Jan. 14, 2008 - wk 14 (O-1 & O-2)

December 3-7, 2007, and January 11, 2008

Monday, 12/3, Part 1
WARM-UP We started with a TEST on Sections N-7 and N-8. All three children scored 94% on this test, which also included our review words and the troublesome homophones. Wow! It’s time to crank up the speed of our work and to be more consistent! We’re increasing our pace to forty words per week.

Monday, 12/3, Part 2
DICTATION I dictated Section O-1 today. We worked quickly to get through the words. A POST-TEST followed, with excellent scores once again. I’m encouraged.

Monday, 12/3, Part 3
REINFORCEMENT The children wrote sentences with their new words. Their requirements were to combine the names for people from the first column (words #941-950) with the verbs in the second column (words #951-960). There were a few verbs that stumped them as they only understood them as nouns. For example, the word sentence as a verb was a new concept. The judge sentenced the thief to time in jail.


Wednesday, 12/5, Part 1
We started with a McCall-Crabbs reading.

WARM-UP The children reviewed the phonogram and rule cards by working in a round robin format, one reading the sounds of the phonogram or saying the rule after another. A REVIEW QUIZ followed with all the words from our review list and those from O-1. Excellent work on their part!

Wednesday, 12/5, Part 2
DICTATION I dictated Section O-2. The kids were surprised that I was giving them another twenty words, but they stuck with me.

Today I had a theme to my dictation sentences. I chose a certain word and incorporated it into every sentence. Today’s word was bad--only because it is a banned word in our writing assignments, and its overuse helped emphasize the need for more specific word choices in our writing.

When I was finished dictating the words, we practiced reading them with the “Think to spell” dialogue first, and then as we would normally read the words.

A POST-TEST followed which was completed successfully by all. Error words from the review quiz and post-test were added to Word Banks.

Wednesday, 12/5, Part 3
REINFORCEMENT The children folded an 8 1/2 x 11” piece of paper into fourths. In each section, both front and back, they illustrated the following homophone sets: threw/through
waste/waist
eight/ate
whole/hole
pair/pair/pare
scent/sent/sent
write/right
stair/stare


Thursday, 12/6, Part 1
WARM-UP The children took quiz on review words. I also dictated the homophone sentences on WG pg 121 as a quiz.

Thursday, 12/6, Part 2
REFERENCE PAGE On WG pg 119 (List O-1), there is a note next to the word “thief” which says that the IE/EI Reference Page is to be introduced at this point only if the students are having a difficulty with these phonograms. My kids were struggling with remembering to use IE rather than EI, so we built this page. Per the instructions in SWR on pp 185-187 we added to the first column the same words which are found in the example on pg 187, except for the word “lie.” Instead we added the word “fierce” per a student’s request. We also learned the first of the “exception” sentences and added those words (see the bottom of pg 185).

Thursday, 12/6, Part 3
REFERENCE PAGE Per the instructions on WG pg 121, we added words from this week’s lists to the Numbers and SH/TI Reference Pages. We also updated our Numbers Page with months of the year, as we had gotten behind on this.

Break from SWR Lessons (12/10/07 - 1/10/08)

FRIDAY, 1/11/08
We had a very special treat today. Wanda Sanseri happened to be visiting, and she worked with my children on their spelling.

WARM-UP She introduced an advanced phonogram GI and discussed the related phonograms GU, GH, and GE.

DICTATION She then dictated 16 words to the children from a book which lists the 100 words graduating high school students should know. To say the least, these words word much higher vocabulary than where my children are working right now. Most of them I didn’t even know. The children were quite intrigued by this list, as they enjoy learning new words. She discussed the meaning of the new words and used illustrative sentences to help them understand the words in context. By the end of the lesson, the children were grasping the idea that the same rules and phonograms they have been learning from the very beginning work in higher level words just as they do in simple words. What a fun lesson and a good way to ease them back into our lessons for the new year!