye out for patterns of error; knowing what kinds of problems you tend to have will be helpful, especially if you are editing a large document like a thesis or dissertation. Once you have identified a pattern, you can develop techniques for spotting and correcting future instances of that pattern. For example, if you notice that you often discuss several distinct topics in each paragraph, you can go through your paper and underline the key words in each paragraph, then break the paragraphs up so that each one focuses on just one main idea.
Proofreading is the final stage of the editing process, focusing on surface errors such as misspellings and mistakes in grammar and punctuation. You should proofread only after you have finished all of your other editing revisions.
Sure, this takes a little extra time, but it pays off in the end. If you know that you have an effective way to catch errors when the paper is almost finished, you can worry less about editing while you are writing your first drafts. This makes the entire writing proccess more efficient.
You probably already use some of the strategies discussed below. Experiment with different tactics until you find a system that works well for you. The important thing is to make the process systematic and focused so that you catch as many errors as possible in the least amount of time.
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* Reading the images can also help your child make inferences which will also help when they are reading chapter books with few or no images and they are relying on their imagination. For example, my daughter just checked out the book Dogs by Emily Gravett. This book has a fantastic twist and requires that the reader pay attention to the illustration to see who is telling the story in this book. Click the title to check it out.
Help your child know how text features can help their reading and how to plan for pages that have text features. Read about strategies to help with this by clicking this linkReading the words.When most of us think of reading, we automatically think about reading the words on a page. Support your child as they read the words by offering lean prompts when needed. Prompting should be encouraging and should allow your child to do most of the work. To learn more about that click here.4. Retell the storyAfter you have read and reread a story, encourage your child to retell the story. Let them tell the story as they turn the pages of the book.
You can prompt your child to add in some of the elements or details they may have left out. Make sure to be really encouraging and honor the reading they have done.If you want to know more about ways of encouraging our young readers, I highly encourage reading the book I Am Reading by Kathy Collins and Matt Glover (2015).
"There was no rhyme or reason to reading for me," she said. "When a teacher would dictate a word and say, 'Tell me how you think you can spell it,' I sat there with my mouth open while other kids gave spellings, and I thought, 'How do they even know where to begin?' I was totally lost."
Woodworth went to public school in Owosso, Michigan, in the 1990s. She says sounds and letters just didn't make sense to her, and she doesn't remember anyone teaching her how to read. So she came up with her own strategies to get through text.
Strategy 2: Guess the words based on context. If she came across a word she didn't have in her visual memory bank, she'd look at the first letter and come up with a word that seemed to make sense. Reading was kind of like a game of 20 Questions: What word could this be?
Most of the time, she could get the gist of what she was reading. But getting through text took forever. "I hated reading because it was taxing," she said. "I'd get through a chapter and my brain hurt by the end of it. I wasn't excited to learn."
Woodworth, who now works in accounting,1 says she's still not a very good reader and tears up when she talks about it. Reading "influences every aspect of your life," she said. She's determined to make sure her own kids get off to a better start than she did.
A couple of years ago, Woodworth was volunteering in Claire's kindergarten classroom. The class was reading a book together and the teacher was telling the children to practice the strategies that good readers use.
The teacher said, "If you don't know the word, just look at this picture up here," Woodworth recalled. "There was a fox and a bear in the picture. And the word was bear, and she said, 'Look at the first letter. It's a "b." Is it fox or bear?'"
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