Aug. 14, 2009 Thinking Through my Fingers
B just finished list z in the W.I.S.E. guide, that means that in a few weeks when we start the school year over, we will be reviewing the foundations of hand writing, and eventually setting up his notebook. This part is very detailed, and has few "work arounds" for mistakes. It makes him nervous. It makes me nervous.
We both make more mistakes when we are nervous.
I sometimes here folks say that children need to make things neatly to learn how to follow directions, and I wonder if they have any idea of how frustrating, humiliating and impossible it feels for a kid with something like dysgraphia. The formatting IS the big problem, the content is easy. How do you learn the thing you cannot do by doing it harder; if trying harder makes you make more mistakes?
We will try to work through the instructions as written, but when he or I goof, we will do what we did last year: print out on our computer the thing it is supposed to say, cut out the words, and glue stick the paper over the goof in the bound notebook. Both of us type better than we hand write.
I want him to learn to breath deeply, relax, and try to follow instructions, but I also want him to learn that we can think of other ways to get the job done, even when we are following such a detailed, structured form of study as SWR.
Come to think of it, maybe we will do his dictation on the computer, and save the files instead of writing them in an actual book. I'll run this idea past the ladies on the SWR list, and B himself! |
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Jan. 30, 2009 Oh yeah, the last time I did this, M was the baby...
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One of today's spelling dictation sentences in the W.I.S.E. guide was “Steam, ice and water, these three are one.” M said, “They are? Do you mean there is water in a boat?” I think he meant a steam boat.
So after spelling dictation, I pulled out an ice cube, and a sauce pan. On high heat, the ice cube melted rapidly. It also slid around amusingly. Then, while the ice cube was still melting, the water began to bubble. I held a metal mixing bowl upside down over the steam with barbecue tongs, to catch the steam and condense it back to water. I checked that it wasn't too hot, then had M feel the condensed steam and agree that it was water. Then I put the bowl into the freezer. By the time we'd finished playing Cuisinart rod games, and reviewing memory verses, the water drops had frozen. M felt the ice drops, but needed some help narrating what had happened.
Figuring that I should inject something familiar, I asked him if Lego bricks were Lego bricks if they were loose in a box. He nodded yes. Then I asked if Lego bricks were Lego bricks if they were connected to make a model. He nodded yes. Finally I asked if Lego bricks were Lego bricks if they were flying through the air because his sister had knocked over a container. That caused some enthusiastic kinetic narration, because it was almost time for run around outside time; but now he began to get how water, ice and steam could be the same stuff.
Thank you Wanda Sanseri!
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Jan. 26, 2009 Why I love SWR
I am not a natural speller. That puts it mildly! Even with spell check, if I don't realize that I am using the wrong homophone, my productions look ditsy. I rely on my spell check and DH, although it is a trial for him, because sometimes I just want to get the point across and I don't really care if people smirk at me. Taking constructive criticism well ought to go with not being a natural speller, but it doesn't happen automatically.
I wasn't a fluent reader until the end of 2nd grade. My mother advocated behind the scenes for me to get into a 2nd grade classroom where phonics were emphasized, I'd had a more whole language 1st grade classroom. Meanwhile she and my father read aloud to me every night, answered my questions, and included me in their conversations. We'd read all of the Little House books, all the Chronicles Narnia, and some Madeleine L'Engle by 1st grade, this while they were both working, and Dad was finishing up his Batchelor's degree.
I remember thinking how useless the alphabet song was to remember how to read, because I knew the letter names, but the sounds were different. And I knew the upper case letters just fine, but lower case 'g' looked nothing like it's print version, it looked like a pair of glasses, and I often got stuck on the word "the" because as a Pennslyvania/New York girl, I pronounced it more like "tha" or even "dah." what was that e doing there? Plus I'd been taught explicitly that "th" made the unvoiced sound, not the voiced one. So I had to remember some "rule breaker sounds" to read/write a word that I pronounced differently any how. I hated how illogical it all was, and looked forward to math class. With arithmetic, if I'd forgotten something, I could always figure it out, it would have more than one way of getting to an answer even if my memory was faulty.
By third grade, I was reading voraciously. The Secret Garden, the Oz books, I attempted the Lord of the Rings. I loved the book of Revelation (all those weird beasts!). But I couldn't spell. And my printing was weird. But we had cursive to wander through. I began having a "special" notebook of words I'd gotten wrong in writing to look at each night. Mom bought me cross word puzzles and word games. To this day at family gatherings I want to hide when someone pulls out a boggle game. Though I love the strategy/math games.
