Winging it with spelling

[Kezia]

I started my poor speller with Spell Well in 4th grade. He was doing great on the end of week test, but spelling those same words incorrectly in daily use. So not retaining much. 
 

So I changed to AAS for second half of the year and of course focused heavily on the rules but did the program levels 2-5 at an accelerated pace. He does know the rules for those levels but has to be reminded that we had a rule about for example, doubling, then he can correct himself. I did not do the heavy review indicated in AAS, only the ones he had trouble implementing in his writing. 
 

 

Maybe I can use misspellings found in his writing for some sort of spelling notebook...I have been scouring for specific ideas for this spelling notebook but not finding much online. 
 

Maybe one section for rules from AAS with a page devoted to each rule learned and any misspelled words found in writing can be listed on whichever rule page it follows?

maybe a section that has him come up with interesting words that he wants to be able to spell and he can define it and use it in a sentence or vocabulary words if he can’t come up with something on his own? 
 

a third section devoted to dictation? 
 

Can I call that spelling and it be effective? Other suggestions?

[8filltheheart]

I personally wouldnt for a poor speller. For a good speller, sure.

[LauraClark]

We use Dictation Day by Day. It's in the public domain so with a look to see if that may be a help.

[Ellie]

10 hours ago, Kezia said:

I started my poor speller with Spell Well in 4th grade. He was doing great on the end of week test, but spelling those same words incorrectly in daily use. So not retaining much.

So I changed to AAS for second half of the year and of course focused heavily on the rules but did the program levels 2-5 at an accelerated pace. He does know the rules for those levels but has to be reminded that we had a rule about for example, doubling, then he can correct himself. I did not do the heavy review indicated in AAS, only the ones he had trouble implementing in his writing.

Maybe I can use misspellings found in his writing for some sort of spelling notebook...I have been scouring for specific ideas for this spelling notebook but not finding much online.

Maybe one section for rules from AAS with a page devoted to each rule learned and any misspelled words found in writing can be listed on whichever rule page it follows?

maybe a section that has him come up with interesting words that he wants to be able to spell and he can define it and use it in a sentence or vocabulary words if he can’t come up with something on his own?

a third section devoted to dictation?

Can I call that spelling and it be effective? Other suggestions?

Is his spelling generally pretty good? Then you can call anything "spelling." 🙂 But if he still needs some help, then, since you own AAS, I would tell you to go back to that and do it just as it's written, all the jots and tittles. As you have seen, skipping the "heavy review" did not result in his having good spelling skills.

[Gil]

My poor speller only improved when I, the teaching-parent, got intense, intentional and involved in his spelling on a day-to-day basis. Hopefully my kid was just especially slow with spelling and your kid will take off with a lightly structured approach, but mine most certainly didn't. Personally, I recommend deciding if you think that Spelling is Important. If somethings "Important" for your HS/student then getting and staying involved is typically what works.

Sorry, OP, but skipping the "heavy review" is likely not going to cut it for a poor speller. It didn't for mine, but hopefully you'll have way better luck.

[JazzyMom]

9 hours ago, Gil2.0 said:

My poor speller only improved when I, the teaching-parent, got intense, intentional and involved in his spelling on a day-to-day basis. Hopefully my kid was just especially slow with spelling and your kid will take off with a lightly structured approach, but mine most certainly didn't. Personally, I recommend deciding if you think that Spelling is Important. If somethings "Important" for your HS/student then getting and staying involved is typically what works.

Sorry, OP, but skipping the "heavy review" is likely not going to cut it for a poor speller. It didn't for mine, but hopefully you'll have way better luck.

What program did you use?

[Kezia]

I don’t know if he is still a poor speller. Maybe?
 

When I started homeschooling starting with 4th grade I noticed too many misspelled words and felt he needed a lot of work in that area. He did well on spelling tests, in 3rd grade public school and at home 4th grade, but he didn’t apply it to every day writing. He has shown some improvement. Spells the words just fine as we do spelling. He does dictation from AAS perfectly. He can answer the review cards from AAS. He does daily editing practice from a workbook and generally spots the spelling mistakes.
 

I still see quite a few simple mistakes in his first drafts. Maybe careless about spelling mistakes when his brain is trying to come up with original sentences?
 

