Whip Crack Sound Spelling Mapping
Harriet Wehrenberg
This is certainly not to say that some students may in fact benefit from word shapes. But, the majority of students will benefit a lot more from using sound boxes and developing their orthographic mapping.
We love coming up with new and fresh ways to incorporate evidence-based activities in the classroom. We all know that to keep our little cherubs interested in learning we need to spice it up! In this activity idea, we are just replacing the boxes and using sticky notes. I know, simple, but kids love it!
As I mentioned in the introduction of this blog, sound boxes can be used to support and build a stronger knowledge of spelling with children. They are also super helpful for older children who may need some phonics intervention. Here is how you can use sound boxes to help with spelling:
When children have learning problems, their parents are usually the first to notice that something is just not right. Teachers often notice a child having trouble in their class. And when they notice, they want reliable information so they can help their students.
My son is going into the forth grade. At the end of the second grade he was tested, we found him to be above average in intellegence with very little phenomic awareness. His reading level was 1.9 at the end of 2nd grade. Last summer (after 2nd grade) he did the LIPS program and Wilson, he completed 3/4ths of LIPS and 1/2 of Wilson then we needed a break. He started 3rd grade with 3.0 reading level. The entire year of 3rd grade he progressed with reading very well ending in the upper 3 range.
The problem is spelling. He took the CAT5 test this year, no accomadations were used to see what his abilities are for future standardized testing. His score was the 11th %ile in spelling. Most other areas he was 50th%ile except math and that was 89th%ile. He can spell word phenetically without much trouble but the small words (and tricky) cause major problems. (I realize much of this sound text book for a dyslexic person) This summer I have been tutoring him (this is the first summer since kindergarten he has not had outside tutoring) we have been testing on the dolch list. He has to spell a word 5 days correctly without having to stop and think about it before he can go to the next word. We are doing 24 words a day. We are also doing a McGraw Hill Spelling workbook 3rd grade level that teaches the various phenomic patterns I am trying to also pull out the Wison rules as we go.
Does anyone have any other suggestions? I know this is something we will be dealing with forever. I am feeling somewhat under the gun since I know he will be having more essay tests and many reports in forth grade. We have a Franklin Spelling Ace which he will be using in school, and a computer with Word so home written reports can be checked. I wonder if I am doing everything I can or is there something out there I am missing?
The Spalding Method is the best program out there to teach spelling and reading. You can get information on training at www.spalding.org. They have a teacher training and a parent training. Great program! It works real well with students with learning disabilities.
Lori
Those of us who teach reading can sympathize with your problem. Many of us are weak spellers. We marvel at the home-school children who win national spelling bees. Many excellent reading teachers would fail rather quickly at these events.
If English were perfectly phonetic in print (as it is in speech), we could simply teach encoding (associating sounds with letters) and decoding would be simply the reverse (setting down letters for sounds). We know this is not true.
It might prove useful to teach a struggling beginner to master the 1001 words and symbols that account for 75 percent of all the English words in print. Get a list and work until they have been learned thoroughly. Begin with: the, of, and, etc. These are the words all writers must use. Then encourage the habit of using the dictionary for verification of less common words.
Seeing Stars is probably the second easiest LMB program (next to V/V) to teach out of without having had the training. Just read and follow the book carefully. They also have a 1000 word list you can use. (He may already have used it to learn them as sight words). I use the list as both a reading/spelling list.
Someone wants to make strawberry shortcake. A strawberry huller is a useful tool for removing stems and leaves, but it is a poor tool for whipping cream. A rolling pin is a useful tool for rolling dough, but it is a poor tool for slicing berries. The successful cook chooses and uses her tools appropriately.
Mat, sat, cat and map, sap, cap are helpful patterns, but that tool alone (pattern knowledge) will not help one to read and spell large numbers of words. Other tools are required. English is brimming with homonyms. It is difficult enough to find a means to sound them out when they appear in print; spelling the hundreds of such words from dictation is impossible. Try it. Just dictate: do, dew, due.
The third bit of knowledge one needs is that is necessary to know the context for a precise homonym one wishes to spell. Jack through the ball into the heir. (Could it be threw?) Prince Charles is air to the thrown of England. (Could it be throne?).
Deare Uncel
The Dr. was hear today and examimimed us. we are booth feeling well. I hope to hear from you soon the mail cames here twice day. It is very nirl here.we eat well and sleep well.
