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Spell/Grammar check


kwg
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We just started doing written narrations and I was wondering if you have your children correct their mistakes. Ds is 8; he hates writing but seems proud of his work. I do not want to hurt his feelings or "rain on his parade" but I am also unsure of allowing all these spelling mistakes and run on sentences.

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DD hates it when I point out mistakes in her writing and written narrations. She works hard to put her ideas into words, and I don't want to undermine her effort with technicalities. Instead I work on her spelling, punctuation, and grammar through dictation.

 

I do point and have DD correct silly mistakes of things that she has already mastered, such as misspellings of words she normally spells correctly. Usually DD laughs off these mistakes and corrects them easily.

 

For trickier mistakes that really bug me, I point out the mistake and explain the correction to DD, but let her decided whether or not to correct it. Sometimes she choose to correct it, but usually she doesn't. Even if she doesn't make the correction, I at least know that she recognizes the problem and knows how to correct it.

 

When DD writes her narrations, I give her full access to her textbook. If she does't know how to spell a word, she knows to copy it from the book.

 

I also recommend looking at how Writing With Ease transitions children into writing their own narrations. First the parent takes the narration as dictation and shows the child how the written dictation looks like, with correct spellings and punctuation. Then the child writes the narration as copywork. As the child gains a better grasp of spelling and punctuation, the parent dictates the narration back for the child to write. Eventually the child writes the narrations completely independently.

Edited by Kuovonne
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I struggle with this, too. I don't want to be discouraging. Sometimes I ask him to look through carefully and check spelling and sentences. Sometimes he will only catch things when I have him read the sentences out loud, instead of just looking at his paper.

 

My usual approach is to hold him responsible for the words we have covered in his spelling program. The "harder words" I make a note of and if they are more common words, make sure to go ahead and teach them the next time we do spelling. I also write names, places, and new terms out on the whiteboard before he writes, if it's a history or science narration.

 

I am wondering what other parents do for grammar corrections. I try to choose just one thing to point out. I also have an 8 year old btw.

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I have a just turned 8yo boy. For narrations, I expect him to start sentences with capitols and end with a punctuation mark. As far as anything more, we talk about the errors that are there and usually only correct them if we are goin to use the narration for something special. As far as spelling, I correct it for him and ask him to rewrite the word if it is something he usually spells correctly, otherwise he is allowed to use his book to spell hard word or to ask. I try to work on, one grammar topic at a time. For example, right now we are working on adding discriptive words.

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