My plans for this next twelve months include far more writing across curriculum. I was hoping that would just organically have him easily spelling most things correctly the first time, leaving only difficult or unknown words misspelled. 

[Gil]

 

39 minutes ago, JazzyMom said:

What program did you use?

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaaaaa!!!! ROFL!

I can tell you a slightly abridged version of the Journey To Decent Spelling  that Pal and I have been on.

We did the WRTR spelling notebook when he was 6/7 ish. He was very advanced in language arts so I thought that the "next step" was teaching him spelling. I used the handwriting method in WRTR with great success but making the spelling notebook did not translate to anything other than a notebook he'd made. Covering the 27 spelling rules at that age/stage and writing words in that notebook was essentially a handwriting exercise because for the sake of spelling it's like it went in one ear and out the other.

His spelling regressed when he was 7ish/8ish and started having to write more for school stuff. I'm not sure what that was about--but he couldn't spell reflexively and it was like he just could not handle spelling while composing.

We were well beneath the poverty level at that time so I honestly don't think it occurred to me to buy "A spelling program".

I had taught them to read without a "A Reading Program" and I naively assumed that I could teach him to spell, as well. He could spell relatively well in isolation mind you, but if he was writing something it was ridiculous.

I started working on spelling with him via exercises and word lists. 

Phase One - lasted about 2 months.

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1) We worked on spelling words by segmenting/sounding out words according to phonics patterns.
He had to sound-and-spell every 1 syllable word that I saw in the lists.
We started with baby-words that he didn't want to do and would get very angry about, but I made him do them. Think of words like
 "me" "an" "it" "be" and "hi". Words that no self-respecting boy--who is proud of how well he can read, BTW--wants to take time to work on explicitly.

I just went by length of words. So he started with 1 letter words--"I" and "a", then every 2 letter word that I could think of (I made a list).
I came up with 9 Spelling Steps and he had to work briskly and go through each step for each word, each time.
9 Steps for 1 Syllable Words
1- put his pen down
2- say the word,
3- sound it out,
4- air-write it as he said the sounds (I experimented with ASL-finger spelling, but ditched it as we don't spell with ASL, we spell with letters)
5- pick up his pen as he repeated the word
6- sound it out again
7- write the word as he said the sounds
8- Say the word-spell it.
9- Put the pen down

He could read and comprehend well beyond his age-level but I made him do all those steps with "baby words". Any time he skipped a step or paused, he had to do it again. If he wrote a word before doing Steps 1-6 correctly, quickly and in order I made him do that word over.  If he skipped Step 8, I made him do the word over. Handwriting mattered.

If he followed all the steps required but didn't do the correct strokes in the air or scrawled the word on the page--I made him do it again. And again and again and over and over again.

He was not a fan on this regiment on baby words which he felt were beneath him and that he could (probably) spell without even trying. I felt it would be good for him to master 1-syllable words so that he could  spell other words so I didn't change course.

In the early days he'd argue and resist.

The most he every wrote a word was like 83 times because he was highly resistant and was trying his hardest to be as non co-operative as possible. He was fuming mad but he finally wrote "ox" correctly and in accordance with The 9 Steps.

After The "ox" Session, things started going more smoothly. He'd tested the boundaries and discovered that he couldn't argue, avoid, or evade doing it "Gils Way"

We spent about a week doing every 1 and 2 letter word every day. If you discount the time he spent whining and resisting, it took only several minutes a day. I started weaving in 3 letter words and we'd follow the same sequence of steps.
Once he "got with the program" and stopped wasting time we'd do a couple of hundred words at a stretch and it took about 30 minutes.

It was okay for the words to repeat. He was fluent in his letter sounds and could read very well so we probably could've started higher but I didn't have the experience to place him anywhere but "the very beginning" and besides, he gets his stubborness and tenacity from me, so I was determined to make him do it "The Correct Way" and "From the Beginning"

2) We made sure that he visually coded words: Color Coding

Once we were consistently getting through 30 minutes of coding words orally/aurally, it occurred to me that we should also be working on the visual memory piece.

We began color-coding the sounds in a word.
We assigned different colors to consonants, digraphs, vowels and diphthongs. We used the same color code every day and used a highlighter similar to this to color code--he could work quickly and efficiently.

