Jan. 25, 2008 - wk 16 (O-3, S-1, & O-4)
January 21-25, 2008
Our read aloud this week is The Cat of Bubastes by G. A Henty. Two chapters to go -- the excitement builds!
Monday, Part 1
We started with a McCall-Crabbs reading.
WARM-UP We started with a review quiz on last week’s words and 10 of the review words from our card stack.
Monday, Part 2
We added words from O-3 and S-1 to the following Reference Pages: Numbers, ER, E’s Dropping, and Y’s exchanging. See WG pp 123 & 177 for instructions on this.
Monday, Part 3
REINFORCEMENT I dictated again the words from list S-1, which the children wrote down the left column in their journals (not the learning logs). They were then to turn each of these adjectives into an adverb by adding an -ly ending. Tricky! They had to watch out for Y’s Exchanging and E’s Dropping words. The question also arose as to what to do when a word ending with L has -ly added. The answer: double the L!
Monday, Part 4
The students finished up by adding to their word banks any words they missed on the warm-up quiz or the -LY dictation list.
Tuesday, Part 1
We started with a McCall-Crabbs reading. I specifically chose one that was a bit lower in grade level than where we have been working lately to encourage my oldest. He actually scored the best of all three kids on this particular reading. Hurrah!
Tuesday, Part 2
The kids have been a bit antsy lately, so I decided we needed to make spelling FUN today. Consequently, we turned each activity into a game. Not only did we review our spelling, but we worked on logic as well.
WARM-UP PHONOGRAM REVIEW The kids lined up in front of me. I held the phonogram cards where they could not see them. For the first child, I gave hints about the phonogram I was looking at. For example, “It is a two-letter phonogram with one sound, and it MAY be used at the end of English words. Its sound is the same as a 4-letter phonogram.” The answer: AY
After the student identified the phonogram, he got to keep the card and go to the end of the line. If he was not able to identify the phonogram, he’d go to the end of the line and the next child would try to name it. The kids counted up the cards they had “won” at the end of the game and received that many “Mommy Bucks” (a reward system we have just started implementing in our home). “Somehow phonogram review was more interesting today than usual,” she says with a big grin.
Tuesday, Part 3
REINFORCEMENT The kids missed several words on yesterday’s review quiz, so I decided we needed to do something to review these words well before the end-of-the-week test, which was going to happen today. How could I get those kids to look carefully at their lists and study them? The answer: Spelling Wheel of Fortune (without the wheel)
I drew a scoreboard on the white board where each child had + and - columns. We also had an overall tally scoreboard to keep track of their points from one round to the next. Next, I secretly chose a word from the current list, which the children were allowed to look at in their Learning Logs. (Ah ha! Mom’s got them carefully “studying” those logs.) I drew the number of lines on the board that corresponded with the number of phonograms in that word. For example, the word “fourteen” has 8 letters but only 6 phonograms; only 6 lines were drawn.
The children took turns guessing phonograms. If the guesser chose correctly, he scored 1 point for that phonogram and could take another turn. However, if he chose a phonogram that was not in the word, I wrote the incorrect phonogram on the board (not on a line), he lost a point on his scoreboard, and the next child had a turn. A child had the potential of literally naming all the phonograms in the word if he could logically figure out which spelling word in his list fit the number of lines on the board after even one phonogram was identified.
No words were repeated, so there was a process of elimination as the game progressed. We started out by showing syllable breaks, but quickly dropped this feature as it made the game too easy. Once a child figured out what the word was, he had to list the phonograms without looking at his log. Naturally, all discussion was done in phonogram language, not letter names. Once we were done with List O-3, we continued with S-1 as well.
Another hit!
Tuesday, Part 4
Note: A few hours transpired between Activities 3 & 4. This included getting ready for piano lessons, going to piano lessons, going grocery shopping, putting away the groceries, and starting dinner. While the chicken was cooking, we worked on the following . . .
END-OF-THE-WEEK TEST Yes, you can give an end-of-the-week test on Tuesday. What this means is just that you’re done with the lists you’ve taught, and you’re ready to move on. That’s where we are; it just happens to be a Tuesday and not a Friday. Oh, well. So how did we turn a test into a game?
-Each student dated and labeled a page in his writing journal. They each chose a color for a white board marker.
-Student #1 stepped up to the white board.
-I dictated a word from List O-3.
-The students sitting down wrote the word in their journals.
-When they finished, Student #1 wrote the word on the board in his color.
-If the word on the board was spelled correctly, he received a point. If it was spelled incorrectly, no point was given.
-The seated students checked their work and either gave themselves a red check (correct) or wrote the word correctly with a red pencil.
-Student #1 sat down and wrote the word in his journal in either regular pencil (word had been spelled correctly on the board) or with a red pencil (word was spelled incorrectly and corrected on the board).
-Student #2 stepped up to the white board, etc.
-By the end of List O-3, we had 20 words colorfully written in various manners, angles, and styles all over the white board. How creative! We erased the board and continued in the same format through List S-1.
-At that time dinner was almost ready, so I quickly gave them the rest of their review words from our card stack without the game format.
In the end, I had a record of how each student had done on the test, the kids had instant feedback on their words, we were able to “retire” many of our review words, and the kids were actually encouraging one another. It did get a bit loud a few times, but they were having a great time and spelling turned out to be fun today.
In the words of Cornelius Robinson, we will just "keep moving forward!"
Wednesday, Part 1
WARM-UP We were very short on time today, so I skipped any warm-up activities. This is okay to do now and then, but it shouldn’t be a regular practice.
Wednesday, Part 2
DICTATION I dictated Section O-4 to the children. Since working at this higher level for a while now, and especially after working on S-1 words last week, these words seem so easy now. The kids seem to be finding that to be the case as well.
POST-TEST I gave a post-test on the words I had just dictated as well as on all of the words in our review stack of cards. Scores: 95%-100%. I’d say they’re doing well!
Wednesday, Part 3
REINFORCEMENT The kids wrote sentences with their spelling words around the theme of a holiday at the beach. They could either write individual, unrelated sentences with this theme, or they could compose a paragraph. See WG pg 125.
Comments
Jan. 24, 2008 - Moving ON
Posted by Sarah W
Thanks for posting so many details about your lessons/tests. I watch every week for a new post--it's so encouraging to watch another family's experience with SWR! Plus I get all kinds of neat ideas! Keep up the fantastic work.
