Just trying to get a sense at what level other soon to be 2nd graders are. The most challenging part for us is the word spelling, particularly I think since English is not a phonetic language. Any tips you know, you have proved to work with your children regarding spelling would help. Regarding reading he has improved drastically, but still would like to hear any ideas on how to further improve on it as well. Again our trouble is that words the majority of times don't have the same letters as they sound, and this is a real trouble.
Thanks everyone for great advices. We will continue to read everyday which should help with writing and spelling, also conntinue practice writing. As with everything, practice makes perfect. :)
My now 9 year old had problems in Kindergarten. He was way behind all the other students, and had problems with pronunciation. The teacher recommended starfall.com. Since then, he has been in the top reading groups every year. It is such a wonderful website. Totally kid friendly, and it has games and stories. I started my daughter on it as well, before she started Kindergarten, and she does very well too. www.starfall.com
when my then-first-grader was complaining about how English didn't make sense (to read), I spent some time explaining to her that it all *does* make sense (because it does), just some of it is more complex and will take longer to get used to.
Essentially, those words that were adopted by English speakers most recently, will make the least 'phonetic,' or linguistically intuitive, sense ... because themore recently they were adopted, the more likely they were either adopted with their original (foreign) spelling, or are deeply truly entirely foreign to even our deepest language-family (Indo-European), or both.
Digraphs (th, gh) tend to come from non-Anglo words (usually French, from when the Normans invaded and became the ruling class of England) ... most "English" words are a mash of French and English, most words after that time we just kept the foreign spelling entirely (tortilla, Nazi) or tried to transliterate non-European-alphabet languages as directly as possible (Nippon/Japan are both attempts at the same word(!)) ...
Most of most people's writing (as opposed to our slang/speaking) vocabulary is based on the ... oh, I'd say pre-1800(?) stuff, so most spelling books focus on the English-French mashup rules.
It's all kind of fun if you consider it a land to explore and discover instead of an obscure set of rules imposed from the outside. (Boys especially, of course ;), hate the concept that they are being intellectually 'trapped' ... girls can often find comfort in the idea that there are boundaries (or limits to what they are being asked to do), boys with boundaries and obscure-to-them rules, not so much ;). )
Ex-first grade teacher here with some experience teaching spelling.
Also I have a son who did not, and I repeat did not get spelling. Neither do I.
So here is the professional and personal scoop on spelling.
Some people have an innate ability to spell. It just is. An it is not correlated to intelligence. Others can memorize it easily. They have the mental pathways that let them easily do memorize.
And then there are children like myself and son, who even with extreme traditional efforts with memorization, struggle to spell. Remember that the ability to spell is not correlated to intelligence. This is particularly true for boys. They need sometimes, time to out grow it.
A trick to try is to find word families like at family. Rat, cat, hat, mat, fat, that, et.
Another trick is to use rhythm. Beat each letter if the word has four letter beat four times as he says each letter. Or tap his foot four times. If he has a piano tap a key. Bounce a basketball. Jumping jacks.
In other words something physical for him, rather than pencil and paper. But he should also say the letter as he bounces the ball or taps the key.
Good luck. If you need to email me further you can. W.
Your concern is a common one, K.. But there is really such a huge range in children's development that while we can talk about what's "average," or within "norms" on testing, it's not a wise or admirable lens through which to view our kids.
This is not exactly the answer you are asking for, but it's terribly important: Every child is an individual. Almost every one is way "ahead" or "behind" in some areas: mathematical conceptualization, verbal skills, writing, spatial development, fine or gross motor skills, reasoning, artistic expression, etc.
If your son responds well to coaching/tutoring, super. He may drink it up. But please stay attentive to whether it's becoming a grind for him, because that will only work against the pleasure he takes in learning, which is a natural gift kids have.
I hope your focus with your sons will be to foster their enthusiasms, and to share your love of whatever it is you love, so they can stay in touch with what that looks like and how it feels. If a child is slow in some educational area, it really will make no difference in how great a person he turns out to be, and in fact, most kids do catch up in areas where they may have been "behind" as soon as they are ready to advance.
I've worked in education in one way or another for decades, and have seen how much damage it does to kids to try to force them into homogenous classrooms. Maybe half the kids in such rooms do well, the other half are stressed to some degree – by boredom or anxiety – and some of those kids shut down when they can't take it any more.
I understand that most second grade teachers are more into content, like imagination and age-appropriate expression, than they are sticklers for spelling, punctuation, or even grammar. Much of that learning is still to come, and much of it will be learning through parents reading to their kids, doing projects together that require reading, and even conversation. As children read more, they will often become more familiar with the spelling of words.
English is complex and it takes many kids years to sort it out. Both my favorite English teacher in high school, and my husband, who writes science curriculum, are terrible spellers. Who cares? They are both successful and wonderful people.
At my kids school, at the age you mention, they don't worry so much about dictionary correct spelling as about sounding out words and trying to get the phonics right. I'm no expert but I don't agree with you that English is not phonetic. It is. But there are a lot of exceptions. But focusing on phonics first allows the child to get the basic foundation, even if they spell some words "wrong" according to the dictionary. They learn the exceptions in later grades as they get spelling tests. Also, it's a lot easy to learn dictionary spelling in later grades because in the meantime, their READING has also improved so they are unconsciously memorizing how to spell words, rather than needing to use phonics at all.