We got to the point we're we'd spend 30ish minutes sounding and writing words, and then color-code the words he'd just written.
He had to write a full page of spelling words but we'd color code by the timer.

We'd spend about 45 minutes working on spelling of 1-syllable words each day.

3) I taught him syllable rules because there are 5 or 6 of them vs 27 spelling rules.

We went through lists of words based on phonics patterns, CVC, VCC, CV, CVV, CCVCC, etc. and for every word he had to got through The 9 Steps as he wrote each word.  I made him re-learn the different vowel combinations like ai, ie, etc... (phonograms).

We added in Syllable Analysis on words that he he'd mastered already and this made spelling more mental, and he hated it a little less because it got an slightly interesting part.

This was improving his spelling  but when he was writing for school it was he'd still misspell words that I thought that he "should know"

 

Phase Two - about a year maybe? This is less-well defined.

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4) The Most Common Words in English

I printed a list of 1000 Sight Words or something like that. He went through the pages and gleefully crossed out every 1 syllable word and we used a sequence to learn/study/practice/drill the words that remained.

Preliminary work:
He'd write the word on a flashcard  (I'd check that he'd spelled it correctly and written neatly and large enough) then on the other side he'd syllabicate the word in writing (again, I'd double-check that he'd spelled the word correctly and written it neatly and large enough), then he could color-code the syllabicated word on the card. He'd look over his flashcards for a few minutes.

Active Work: (My son had some speech issues so I built in a lot of oral/articulation steps while spelling because if he disliked spelling he loathed working on speech stuff more so.)

1- put your pen down
2- say the word CLEARLY
3- clearly syllabicate the word (slowly)
4- say the word CLEARLY again
*5- sound out each syllable of the word. (pause between syllables)
6- say the word CLEARLY again.
7- air-write the word by syllable as you sound out each syllable
8- say the word CLEARLY again
9- trace the word by syllable as you say each syllable (we used a finger/straw/dead pen/empty mechanical pencil)
10-pick up your pen (or highlighter) and say the word one more time.

• if he's not ready to write it the word, he uses the highlighter and visualizes the word and puts down the syllabicated color-code for the word while he says the word. So instead of writing no-thing, he'll put the color coding
  ____ - ______ then pick up his pen.

*11-write the word by syllable

• compare his spelling to the color-code pattern and check that they match.

12-write the word in standard form
13-color code the word in standard form
 

*This was where his syllable analysis training came in handy. "Should the word by bec-ause or be-cause? What kind of syllable is that? How will it be spelled"

This method was working but it was time intensive for me--but he was getting better and the improvement was showing up in his day-to-day writing and For School compositions. He'd been using a dictionary since he began reading, but this is when spelling seemed to click for him.

We could do about 25 words a day using this new sequence, but it was slow going and we often repeated the same 25 words for 2-3 days, phasing out words he got and keeping track of words that he kept missing. The flash cards of those Often Missed Words went on a ring and he spent time with them most meals.

The flashcards for Words He Could Spell went into a box and were used for games as review and confidence boosting. He enjoyed taking Often Missed Words off of the ring and putting them in the box.

Then, because we were making good progress and he was having a break through life happened and we dropped spelling (and most school stuff for a while).

4a Spelling Through Morphographs - (aka The "Meaning Based Piece of the Puzzle that Gil Might've Never Even Dreamed Of Existing Because He is Not an English-Type-of-Person.)

He attended Charter school for 3rd/4th grade and while there he was a remedial speller and it was impacting his grades across the curriculum (spelling counted in all subjects at the 3rd grade level) so The BM school did a few intervention assessments and put him through Spelling Through Morphographs to catch him up to where they wanted him. That programs expensive for my budget so I'd have never even considered it given the price and the fact that I had no idea what it was but Pal blossomed and finally could tackle multisyllable words intelligently and it was a lot more streamlined then the infinite put your pencil down and say this word word approach.

His success with StM showed me that he "clicked" with meaning-based spelling--when he was finished with StM he didn't regress nearly as much as I might've expected him too. With Pal it always seemed that with spelling it was 3 steps forward, 1-2 steps back.

It's not that he couldn't learn to spell, it's that he couldn't seem to get the spelling so deeply ingrained that he could use it reflexively in real-time while writing.

