Melissa Borries

Hello! I have a question about spelling. My son, 7, just started to do some independent writing. He asks me when things are spelled right or wrong. Sometimes he gets upset if I tell him the correct way. From the beginning we have always said, of writing, if you know what it says or you can tell the person you're writing to what it says then it has done its job. But now that he's such a fluent reader he can TELL it's wrong, he just can't get to how it's right on his own and I'm not sure what I can do differently besides calmly spelling it for him or pointing out "tricks" to remember. Any suggestions on how to handle this more gently?

Melissa

Sandra Dodd

-=- My son, 7, just started to do some independent writing. He asks me when things are spelled right or wrong. Sometimes he gets upset if I tell him the correct way.-=-

Maybe you could just write down the right spelling if he asks you, on a 3x5 card, and he can keep the words in a box.

Sandra

Clare Kirkpatrick

We make word books for/with our children with a page for each letter. When they ask us for a spelling we write it down for them. 
That way they can be a bit more independent. 


Sent from Samsung Mobile

Sandra Dodd

-=-We make word books for/with our children with a page for each letter. When they ask us for a spelling we write it down for them. 
That way they can be a bit more independent. -=-

If the kids like it, that's not a terrible idea, but if one child thinks it's needed to learn to spell, because another child had one, it becomes a method and a curriculum, so don't attach yourself to any one way to do anything.  Play.  Make it a game, whatever it is, or conversational.  

If one child likes "spelling rules," and you share those, be sure to make it light and say that English is from several languages and no "rule" works all the time.   Otherwise, exceptions will be frustrating.  

Words have histories and that might be fun for some kids, which others might not care at all.

http://sandradodd.com/spelling has some ideas, some humor, and half a dozen links to things that might be on interest.  It's not a curriculum!  Nobody needs all of that.  I just thought the things were fun.  Some people will and some won't.  That's fine.

Sandra

Vicki Dennis

Sounds like a homemade dictionary!   I think it brilliant.   And for some perhaps easier than keeping up with loose index cards.

vicki


On Sat, Jan 11, 2014 at 8:20 AM, Clare Kirkpatrick <clare.kirkpatrick@...> wrote:
 

We make word books for/with our children with a page for each letter. When they ask us for a spelling we write it down for them. 
That way they can be a bit more independent. 


Sent from Samsung Mobile


BRIAN POLIKOWSKY

When my kids asked me to spell something I either did spell it out or wrote on a piece of paper.
My son is a pretty great speller. All on his own.
My daughter is doing OK as she just started reading fluently last year.

Spell check, if they are using the computer, can help a lot too.
I have seen some little machines, size of a calculator, that is a spelling machine.
Maybe he would like one? Not expensive at all!

http://www.directron.com/dhncs101.html?pgrab=1
 
Alex Polikowsky
 
 
 


Karen

>>>>>But now that he's such a fluent reader he can TELL it's wrong, he just can't get to how it's right on his own<<<<<

My son likes to figure words out on his own too, and gets a little frustrated when he can't quite figure out where he is wrong in a word that doesn't look right to him. Sometimes he just needs one letter like the y in cycle. If I spelled the whole word for him he would be a bit impatient and irritated with me, so I have learned to say "Cycle has a y instead of an i", and hope that answered his question. He likes clues. He doesn't like when I do it for him.

I've seen apps for phones that have spelling programs that use voice recognition as well as manual input. My husband has a voice recognition program for dictation. Ethan enjoyed playing with that.

Another thing I do (I'm not a good speller), and I've noticed Ethan doing too, is input a word in the search bar of google and let it find the correct spelling for me. Sometimes with spellcheck in certain programs Ethan will keep iterating on a word until it is no longer underlined for being spelled incorrectly.

Karen.

Melissa Borries

Wonderful suggestions! Especially for a boy who likes to collect things. I think it will fit in nicely to "collect" words. I'll try it! 



On Jan 11, 2014, at 1:28 PM, "Karen" <semajrak@...> wrote:

 

>>>>>But now that he's such a fluent reader he can TELL it's wrong, he just can't get to how it's right on his own<<<<<

My son likes to figure words out on his own too, and gets a little frustrated when he can't quite figure out where he is wrong in a word that doesn't look right to him. Sometimes he just needs one letter like the y in cycle. If I spelled the whole word for him he would be a bit impatient and irritated with me, so I have learned to say "Cycle has a y instead of an i", and hope that answered his question. He likes clues. He doesn't like when I do it for him.

I've seen apps for phones that have spelling programs that use voice recognition as well as manual input. My husband has a voice recognition program for dictation. Ethan enjoyed playing with that.

Another thing I do (I'm not a good speller), and I've noticed Ethan doing too, is input a word in the search bar of google and let it find the correct spelling for me. Sometimes with spellcheck in certain programs Ethan will keep iterating on a word until it is no longer underlined for being spelled incorrectly.