It's great that he has made great strides in his reading. I would continue to have daily reading, pick books he's genuinely interested in. One thing I do with my daughter who is just not as much a reader as my son is alternate reading a story or a page of a story. this gives them a break.
The easiest way to learn it is to study spelling rules and then teach word that follow those rules.
eaxamples:
- teach diagraphs (ch, sh, ck, wh, and th)
- when a one syllable word with only one vowel ends in f, l, s, or z we usually double it.
- the three "ers" (ir, ur, er)
- the four long a sounds (a_e, ea, ai, ay)
- the long e sounds (ey, ie (if it is in the middle of a word))
- long u sounds (u_e, ue, ew)
etc....
My brother and I were both home-schooled. When we were about that age, my mom was going through huge trials because we didn't seem to be "getting it" with spelling and she was afraid we were going to fall way behind. My great aunt, who had been an educator for years, gave her some excellent advice. She just said not to worry about it, for the time-being . . . our brains simply weren't ready for learning the intricacies of spelling, yet. Instead, she recommended we focus on reading. As we became more and more fluent in reading and familiar with seeing the English language in print, the spellings of words would just begin to settle in and make sense. (Also, we continued writing on a daily basis, but without the pressure to spell correctly. After completing a writing assignment, my mom would review the mis-spelled words with us, but not make a big issue out of them.) Then, at about fourth grade, it should all begin to come together and we could begin really working on spelling--tackling some of the more difficult words and situations. Sure enough, that's exactly how it went for both of us! I wouldn't say I'm an outstanding speller (thank goodness for spell-check!) now, but I do just fine and get along quite well. Both my brother and I both did great in college, also . . . he's even a doctor! So, at least in our situation, that approach of relaxing and waiting for our brains to develop really worked.
<Lafing> Yoor rit, english iz just not fonik. Espshally depending on ware we liv bekuz ov the varyashon ov axents.
Oh...gawd...that was just positively painful! Ack. I'm literally twitching. Okay now, getting over it.
The Engligh language used to be a lot more fluid than it is now...It's actually really quite fun, how the first (modern type) dictionary came about. It was started because of certain people's grandparents who were horrified that their grandchildren couldn't understand what they believed to be the funniest writer of all time...Chaucer. And that their grand children were ALSO apparently horrified to be missing out on the joke. One of the very first (or the very first if you take the previous 'word books' to be the thesauruses or translating -like spanish/english- dictionaries out of the equation) was one done by Samuel Johnson. And it's a crack up. My English professor used to be an archivist to the queen, and he had over 100 pages of it that he scanned and passed out. Here's a link to an okay wiki entry on him http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Dictionary_of_the_English_... It's full of fun slants...for example
# "Lexicographer: a writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge that busies himself in tracing the original and detailing the signification of words"
In any event, sorry I got side tracked.
Yep we have the exact same problem. When I was in school, we were taught spelling from day one, but the method taught now is NOT to teach spelling first. I don't actually agree with that method, overmuch. The way that we pronouce words, is actually quite subtle. Perhaps the way that one's lips are shaped as IF we're saying a letter silently. Anyone who doesn't agree with me, can listen to ghetto-slang for five mintes. 90% of the way that ghetto slang is pronounced, is phonetically. DUM, instead of DUMB. CUZ, instead of CAUSE. A HUGE leap in verbal speaking happens along with learning how to spell. We KNOW that the letter is there, and so the way we shape our mouth is different.
What we've found to be a huge help:
1) Practice, practice, practice. Verbally or written. It's HARD to learn how to write, all of those fine motor movements reeeeaaally cramp our hands in the beginning. So verbal spelling, can spare cramped fingers. So can silly writing...like smearing shaving cream on glass and writing by tracing words in the negative...or painting...or chalk.
3) Reading reading reading reading
4) Games...whether it's old school hangman, crosswords, madlibs, boggle, scrabble, or computer games (carmen san diego, word detective; bookworm adventures; even non spelling games, that require reading like iSpy or Cluefinders, etc.)
Oops...gone on at length again, and only kind of on topic.
Good Luck!
I homeschooled my kids. And phonetics is very important. However, not everyone catches on quickly to phonetics. But it is the foundation. The English language is very complicated. In phonics there are a lot of rules with exceptions. But knowing the rules helps. For example c has the hard "k" sound when followed by the vowels a, o, and u. And the soft "s" sound when followed by e, i, and y. The same idea goes for g. The list goes on. With homeschooling I used Abeka curriculum which is very phonics based. They spread the rules throughout their language, spelling, and writing curriculum, but is most prominent in the spelling. Other homeschool parents have used "The Writing Road to Reading". I have heard great things about it but have never used it myself. The more you read the better he will become at both reading and spelling.
AVKO is a great spelling program intended for dyslexic kids, but makes oh, so much sense. Why throw random words at your child to spell when you can sequence words, build on the previous word or root? Check it out at www.avko.com
My two cents worth. J. in Alaska.
Hi K..
My younger son just finished 2nd grade. At the end of 1st grade I was concerned about his reading and writing. However, I knew the spelling would come because my older son had already been through this. About 4-5 weeks into 2nd grade my son "got it" for reading and just took off. As his reading increased so did his spelling. I agree with the others that spelling really kicks in around 4th grade. I would watch the first month or so of school and if you still have concerns set up a meeting with his teacher.