If he was focused on and interested in spelling, he could spell but he didn't see spelling as important and doesn't enjoy tedious LA related stuff so it was torture for him to put in the work. He tortured me accordingly.

 

Phase 3 - This overlaps the end of his time at the BM for a while, but it went on for about 2 years. (Until around mid-6th grade)
 

Quote

 

5) We come at Spelling with a combo of Meanings + phonic patterns + syllable rules

Once I saw that he was well served by meaning based spelling I started looking at the later lessons in Phonics books like OPG and took clusters of words that were related. I took lists of Commonly Misspelled Words and heavily modified the way that we used this Vocabulary Builder book from just a vocabulary focus to a spelling program.

Aside from actively studying roots and rules we continue to syllabicate, color-code and drill words (almost) every day that we practice/work on his spelling. Even just 15 minutes.

He's just about mastered Commonly Misspelled Words (compiled from lists in guide books and off the internet) and spends time working on longer words (5-8 syllables).

We still use the same steps on words longer than 1 syllable, but we've added the following steps

14-use the word in a sentence
15-syllabicate and spell the word orally 1-3 times. (5 times if it's tripping him up)
16- encode the word using only the Color-code 3 times without looking at the word (5 times if he makes a mistake)
17-write a sentence using the word

• IF he falters on the spelling word while writing the sentence then he will write the sentence and leave a gap for the spelling word, then color codes that spot and then writes the word into its color coded spot.

18-writes the target word 3 times beneath the sentence

6) We take time to keep the foundation rock-solid. I try and drill him each day--this takes about 15 minutes.

We go through phonics patterns, rules for combining various morphemes, syllable types, root words, spellings of simple words, spelling of recent words, commonly misspelled words, mnemonics for tricky words, etc. During these sessions he might have to write, speak, trace, quickly complete a worksheet or explain rules or patterns, etymology for odd-ball words the "Spelling Pronunciation" of common words etc. I try and cover 75-100 items in rapid fire fashion each day.

It helps tremendously that he no longer pitches a fit about spelling review/practice.
We focus primarily on English spelling, but I give a day or 2 to ortografia en español each week as well.

Since he's mastered the 1-3 syllable words so we don't practice them nearly as much outside of these daily drills, but any word that he struggles with remains in rotation and I don't care how long it takes.

7) He continues to do spelling even though he's in 8th grade.

We apply methods to any words that I want him to learn. We harvest words from 4 main places:

1. the End of Chapter section or the glossary of quality textbooks that we own
2. lists of Commonly Misspelled Words (collected from English textbooks, teacher resource books and around the internet)
3. Test Prep Lists/sources (GRE/LSAT/SAT/ACT books)
4. Magazines aimed at educated adults

To make sure that he's integrating his spelling ability into his writing some of the strategies that we use are copied below for reference.

Quote

A couple of other strategies that I have come up with him is when writing,

• We use syllable-division rules to help ball-park the spelling of words (there are only 6 or 7, vs 27 spelling rules)
• I have him drill words that are short, common and irregular (I made templates of worksheets where he might fill in the blanks for missing letters, write the word 3, 5 or 10x while saying it, order the letters/digraphs, write the words in sentences, spell the words orally spelling bee style, use different highlighters to color code the digraphs/vowels/consonants/blends etc) 
• In his writing compositions (and he writes every day) he must use wide-ruled paper. He writes in blocks of 3 lines.
  • Line 1: Writing sentences
  • Line 2: Reserved for him to "test-out" spelling for longer words by hyphenating each syllable, then he returns to line 1 to include that long word.
  • Line 3: Left blank for readability.
• He keeps a list of commonly misspelled words, and I have him drill those at the beginning of each writing session.
• When he has finished writing something for school, I have him go over it to look for commonly misspelled words and correct them before he turns it in to me.
• He also drills his commonly misspelled words at the beginning and ending of each spelling session, even if we're working on something else that day.

 

9) Use A Freaking Dictionary While Writing

I am mean. I make my child use a Collegiate Dictionary--not the internet, not a computer, a good old fashioned, heavy-a$$ dictionary when he's writing to check his spelling.

