Spelling

The boys all used a typical spelling program, learn a given set of words, do some activities with the words and take a test. Each week new words. Nothing wrong with this but I just could not face doing this again with Emma. For one I kept seeing words Emma uses in her writings and gets wrong not being in the lists. Her working word list was not represented in the spelling books. Granted these words need to be learned, the spelling book ones, but other words do too. I decided to use the ideas in Ruth Beechick's book You Can Teach Your Child Successfully (I highly recommend this book).

In it she has several options for teaching spelling. The one we will be using is where you take the child's writing and pull from it words they misspell, words you think they should know, and keep a running list of them. When you get 10, or how many you want to work with, you then teach those words. I kept a running list on a piece of scratch paper and had it hanging on the fridge.
(here is a pic of our list written on the back of a calendar page)

Ruth Beechick then suggests making a note page for the different phonics sounds. She breaks this down in her book with page suggestions and examples of the letters that make the sounds. This is very helpful for me because it is hard to decide sometimes exactly where the different sounds go. I made Emma make the different pages that had to do with her mistakes. Eventually we will have all the pages represented if Emma needs them.

Before she wrote the words on the appropriate page we discussed the sound and letters as well as other words that had similar spelling/sound. Then I had her write the list out. We will have a test at the end of the week on these words. I am also having her write the words in script for hand writing practice but that is a separate subject and not necessary for spelling.

The lists she makes are her personal word lists. I can add words I want her to know how to spell to it. There is no limit to what we can add and no wrong way on what notebook pages we want to add. It is a personal spelling book. Ruth Beechick gives suggestions and lets you know it is okay personalize it. For now this is how we will do spelling.