Sep. 28, 2007 - wk 4 (N-2)
September 24-28, 2007
Monday, Part 1
Following the PRELIMINARIES in the WISE Guide on page 102, we worked on the ED page in our Black Learning Logs [B19 & B20]. We filled in the words from "land" to "run" in the left column, and then converted each verb to its past tense form, placing it in the appropriate column. We'll come back to this page after we've worked in Section N-2, and we'll add other verbs from this week's list to practice this new rule.
Monday, Part 2
WARM-UP started by reading the 70 phonogram cards. It's difficult for the children to all read the cards together if we're trying to beat our record. It gets pretty loud and exciting. We'll try having them do it individually tomorrow. Next the chidlren took a warm-up quiz. This included the phonograms listed in the Preliminaries for Section N-2 (WISE pg 102) and the review words left over from last week. We also went through all the rule cards for rules we've learned thus far.
Monday, Part 3
DICTATION of the the first ten words in Section N-2 (words #801-#810). The children are earning chips for proper spelling dialogue, quietly saying the sounds of the words while they write them, and explaining how to mark the words. We added our first Advanced phonogram GU to our multiletter phonogram page. That was totally cool for the children and me as we've never gotten to the advanced phonograms yet! A POST-TEST was immediately administered, and there were only two errors made in total! These words were added to the appropriate students' word banks.
Monday, Part 4
REVIEW The kids quickly wrote all ten new spelling words in five sentences. They received extra points (chips) for including past tense verbs and review words from last week's list.
Monday, Part 5
McCall-Crabbs reading.
Our lesson lasted approximately 75 minutes today.
Tuesday, Part 1
Our WARM-UP started by having JD read all 70 phonograms, sounds only, and trying to beat our group time. He did! His score was entered on our white board scoreboard, and he earned extra points (chips) for this success. The other children were quietly listening and watching, so they were getting the review in this way. Next, we had a warm-up quiz which consisted of any multiletter phonograms that would come up in today's list of words and all review words. Finally, we reviewed all rule cards for rules we have covered.
Tuesday, Part 2
After eating lunch (yes, we had a break), DICTATION of the the second ten words in Section N-2 (words #811-820) occurred. The children struggled with paying attention for all ten words. As a result, two of them missed one or two words on the POST-TEST.
Tuesday, Part 3
REVIEW Words missed on the post-test were added to word banks. The students wrote original sentences independently. JJ chose to write a paragraph that included all of his new words.
Between breaking for lunch in the middle of our lesson, and the fact that the children did their sentence writing at their piano teacher's house while I was grocery shopping, I'm not completely sure how long SWR-related activities took today. I'm pretty sure the time we spent together was about an hour.
Wednesday, Part 1
Well, the honeymoon is definitely over. The kids are figuring out that Mom is determined to do this every day. Today was a test of my patience with their childlike behaviors which distracted us from the task at hand. "He is sitting too close to me." "She touched me." "What was that again, Mom?" (after I'd repeated it three times.) Then there was the pencil dropping, the foot swishing on the floor, poking the sibling, the sibling getting mad at being poked . . . I could go on, but I think you've got the idea. Touching another child became immediate grounds for losing all chips collected thus far. You'd think after the first child lost a generous cupful, the others would figure out that that was a dangerous move. But nooooo! All three had to try it, and the little one lost all her chips at the last minute, leaving her with a zero count for the day. Of course, that was followed by a crying fit in her bedroom. Okay, enough of that part of our day.
One of our words for this week was "doctor" which has an abbreviated form. To start off our REINFORCEMENT activities, we opened to page B25 in our Learning Logs and added all the abbreviations that would have been collected, had we started with Section A, and we ended on Dr. (See SWR pg 133.) The kids really enjoyed this activity since they like to use abbreviations when creating their Key Word Outlines for our writing class. (We're using the methods from Institute for Excellence in Writing.)
Wednesday, Part 2
PAST TENSE VERBS I read the words from Section N-2, and the children identified the verbs, which were then added to the left-hand column of our ED Reference Page in the Learning Log [B19-20]. After we had the verbs on the page, we then changed each one to its past tense form and logged it in the appropriate column, marking the words as we went. They were able to do the last several words on their own, as they were catching on to this quickly. I checked everyone's book to be sure they had done everything correctly.
Wednesday, Part 3
E's DROPPING PRACTICE We started by adding two words (size, write) from last week's list (N-1) to the E's Dropping page in our logs [B10]. Next, I dictated words to the children from lists N-1 and N-2 which ended in silent final E's. The students wrote these words in a column down the left side of a sheet of paper in their spiral notebooks. We drew vertical lines to make three columns across the page. We added the suffix endings -ing and -er at the top of columns #2 and #3. As an independent activity, the kids wrote each word that was in the left column with either or both of the suffix endings, in its appropriate column, to make a legitimate word. For example "write" was logged as "writing" and "writer." The children enjoy being able to work on activities like this independently.
Our lesson lasted approximately one hour. Had we not had all the discipline issues, it would have been much shorter!
