Spelling 10/15/12

One of Hannah's big challenges is spelling.  She can articulate all kinds of ideas.  She has terrific penmanship.  But she has a hard time with spelling.  So she doesn't do much unsupervised writing--she likes to dictate and have me write down her ideas.  Then I make her copy it.  She's making progress with spelling, slow and steady, and, umm...slow.

We've tried many spelling programs and techniques.  Some worked better than others, but basically, English is a bear to learn.   It's a really lousy language to spell (and read too!).   There are so many combinations of letters that make similar sounds, as well as unfathomable combinations ("eight"??).

Aside:  Did I ever tell you that Hannah always says "height" to rhyme with "weight" and "eight"?  It cracks me up.  "Hate".   It's so funny when she reads that word.

Back on track.

I learned this technique from a neurodevelopmentalist.   Our kids with Down syndrome have trouble with short-term memory.  So we need to input the information into the student more frequently than a typically developing student would need.  Input input input.   Output will come at some point.  If the student is not giving output yet, that means you have to keep on inputting!

We make a flash card of each spelling word.  It's important for Hannah to see the word clearly, without other words nearby to distract her.   When making a flashcard make sure none of the letters in the word touch each other.  This is REALLY important if your child is just starting to learn to spell.

My turn:  I hold the card.  I say the word.  I spell the word.
Hannah then while looking at the word, spells it.  Then I flip the card down, and she spells it again.

That's it.

When it is a new word, or a long word,  she might need a couple tries before she gets it right.   Sometimes on really difficult words Hannah chooses to finger spell the word as well. (sign language)  I think this is a smart move on her part--it gives her a physical way to remember it using her motor memory.  (motor memory= muscles remembering a pattern or behavior that doesn't necessarily involve language or short-term or long-term memory--it's not ideas, it's just what your body knows without thinking.  Sort of like typing.  You don't have to think about it, it just goes through your fingers.)

Sometimes a word is difficult and she gets letters mixed up or skipped.  When that happens, I usually try to make a sort of sing-song way of spelling the word or a rhythmic cadence with the letters. Or,  we'll tap out a rhythm as we recite the letters.

Sometimes she closes her eyes to recall what the word looks like.  She can get over a spelling glitch by visualize the word if she consistently transposes letters in a particular word.

We go through a set of 10-15 words each week.  Or two weeks, if we need the time.  I choose words from the Dolch list as well as words that she uses frequently in correspondence or just words she likes.

I don't ask her to write them until she can spell them out with her voice.   When she can speak them,  we add the pencil.   Once I know she can write them, I test her.  I don't test her until I know she can be relatively successful.  I know this isn't an option for kids in regular school, but I generally work on a "quit when you're still successful" principle.   If you push too hard, you'll end up grumpy,  same as your child.

Use a red or black sharpie for your flashcards



***WHOOPS!  I'm having trouble uploading my video. ***
*** Will add it as soon as I can get it edited!***
(Come back soon if you're interested in seeing how we spell.)

Sometimes we use letter tiles to build her spelling words.  Digging through the letters makes her really recall which letter she's after, in addition to working on alphabet skills.

This is a part of a spelling game (of which I am not fond).

Each tile has a few little pegs on the back.  Only the correct letter will fit in a specific block, so sometimes it's just trial and error.  The colors provide limited options, so that might be helpful for some students.    There are too many useless words--look at that picture at the top of the picture.  I think it's a faucet.  Somebody might say "sink".   But no.  It's "tap".  A good word to spell, but a horrible illustration.

We only use the letter tiles, not the spelling cards.   Don't ever feel bad about not using the instructions in a game or lesson.   Use what works for your student.


RANT:

What in the world do you think this is?

Neither Chris nor I could figure out what this picture was.  "Ice"?  No.  It's a 5-letter word. "Cubes"?  No.  "Tongs"?  Nope.

It's SUGAR.  Besides the bad picture, what a horrible spelling word!  Really?  Sugar?   This is coming from a beginner spelling "game"?     Ick.
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Epilogue:  Hannah picked out some of her spelling words for this week:
mansion,  genes,  haunted,  because,  science.    

