Yesterday I was lucky enough to spend the day with some lovely friends. I asked the boy reading question. You know the one…We’re reading Bob Books, but where do we go from here? The Hero is bored out of his mind, he is not ready for the next step and he couldn’t care less about Daisy Meadow and her Rainbow Fairy books that were my secret weapon when teaching the Fairy.
Mama Kathleen says ‘He’s fine. He’s doing way more than my son was at that age. If you give him some space he’ll make a leap eventually’. I knew I could count on her for that. Thanks!
Mama Kris offered some lovely practical ideas. Some old Dolch word readers which are designed so much better than most of the early reader crap in our modern world. And, the idea that she read a page with her new reading son, then has him re-read the page. Brilliant. Well, the hero was not real convinced. Wish me luck. We’ll see how it goes.
Mama Blimes is asking about my spelling plan that I’ve been raving about. I figure I’ll type it here so that when I forget to use it, I can be reminded. How smart is that?
My spelling plan. I’m using the Sitton Spelling ‘No Excuses’ list which Blimes herself suggested I use. I started at the beginning with the K list, moved through 1,2,3,4, 5 and we’ve officially moved on to 6th grade words. Can I brag? Should I get her signed up for a GATE program? ; )
I followed the basic Spelling Power plan of pretesting the words each day and rotating them through. I’ve decided that 6 words is a good number for us. 5 feels wimpy. 10 too much. But, if the words are tough I may stick with 4. We got tripped up on a bunch of tough words for 2 weeks and I think it would have gone more smoothly with less.
Each day that we do school (no Tues), I test her on the words on the list. Add words to take her to 6. Then have her practice the 6. The only fancy thing I did was use a ‘week at a glance’ type notepad and jot the words on each day. It used to have magnets but the darn thing fell apart, so now I have to magnet it to the fridge manually. How lame. So, the idea is that each week, I end up with this on-going list of words to use as a master review. This way I get to check comprehensive spelling.
Then I also write the words on a post it note and leave that on the window by the kitchen sink and grill her occasionally on the words. The main way I have her practice them is to write them each 3 times during school. Nothing fancy, Blimes and it’s the website you recommended. Don’t know how helpful this is but maybe my excitement can rub off.
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