When he's getting ready to write on a topic, he generates a list of vocabulary words he expects to need for the paper and studies the spelling before writing the paper.

 

 

Phase 4.5ish?

Through it all, you've got to

10) Hold Him Accountable
When I read his work, I put a mark in the margin of any line that has a misspelled word and he has to figure out what's misspelled using the heavy-a$$ dictionary.
The word(s) that he missed gets added to Gils List of Words that he needs to be able to spell so he is incentivized to spell well so as to spare himself having to go through 18 Spelling Steps on words.

 

11) Be consistent.

It was NOT EASY to get a spelling regiment started with him (See "The "ox" Session)

When he was a small boy he pitched a fit about spelling.  Being my less inhibited child with a penchant for theatrics he cried, he accused me of thinking he was dumber than his brother, he hated spelling, he hated me for doing this too him and just out right hated me! He wanted to run away and he wanted to go to jail instead of do spelling. He made me suffer at least as much as he did.

Fortunately, that was an intense but relatively short period. It didn't last past Phase 1, thought it reared its head a bit in Phase 2 but never as intense as those early days.

when you consider we've been at this for years now and he can spell many SAT and GRE type words.

I felt in my Fatherly-Gut that he needed to work intensively on his spelling and that's what he did. Once we hit upon Meaning-Based spelling it helped a lot in guiding me in which words to chose and how to break words up for him.

However, I had to get explicit and involved and come at spelling intensively with a vicious combo of Sound-Meaning-Pattern-Rule tactics to get to this point and consistent and continuous drilling to prevent that ever-present-threat of going backwards.

I'm not sure when/if I'll drop spelling with him. (Next year? 10th grade? College graduation? Tomorrow, 😭?)

So, the short answer is that we don't use a Spelling Program. At this point, I'm not sure I'd switch to a program or if it's even worth it.

I've been teaching this kid long enough to know that Spelling can NOT be an Independent or Casual subject for him if he's to achieve proficiency and long-term mastery of it. If I bought a workbook or a CD, I'd be tempted to take my eye off the Pal-Learning-To-Spell ball and I since I know my kid, I know that would not end with Pal-Learning-To-Spell, lol.

[Kezia]

29 minutes ago, Gil2.0 said:

he couldn't spell reflexively and it was like he just could not handle spelling while composing.

Yep, this describes my son perfectly. 
 

Thank you for the detailed description of the way you taught your child. I am definitely going to put some of that into action. 
 

 My son’s public school didn’t care about spelling in third grade writing, they just wanted him to write. They did spelling separately. I still have trouble getting him to remember to always capitalize the first letter of the sentence and always use punctuation. It is as if all these things are completely separate in his brain. He can only do one thing well at any given time. 

[lewelma]

54 minutes ago, Gil2.0 said:

 

However, I had to get explicit and involved and come at spelling intensively with a vicious combo of Sound-Meaning-Pattern-Rule tactics to get to this point and consistent and continuous drilling to prevent that ever-present-threat of going backwards.

I've been teaching this kid long enough to know that Spelling can NOT be an Independent or Casual subject for him if he's to achieve proficiency and long-term mastery of it. 

Completely agreeing with these two points. We had to be both consistent in drilling and I had to be completely involved. What this ended up looking like for my 12 to 15 year old boy, was 30 minutes of dictation every. single. day, with me correcting him word for word.  He had to get used to spelling things right *while* writing, and spelling programs just don't do this.  It took 3 years of this consistent and heavily parent-involved approach to get him to 90% accuracy. From the age of 15-17, he has switched to working independently on his spelling everyday by correcting all the underlined words in his typed writing without just hitting yes to the suggestion. He evaluates the word, figures out what he has done wrong, and corrects it. This is now working. Starting at 15, he owned the goal and didn't need me anymore.

[Gil]

3 hours ago, lewelma said:

Completely agreeing with these two points. We had to be both consistent in drilling and I had to be completely involved. What this ended up looking like for my 12 to 15 year old boy, was 30 minutes of dictation every. single. day, with me correcting him word for word.  He had to get used to spelling things right *while* writing, and spelling programs just don't do this.  It took 3 years of this consistent and heavily parent-involved approach to get him to 90% accuracy. From the age of 15-17, he has switched to working independently on his spelling everyday by correcting all the underlined words in his typed writing without just hitting yes to the suggestion. He evaluates the word, figures out what he has done wrong, and corrects it. This is now working. Starting at 15, he owned the goal and didn't need me anymore.