Thursday, Part 1
Today we did not use chips to reinforce behavior; instead Mom pulled out the real attention getters - M&M's! Each child had 10 candies they could earn for the lesson. Touching anyone else was immediate grounds for Mom getting all their candy. Unfortunately, Mom got no chocolate by the end of the lesson. *boo hoo* Of course, I'd prefer well-behaved children than chocolate any day!
Our WARM-UP for today consisted of SE trying for the record in reading the phonogram cards. The boys quietly watched. She did not beat either our group or JD's record, but she came close. The most amazing part of her accomplishment was that even though she was excited, she remained relatively calm during her try. She has anxiety about being timed, but she held it together for today. I was so proud of her. We added her time to our scoreboard. Next, the children took a quiz on all the review words, and the A-L review words at the top of page 103. Any words missed on this quiz were added to the Word Banks at the end of the day.
Thursday, Part 2
I could have organized my lesson better today. Had I looked ahead, I would have realized that the A-L review words were going to be included in the next part of our lesson. I ended up dictating these words twice as a result. Although it doesn't hurt the children to take dictation more than once, we are trying to cut down on the time it takes for our lessons, so this duplication was unnecessary. I'll work on better planning next time.
REINFORCEMENT ACTIVITY: VIVID WORDS The children folded a page in their spiral notebooks in half. At the top of the columns they wrote "person" and "say." I read the words from list N-2 and the A-L review words, and the children decided if the word would fit into either of these columns, or if it didn't belong at all. If it would be another form of the verb "to say," then they would write it in that column in its past tense form. Again, this was all by listening to dictation, not from reading the words from the board. (As much as possible, you want your children taking dictation of their spelling words to engrain the spelling in their minds. Copying is a much more passive activity.) Next, the children independently wrote 10 original sentences that needed to include one of the words from each column in any order or combination they wanted. They all opted to add other words from their lists, so this improved the sentences' quality greatly.
Our lesson today went much more smoothly than yesterday's, and it was still about an hour in length, including the independent work."
Friday, Part 1
TEST on N-2 The children took a test today on Section N-2, our list for the week, plus the review words we've been collecting as we go. I'm pleased to say they scored between 94%-100% on the test! Yahoo! In addition, we are able to drop several of our review words from the list. (See below for discussion on how I handle review words.) Words missed on the test were added to the students' word banks if they were not already logged there.
Friday, Part 2
We handled PHONOGRAM REVIEW today by having JJ try to beat the group's record or either of his siblings' records in reading the cards. He did very wel, and his time was added to our scoreboard. All three children now have their own time to beat in future timings.
Friday, Part 3
In preparation for next week's lessons, I looked at the PRELIMINARIES for Section N-3 where the Plurals rule is listed. Therefore, we worked on page B14 in our Learning Logs. This was a fun page, but I must warn you that when you're working on this page, be sure you count the lines correctly. I goofed in one place, and so we all ended up short one line at the bottom of the page. After all that beautiful work, however, we were not about to go back and erase. It just meant we had one less example at the bottom of the page. This is why it's so important to have books with the correct number of lines and to count carefully when you're dictating! You can be assured that the Black Learning Logs sold by Back Home Industries and the SWR Trainers will be the correct books!
Our lesson took about an hour today. I need to be more faithful with using my timers so that I can give more accurate times.
Spelling Throughout the Week
While we had some bumbs in the road, we are starting to fall into a pattern. The kids are realizing that this is going to happen every day. The children's success in quizzes and tests are demonstrating that our consistency is paying off. Several times during the week both boys have stopped in the middle of other school work to ask about the correct spelling for their writing. They are starting to notice what they write and to care whether it's correct or not. This is tremendous success for them. The sentence writing we've been doing has been helping prepare our "little one" for her first exposure to our writing program. She's excited about word choice and using powerful sentences. This is a perfect example of how the writing in SWR prepares children for more structured writing programs later (3rd/4th grade and above).
How to Handle Review Words
The question is often asked on the SWR Email Support Group about how to handle review words as one progresses through SWR. I've tried various methods in the past. One idea is to put two red checks in the student's log behind the word that was missed on Friday's test. This word is reviewed during the subsequent week and is presented on the next end-of-the-week test. If the word is spelled correctly, then one check is erased, and the process is repeated for another week until both red checks are erased. Given that I have three students and I am not going to keep track of review words for individual children, we are keeping a group review list. Therefore, the checks in their books won't work for us.
Another idea is to make index cards for each of the review words. You can put the date the word was added to your list on the back of the card. Record here also when the word has been spelled correctly for two subsequent tests, and then move the card to a "retired" stack. I think I'll try that this year.
Comments
Sep. 29, 2007 - Word Banks
Posted by Robynn
Thank you for taking the time to post. I have learned quite a bit from them. Can you please tell me what a work bank is. Thank you.
Sep. 29, 2007 - Word Bank
Posted by teachingkids
You can read about the Spelling Word Bank on this page of my web site: http://www.swrtraining.com/id37.html