In our recent meeting to discuss Samuel's progress in academics at school, I brought up concerns about Samuel's spelling. He seems to be having trouble with vowels digraphs and consonant combinations. His average spelling score is 80%, but a recent test, where the "ei" and "ay" vowel digraphs were used, some of them also having one or two consonant combinations, had a score of 20%. A second attempt resulted in 30% correct.
Samuel's teacher agreed to start working with him on phonics. I asked for some worksheets that I can use to work at home and they came home the next day.
This is the first time that I'm aware of Samuel working with phonics. He learned to read sight words in kindergarten and first grade. I believe that much of his ability to read is by memorizing words. When he is reading , he often looks at a word and just takes a guess as to what the word is. In these cases he doesn't appear to take any time to "sound out" letters.
I just tried a worksheet with the "long a" vowel sound this morning. Before doing the worksheet we talked about vowels sounds (including a review of what a vowel is, and that letters can make more than one sound) He did pretty good. The worksheet entailed choosing the appropriate word from a choice of 6 to fill in blanks that made up a story. He did well at understanding the context and then writing in the correct words.
I'd like to hear about what others have encountered with their children when they are learning to read. I'm wondering if teaching phonics will help him do better on his spelling tests.
3 comments:
Phonics will help a lot. Actually, the more approaches to a problem, the better, my wife says.
But spelling is difficult and I must confess that I have never completely mastered it myself. Spell-checkers are what eventually taught me to spell.
Also, if he's got the typical problems with handwriting, it will be hard for him to write enough to learn spelling.
Mavis Beacon - a typing tutor program - and lots of computer time involving writing a lot is what will fix it for him. BTW, I taught myself to type in sixth grade, because it was becoming quite impossible to write legibly to the lengths demanded otherwise.
Three misspellings, corrected on the fly. :P Oh, wait, "misspellings" is underlined! Make that five.
Oh, almost forgot - Callegraphy!
I found that I was able to write legibly with a chisel-tip callegraphy pen far easier than with normal pens. It's worth a try - along with those large triangular grips for pencils they sell to arthritics. They force a proper and comfortable grip.
It made the difference between legible and illegable. Graph paper is also a great help for making letters form up and space properly.
Still, for most things, a keyboard is the right tool for the job, and an "alpha-smart" or a rugged laptop is a reasonable accommodation in school. If you have an IEP for your child, get Assistive Technologies on-board on this.
There's nothing that says your child has to be able to do everything the same way everyone else does; it's the output that counts!
Thanks so much Bob! My husband had many of the same difficulties when he was a child with spelling and he goes as far as saying not to bother with teaching Samuel to write. In fact, the last paragraph you wrote about it being the output that counts sounds exactly like something my husband would say! Samuel LOVES the computer and plays "BBC Dancemat Typing" to learn keyboarding.
Thanks for your perspective!
I'll have to try the calligraphy pen and the graph paper. His OT therapist at school works on letter sizing with him, I wonder if she uses graph paper.
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