Three years sounds like a dream, *sigh*! We are pushing right on through our 7th year of spelling and there is little sign on Pal taking ownership of His Own Spelling, but this gives me hope! 2 more years and hopefully he'll be too embarrassed to have Daddy hold his  hand through spelling for every.single.composition.

Admittedly, I probably started Pal on spelling 2 - 2.5 years too early for him. If I'd started Pal on spelling towards around 8.5 or 9, then it might've been better.

Buddy learned to spell from learning to read via phonics and going through WRTR at 6/7ish was just fine for him.
He spelled pretty much naturally and the going through the 27 rules via WRTR and the practice of making the spelling notebook and bam, viola he could spell. No muss, minimal fuss.

Pal, *tsk, tsk*, at least his penmanship was improved by writing all the spelling words.

 

[Gil]

6 hours ago, Kezia said:

Yep, this describes my son perfectly. 
 

Thank you for the detailed description of the way you taught your child. I am definitely going to put some of that into action. 
 

 My son’s public school didn’t care about spelling in third grade writing, they just wanted him to write. They did spelling separately. I still have trouble getting him to remember to always capitalize the first letter of the sentence and always use punctuation. It is as if all these things are completely separate in his brain. He can only do one thing well at any given time. 

I won't tell you what to do, but I will share that practicing the various layers of LA in seperate, isolated strands would accomplish nothing for either of The Boys--Buddy who is a strong with ELA and a natural speller wouldn't have benefited from the isolated approach, Pal is not strong with ELA, nor a natural speller but grammar doesn't make much sense in isolation.

I dabbled with a grammar workbook but the approach didn't didn't make sense to me and it was dropped

Instead I taught just 1 or 2 grammar rules at a time and made them write everyday in every subject, and always required that they speak and  write in sentences. I tried to never accept phrases and fragments.

Every day The Boys had to orally recite the grammar rules they'd been learning just because they were conscious.

Once school starteds, each time that they were about to write something (in math, history, science, etc) I would have to prompt them with.

"How does  a sentence start, and how will it end?" (A sentence begins with a capital letter and ends with a period.)
"How do you know when your sentence is complete?" (It'll have a subject, predicate, and make sense.)
"How does a paragraph start?" (I have to indent a paragraph.)
"Make sure you have a nice healthy indentation to start your paragraph!" (I'll use my thumbnail to make a nice, healthy indentation for my paragraph.)
"What should every paragraph have?" (every paragraph should have a theme--all the sentences should be about the same theme or topic.)

Trust me, if you spend 2 months just solidifying how to write sentences and paragraphs across the curriculum then you'll be better off.

For both boys, I wound up just teaching a couple of grammar rules at a time, and making them use them over and over again. They'd learned contractions and homophones in phonics, and we revisited them once they were fluent to make sure that they didn't mess with their comprehension.

"What's a contraction?" (A contraction is when you squeeze the words of a set phrase together to make a simpler, slangier word that should not be used in school or at work)
"How do you make a contraction?" (You make a contraction by dropping some letters and using an apostrophe to show that some letters are missing.)

For spelling with Pal, I included contractions once we covered the base word. Because the first words that he learned to spell were "I" and "a" I made him say the rule every-single time- there was nothing to sound out, so he had to say.

"I is a whole word by itself. I is special because it is always capitalized no matter where it is in the sentence."

"a is a whole word by itself. a is not special. It's only capitalized if it's the first word in the sentence."

He had to say that over and over again when we started because we started with I and a. When we started doing 2 letter words, he learned to spell "I'd" and "I'm"

He had to sound it out and write them using The 9 Steps, but since he knew the rule for creating a contraction, he had to justify the spelling of them by saying
(I'm is a contraction--it's a simpler, slangier version of the phrase I am. I'm: Capital-I, apostrophe, m) and "
(I'd is a contraction--it's a simpler, slangier version of the phrase I would or I had. I'd: Capital-I, apostrophe, d)

and "an"

(an is another form of a, used only if the next word starts with a vowel.)

