A quick review on Tamerin's spelling: Yesterday she spelled "Hydrochloric Acid", "duodenum", "enzymes", "pancreas" (Guess what theme we are busy with!)
The reason why she could spell these words is because she struggled with the pronunciation of them. Every time she struggles with pronunciation (which is still very often), I break up the word and write it, syllable by syllable on her little white board and then we practise to say the word syllable for syllable e.g. "Hy...Hy...Hy (add dro) hydro, hydro, hydro..... (add chlo) hydrochlo... " etc. I find that by the time she can say the word - even long words - she can spell it too. In her theme test, she could not spell stomach, although I could see that she had tried to write it. She never struggled with the pronunciation of stomach, so we never practised the word!! (I'll make sure next time, that we practise all the words, before giving her a theme test again.)
Copying lists of words is not really effective for her: she often makes mistakes and to practise a mistake is just unforgivable! The only lists she ever has to copy are lists of new vocabulary that comes from her reader, and it works best if we practise them together - pretty much as we would do with words that she could not pronounce.
Words that sound the same, but are spelled differently (e.g. there and their), must also be learned in context and totally separately from each other, otherwise she gets very confused. In the ACE paces that we do now, she often has to underline the correct word (two, to, too). In the beginning this was terribly hard for her to do, but she is getting there. However, I still don't believe this is the best way to go about teaching these words. She has never before written to or too when she meant two! I believe these words should be learnt naturally and separately to minimize confusion.
Thank you God, for the 70% Tammy got for her test on digestion yesterday. Please help me to know how to teach her, so that she will do even better next time. Thank you that her speech has already improved soooo much! Thank you that her writing of sentences has improved. Please keep on unlocking her tongue Lord, so that she can be free to express herself.
A walk to the stables
Tamerin at the horses: we walked there on Thursday and talked rugby nearly all the way!
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5 comments:
The body, of course!
And, yes, to practice a mistake is unforgivable and unfortunate.
When I hear the word stomach, it is something like "stummick".
(And it is something to learn if/when a family member is sick).
Hi Adelaide
Yep, that's the idea: for Tammy to understand about her body, so that when she or someone else is sick, she will understand the illness better and what one can do to get better/ prevent getting sick. E.g. she knows that eating too many sweets in one go is very bad for the pancreas and can eventually lead to diabetes. So many ailments are connected to food and digestion, so that is what we are concentrating on this term - still have to talk about the kidneys etc.
Hi 1025
Wish I could read your comment!
Okay, lets see if I get this...for Tammy's spelling you just break down words by syllable and review these. I'm still not sure what to do with Jacob. He is still struggling with long vowel words. Like make, read, sea, home...he can't seem to get the long vowels. So, right now this is what we are focusing on. I'm just not sure if I'm on the right track. Should I have him do harder words that he comes across in his reader or stick with the long vowel words for now? If you get a chance I would love an e-mail from you so that I can talk more with you on this. You can contact me from my blog there is a button there to get my email address.
Thanks so much!
Is it the whole blender thing?
With the International Phonetic Alphabet, you can show why things are not always as they sound.
(You can put a symbol over that particular A in make and show why it is different from mat).
I notice that the long vowels are after a consonant.
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