We did have decent spelling text books that often emphasized different rules of English spelling, but with one rule a week, lazy me remembered it for that week, and did not fold it into my writing. I'd figure out the pattern, then fill in all the blanks. For the Friday quiz, I'd memorize odd mispronunciations to incorporate all of the "silent letters" and remember them. That is on the weeks I studied before Thursday. Often I'd cram Friday morning in the hall way lining up to go to my homeroom. I figured it wouldn't work anyway, so why spend time on it?
In 7th grade I got to study French. My cousin the language teacher tells me that the ALM method of instruction is passe, but the one thing I loved was that we weren't taught "silent letter." Or "blends." If a group of letters consistently made the same sound, then we learned that letter group as one unit, or phonogram. I could spell in French much better than I could spell in English. I later (much, much later) wondered if there was a way of teaching English spelling that was like this.
One of the reasons that I majored in chemistry in college, besides loving to use my hands, and not understanding the quantum mechanical model of the atom was that I knew I'd have fewer papers to write. Problem set? Bring it on. Formal Lab? Ugh, but at least it was only once or twice a year. Writing papers was oddly easier in semesters that I had several classes requiring papers, the more I had to write, the easier it was. It did seem like an impossible thing for me to conquer though, even with access to computers.
After college, my husband took some night classes at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. I audited as many as I could. (This was before kids when we thought we were busy and broke!) In our Greek class, we were taught the lower case letters, and just referred to the upper case letters in a chart when we needed them. We also learned the most common words first, not words in pattern of spelling. By the end of the 3rd week, I could open a Greek New Testament to any page and find the article. The article is not too exciting, but in an inflected language, the article is your friend! Any way, starting with the lower case letters, and most common words was a good thing. I wondered (much) later if there was a way of teaching English spelling that also did this: common words first, lower case letters first, phonograms not "silent letters," the fact that letters make more than one sound being told up front, not left as a scary secret, and using the "mispronounce" it way to remember all the letters.
When I was thinking about home schooling, the thing everyone worried about was that I would be the one teaching the spelling (math, bring it on. socialization, well, your brother-in-laws turned out OK. BUT CHRIS is going to teach SPELLING?) I wailed to my "Elmer" L, the classical homeschooler that there were probably no spelling texts that explained all the rule breakers. she pointed me to Ramalda Spaulding's "The Writing Road to Reading." I felt like I was starting a diet and exercise program. But it made sense. Common words first. Groups of letters taught as phonograms. Lower case letters first. No letter names, refer to letters by the sounds they make, all the sounds in order of their most common sounds to rarer ones. My aunt the excellent public school teacher stopped worrying about us once she heard that I would be using the Spaulding method.
How did it all work out? Well, B had handwriting problems (did I put that in the past tense?) and some speech difficulties. His speech therapist was nervous of my chosen method of instruction, nudging me towards some more whole language methods, and especially balked at the idea of referring to the letters by the sounds they make, not their names. B loved having a novel adult, and to this day would rather call letters by the letter names than refer to them by the sounds they make (in the order of frequency of use) his therapist MUST be write, not MOM... His phonemic awareness got better, and people began to understand him even on the phone.
Eventually, I was pointed to the Spell to Write and Read Forum, and bought the WISE guide and SWR text book, a much updated and tutor friendly evolution of the Writing Road to Reading. With fun enrichments added to review the spelling, constant review of the rules and phonograms (all 72 of them, plus foreign ones that crop up from time to time). SWR even encorporated the "mispronounce" it way to remember all the letters, though they call it "think to spell," I love it! I mean, it's still work, but it's what I wanted all those years I raged at the world for making English my mother tongue.
B's reading came together all at once while I was in China for two weeks last year. He zoomed through the Harry Potter books until DH told him to wait; the plots were darker, and there were girls. His independent reading (and voracious free reading) delight me. Most of the time I can read his handwriting, and we've begun keyboarding skills to fill the gap.
How about me? I still see that red underline from the spell check when I write (why does it always have to be red? it looks like a laseration) but I have options for fixing it. I try to slow down and try some of the logical ideas from B's spelling book. Lately, DH has had fewer problems to find for me, although he'll tell you it's not MUCH better, especially with those wretched homophones.
But if England didn't have such a messy histrory, we wouldn't have such a rich vocabulary, and people all over the globe wouldn't speak and read English. I love to speak this language, I'll put up with the inconvenience of learning how to spell it.
And I'm so grateful there is a logical way to learn to spell it, to point out the order that is there, even if it's an organic sort of order, like a coral reef.
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