When Pal started doing 3 letter words, he learned to spell all the 3 letter contractions (Yes, I used a list.) He had to go through the whole Nine-Steps plus justifying process for them. We did 'tis and it's along with he'd, he's, I've, I'll and all the other 3 letter contractions.

As he mastered the 1-syllable words, contractions were the exception to the syllable limit. (ie "would" is 1-syllable, but "would've" & "would'nt" are 2-syllables)

Verbs were probably the easiest part of 2 syllable words because it was adding the same handful of suffixes to the same effect. (In hindsight, this should've been a big clue to the whole morpheme approach being a good fit for him, but at the time I didn't know that a morpheme was a thing and it just hadn't occurred to me yet.)

Edited July 1, 2021 by Gil
Had to adjust the verb tenses so that I wasn't telling you what to do, but instead was just sharing what I did.

[lewelma]

2 hours ago, Gil2.0 said:

Three years sounds like a dream, *sigh*!

 

Oh no. NOT 3 years!!. LOL. Those 3 years were after the previous 6, so 9 in total, -- ages 7 to 15 to get to 90% accuracy (which isn't actually that high). It was at the age of 12 that I realized that all the work I had done and all the programs I had used had not taught him to spell even the top 100 words.  At the age of 12 we moved back to The Cat in the Hat. It was just those 3 years that showed me the best method to get a kid to apply their spelling knowledge to their writing, was to actually practice spelling in the context of writing rather than in isolation.

Edited July 1, 2021 by lewelma

[lewelma]

40 minutes ago, Gil2.0 said:

I will share that practicing the various layers of LA in seperate, isolated strands would accomplish nothing for either of The Boys

Same here. All the grammar, mechanics, and punctuation study was also useless when learned in isolation. Starting at the age of 12 I taught all LA in the context of the dictation. This even included sentence structure, literature appreciation. All of it all rolled into 1 with no program. Just me taking the appropriate level book, and dictating 30 minutes every day. We started with Cat in the Hat, moved up to Frog and Toad, then Narnia, then some fantasy book he liked, then The Hobbit, then Titus Groan.  Day after day after day.  I taught what he needed to learn at that moment.  No program we ever tried in any isolated LA skill ever worked. Not ever.

[MerryAtHope]

On 6/30/2021 at 2:22 PM, Kezia said:

I don’t know if he is still a poor speller. Maybe?
 

When I started homeschooling starting with 4th grade I noticed too many misspelled words and felt he needed a lot of work in that area. He did well on spelling tests, in 3rd grade public school and at home 4th grade, but he didn’t apply it to every day writing. He has shown some improvement. Spells the words just fine as we do spelling. He does dictation from AAS perfectly. He can answer the review cards from AAS. He does daily editing practice from a workbook and generally spots the spelling mistakes.
 

I still see quite a few simple mistakes in his first drafts. Maybe careless about spelling mistakes when his brain is trying to come up with original sentences?
 

My plans for this next twelve months include far more writing across curriculum. I was hoping that would just organically have him easily spelling most things correctly the first time, leaving only difficult or unknown words misspelled. 

It's a good sign that he can spot mistakes with the daily editing practice he does. Honestly, it's pretty normal for kids to have more misspelled words in a first draft. 

When students are writing outside of spelling time, they have many more things to focus on–content, creativity, organization, punctuation, spelling, grammar, capitalization, what kind of audience they are addressing–it’s a lot to think about at once. Many kids are in junior high (and for struggling spellers, even high school) before they are able to put these skills together more effectively. Many students definitely need ongoing training in this area. Here are two articles with tips to help you:

• Helping Kids Achieve Automaticity in Spelling 
• How to Handle Spelling Mistakes

It sounds like you're doing a good job of having him analyze his spelling mistakes. I would just let him have a separate editing time (maybe on a separate day) before he shows you his rough drafts.

To help my kids start to use some beginning editing skills, I first worked on it through the dictation. When they made a mistake, I would say, “There’s one spelling error. Can you find it?” Praise if he can find it. Then see if he knows how to change it. If he’s not sure, give a question to prompt, such as, “Can you think of a rule that applies?” or “Sound out exactly what you wrote” (very useful if he has a wrong phonogram, too many sounds, or a sound left out of the word) or, “Can you think of a word that might have another option for one of the phonograms?” Try to lead to the answer by getting him to think it through. However, if he starts to get frustrated, you can give more help and just model the process of thinking of the rule, sounding it out, or trying different phonograms.