Karen.

Sandra Dodd

-=-Another thing I do (I'm not a good speller), and I've noticed Ethan doing too, is input a word in the search bar of google and let it find the correct spelling for me. -=-

That's what I do.  I used to LOVE dictionaries, but they have been replaced by internet searches. :-)

I still have the joy of following photos of birds and the names of scientists or statemen I had never heard of, thanks to the internet.  It was hard for me to *just* look up one thing in the dictionary, back in the day.  I would stay there looking at other things I had seen in  passing.

Sandra Dodd

-=-I think it will fit in nicely to "collect" words. I'll try it! -=-

There's a game, or at tool, or a concept, that someone brought up 20 years ago (not me) and it's a good one:  Word Jail.

With 3x5 cards and two boxes, one can be the words that make sense, "follow the rules," are easy to read and spell.  
The other box is "Word Jail," the words with odd or mysterious spellings.

Sandra

<bobcollier@...>

This is what I use for accurate spelling personally:


http://www.nlpu.com/Articles/artic10.htm


My son, who spent nine years of his life "growing without school" is also an accurate speller and that was achieved with hardly any input from me. I don't know what instruction he received in the two years he was in school but practically no attention was given to spelling after he was removed at the age of seven. I've never thought to ask him, and he's not here right now, but since he has consistently preferred playing videogames or watching TV to reading books, I suspect his learning method is visual in a similar if not the same way as described in the above article.


Two things I remember from time with both of my children when they were small. I always used the term "standard spelling" rather than "correct spelling" because in my view there's really no such thing as correct spelling, there's only spelling that a majority of members of a society agree on - even when the spellings make no sense, which is often the case in English (I wonder if it's because of the number of words in the English language that originated in other languages - Latin, Danish, French, for example - and the pronunciation changed over time while the spelling didn't). Secondly, I never commented on "creative spelling". I regarded it as part of the process of arriving at standard spelling, the way the word was spelled right now, that's all. Standard spelling is useful in most adult situations, however daft some of it appears, but I agree totally with your observation that, regardless of spelling, if a piece of writing communicates the message the writer intends it to communicate, it has done its job.


Bob




---In [email protected], <melissa.cossey@...> wrote:

Hello! I have a question about spelling. My son, 7, just started to do some independent writing. He asks me when things are spelled right or wrong. Sometimes he gets upset if I tell him the correct way. From the beginning we have always said, of writing, if you know what it says or you can tell the person you're writing to what it says then it has done its job. But now that he's such a fluent reader he can TELL it's wrong, he just can't get to how it's right on his own and I'm not sure what I can do differently besides calmly spelling it for him or pointing out "tricks" to remember. Any suggestions on how to handle this more gently?

Melissa

Sandra Dodd

And "standard" English isn't the same in different English-speaking countries. That's only becoming more confusing, too, internationally. For a long time, foreigners learned British-style grammar and spelling. But in more recent decades, Americans and Canadians are hired to teach ESL (English as a second language). Canadian spelling isn't just the same in a (very) few instances, but the vocabulary and accent are way similar.

My husband kept learning to spell for years after he was grown. There was frustration and pressure in school, and he was the mathy/musician/jock dyslexic type. Things were easy for him when they didn't involve spelling or punctuation. But once the grading and comparisons were gone and he was "in the real world," he wrote things he wanted to write, for real reasons, for real people, and then he was able and willing to ask for help.

Too often, school forbids, prevents and punishes getting help. Reminding our kids that in the real world it's okay to ask someone, or to look things up, can take off lots of pressure.

Sandra

<plaidpanties666@...>

>>Too often, school forbids, prevents and punishes getting help. Reminding our kids that in the real world it's okay to ask someone, or to look things up, can take off lots of pressure.<<


For all sorts of things - when I worked in a subset of the construction industry, we checked each other's math a lot, and that sort of thing was common on job sites. Now and then you'd see where someone had scrawled a bunch of numbers on a wall or the side of a 2x4 to check their math. At my current job, the office manager will ask people to proofread his outgoing emails to make sure they make sense, and it's not uncommon for someone to say "I'm not good at this - can you show me how you do it?" or "okay, I've made a mistake, how do I fix it?" In real life, that kind of information sharing isn't cheating, it's part of being a professional. 

Sandra Dodd

-=- In real life, that kind of information sharing isn't cheating, it's part of being a professional. -=-

Yes.  And also saying "I'm feeling really cranky, and need a break" happens when people are working on teams and they trust each other.

The same way trust can be impossible when punishment is close by, competition can do that, too.  When people are living, and working, by principle more than by rule, getting help is adaptive, sensible, and good for the whole team.

Sandra