Your loving nice,
Deare Uncel
Teh Dr. was hear today and examimimed us. we are booth feeling well. I hope to hear from you soon the male cames here twice day. It is yer nirl here.we eat well and sleep well.
Your loving nice,
The long list of failed words from spelling tests I took home at the beginning of Christmas vacation, each to be rewritten fifty times, I had made little progress on before I came down with the flu. When I returned to school six weeks later, the list in hand, Miss Shapiro said,
If there was anything that could have made me nostalgic for the days of confinement when, with feverish brow pressed against the icy windowpane, I had watched my friends down on the street throw snowballs or, with sleds under their arms, head toward Fort George for an afternoon of tobogganing, it was this threat of being left back. How could I, who at the best of times limped along behind the class like a lame dog behind a wagon, possibly catch up now?
Knowing how little chance I had of writing, without error, the kind of thank-you note that would have expressed my genuine feelings about a gift, I resorted to a safe (or almost safe) and wooden formula:
To my mother, Latin and Greek were synonymous with good education and wisdom. Was this word or that word derived from the Greek or Latin? It was most important to my mother that I should know these things.
Mary MN - how is the AVKO Sequential Spelling going? I have gotten the Reading Reflex and we are working on it. My DS seems to like it. As part of his daily work that we are doing he is writing a childrens book for his infant cousin. We will then use the computer to print it using WORD to assist in spell checking. I really appreciate your in put.
LD OnLine is the leading website on learning disabilities and learning differences. Parents and teachers of children with learning disabilities will find supportive and authoritative guidance on attention deficit disorder, ADD / ADHD, dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, reading difficulties, speech, and related disorders.
The merger seems to have been present in the south of England as early as the 13th century.[4] It was unacceptable in educated speech until the late 18th century, but there is no longer generally any stigma attached to either pronunciation.[3] In the late nineteenth century, Alexander John Ellis found that /hw/ was retained in all wh- words throughout Cumbria, Northumberland, Scotland and the Isle of Man, but the distinction was largely absent throughout the rest of England.[5]
The merger is not found in Scotland, most of Ireland (although the distinction is usually lost in Belfast and some other urban areas of Northern Ireland),[6] and in the speech of older speakers in New Zealand. The distribution of the wh- sound in words does not always exactly match the standard spelling; for example, Scots pronounce whelk with plain /w/, while in many regions weasel has the wh- sound.[3]
Most speakers in the United States and Canada have the merger. According to Labov, Ash, and Boberg (2006: 49),[2] using data collected in the 1990s, there are regions of the U.S. (particularly in the Southeast) in which speakers keeping the distinction are about as numerous as those having the merger, but there are no regions in which the preservation of the distinction is predominant (see map). Throughout the U.S. and Canada, about 83% of respondents in the survey had the merger completely, while about 17% preserved at least some trace of the distinction.
A few years ago I was helping my friend Stephen Ambrose lead a group of people along some of the most scenic stretches of the Lewis and Clark Trail. On a warm summer evening, after a pleasant day of paddling canoes on the Missouri River, we camped amid the eerie and majestic White Cliffs of north-central Montana, close to the exact spot where, or 31 May 1805, Meriwether Lewis wrote one of his most lyrical journal passages about the wondrous landscape he and his men were encountering with such fresh eyes. "As we passed on," Lewis concluded, "it seemed as if those seens of visionary inchantment would never have an end."
Did any members of the Lewis and Clark expedition snore? If so, which ones? Was it a gentle sawing sound that encouraged the others to sleep, like the croaking of frogs on a riverbank? Or was it a series of erratically erupting snorts and rasps, perhaps even a grand anvil chorus of a dozen or more men that reverberated out of the tents, echoed over the hills, and alarmed the wild beasts of the Plains? Did their non-snoring campmates ponder (as that other great American adventurer Huckleberry Finn would have) the age-old conundrum, the "curiosest thing in the world": why is the snorer, the person closest to the sound, the only one left undisturbed by his snoring? Did they kick or shove or toss sticks at the offender? Or did they simply lie there, wide awake and murderously sleep deprived, silently calculating how hard it would be to slip a few doses of Rush's Thunderbolts (that super-powered laxative) into someone's breakfast?
7fc3f7cf58