Make sure to put any missed words back in daily review until they are truly mastered.

When we started the Writing Station activity, I would put a light pencil x next to each line that had a mistake, and would again see if my child could find them. Again, praise for any he finds. This is hard work for them, and you really want to encourage them. Go through the same process I described above.

When he has the hang of editing in dictation and Writing Stations, then you can start to help him edit outside writing that needs to be polished (not all writing needs to be polished, and sometimes if the subject is science or history, I would choose to focus on content, knowing that spelling would eventually come along. Kids can get discouraged if you focus on everything at once–the goal of perfection seems unattainable.)

HTH some! Remember this one is going to be more of a marathon than a sprint–it takes practice over time for kids to improve in this. He'll get there!

[Kezia]

19 hours ago, MerryAtHope said:

Here are two articles with tips to help you:

• Helping Kids Achieve Automaticity in Spelling 
• How to Handle Spelling Mistakes

I read through those interesting articles. I was using the advice of the second one, trying to ignore misspelled words outside of spelling and just make a note to review that.  Especially since he does really well during spelling time and dictation. I have chosen dictation from The Hobbit, AAS and from WWE 4. He does well with all of the selections. (I now have Dictation Day by Day in my Arsenal as well.)  
 

Then I read separately about how when I see him starting to misspell a word, I should correct it then and there so he doesn’t get practice writing it incorrectly. And I noticed the types of mistakes he makes are simple words like come without an ‘e’ and just not doubling when he should. Little things that seem like they should be automatic by age 10. 

[goldenecho]

I agree with others that I wouldn't wing it too much for a poor speller.  But, if you notice him missing any words that he should be able to do from previous lessons, I might add a quick review of that concept right after you finish your current lesson, and then add that word to the words he reviews during the next week. 

I also sometimes add a few "challenge words" that he is having to write anyways for other subjects.  Like if my son is writing a research report on elephants that week, and is already probably going to have to write elephant a dozen times in his paper, I might add that word to  our spelling this that week, even though he hasn't hit the concepts for it, because he is doing so much work around it anyways and is probably on his way to learning it. But I usually only add one challenge word to the list and don't add them every week.  Sometimes these are things like names of family members and so forth.   And I make sure to write these down and throw them in for review now and then.

But I want his main focus to be on the current concept.

Edited July 2, 2021 by goldenecho

[MerryAtHope]

9 hours ago, Kezia said:

I read through those interesting articles. I was using the advice of the second one, trying to ignore misspelled words outside of spelling and just make a note to review that.  Especially since he does really well during spelling time and dictation. I have chosen dictation from The Hobbit, AAS and from WWE 4. He does well with all of the selections. (I now have Dictation Day by Day in my Arsenal as well.)  
 

Then I read separately about how when I see him starting to misspell a word, I should correct it then and there so he doesn’t get practice writing it incorrectly. And I noticed the types of mistakes he makes are simple words like come without an ‘e’ and just not doubling when he should. Little things that seem like they should be automatic by age 10. 

If he’s making the mistake, it’s already wrong in his mind. (Marie discusses this a bit in her article on dictation.) I would let him finish and have the opportunity to self-correct. Otherwise he just learns to rely on you and doesn’t have to think or evaluate on his own. Your goal is to give him the tools to self-evaluate. AAS works on this, but level 4 is pretty early. At that stage, my kids really skimped on the analysis and needed to be walked through how to evaluate with the spelling strategies on an ongoing basis. 

If he doesn’t find a mistake in a word he should know—one he’s studied in AAS—then tell him there’s a mistake and see if he can find it. Praise him if he can. Then ask him how he knew and have him teach the concept to you. If he can’t, then make it part of a lesson and work on the concept a little each day until it’s easy for him to remember and teach back to you with the tiles or app. 

10 is still young; he has only been writing a few years. Kids who have only been speaking a few years make tons of speaking errors. Expect the same with writing and work with him where he’s at. If something isn’t automatic, it’s just a sign he needs more help and practice for it to become automatic. Hth some!