Study them and you might discover a clue to our destination next week!

2/31 Schooling

Too bad that 31 is a prime number or I could have had some fun with fractions!

Fractions fractions.   Yesterday I was trying to teach Hannah the nuances of dotted quarter notes.   Her newest piano piece has introduced dotted quarter notes. She understands tying notes together, but the blasted dot surely doesn't look anything like an eighth note.

For those of you who don't know, a quarter note has a beat of 1.  If you fit two notes into 1 beat, you have two eighth notes.   If you want to stick one eighth note on to a quarter note (you'd get 3/8ths mathematically), you'd have to count 1.5 beats.    Does this make any sense?  Of course not.  

Hannah absorbed about ZERO of what I was explaining.   And I don't blame her.    She does understand basic fractions.  We have those tiles that are divided into various fractions, and she understands cutting something in half, and then in half again to get fourths (or quarters...as in money).   But music timing doesn't make much sense to her.   She usually just memorizes the rhythm and doesn't count beats at all.  She leaves that up to me.   I personally don't think it matters much.  It's not a required life skill.

This year, which we call Sixth Grade, we are focusing on academic life skills--the 3 Rs.   Hannah would be in 7th grade if she was with her age-mates.   We had a 2nd grade, and a 2nd-and-a-half grade, so she's a grade behind, by name only.   She really is working on a spectrum of skills that range from 1st grade - 4th grade.  Reading individual words (vocabulary words) is one of her strengths, and I'd guess she's close to a 5th grade level.  I don't really know, because I never test her.   She is where she is.  And I just work on the next step she needs to take.

I did some thinking this summer, trying to distill what is holding her back, where is she weakest, and I revamped some of our curricula. (By the way--TANGENT WARNING--one of my BIGGEST pet peeves is when a homeschooling parent who cannot spell the word curriculum!  You'd think that the error they make is with the plural.  I can forgive "curriculums".   But I cannot forgive "cirriculum".  Sir Iculum it is not.  I'm sure this spelling error is not limited to homeschoolers, but, let's face it, other than educators, hardly anyone else uses the word.  And besides, there is ALWAYS spell check.)

The areas that need the most attention are writing, spelling, and math. Yes, her penmanship is very tidy, but still slow.  It's slow because she spends so much time figuring out how to spell words.  If she has an idea/answer in her head, she'll say it out loud.  But by the time she's written the first word in the sentence, she's forgotten what she wanted to say because the idea left when she was concentrating on the motor task of writing, as well as the mental task of spelling.  It's not automatic.   And it hasn't improved over the past few years.

So I decided to go back to Sequential Spelling.  We tried it a few years ago, but didn't stick with it.  This time it seems to be working.  She'll even ask to do her spelling first!

Here are yesterday's words.   She doesn't get tested on them--she figures out how to add the prefixes and suffixes, and builds words within families.

(Yes, they actually use the word "treeing"--as in, "The hounds enjoyed treeing the squirrel.")

For Language Arts and Writing, this year we are using materials from The Well Trained Mind.

I'm starting back at the beginning, making sure that Hannah's not missing key components in language arts and writing.   For now, it's very easy for Hannah.  She is doing copywork, memorization (poems), and narration (re-telling a story I just read to her).   

I never used a "programmed" curriculum before.   It's so easy!  I sort of feel like a fake--saying exactly what the book tells me to say.   But she's eating it up, and making progress.  

I'm not so sure that she (or I) would have been ready for this approach a few years ago.  

Another thing I'm introducing this year is keyboarding skills. We haven't started yet, but I am hopeful that by removing some of the motor task elements her writing will improve.

For math, we are still using Numicon, but I'm also taking a closer look at the Teaching Math to People with Down Syndrome.   We'll be using more games, money and calculators this year.   She loves creating a "store" and counting out dollars, dimes and pennies (we're not adding nickels yet, and quarters are totally confusing).

I have to mention that this summer we added another supplement, Longvida Curcumin to her protocol.   I discussed it with her pediatrician (whom we adore), and after reading the research, she thought it was worth a try. We didn't observe any changes over the first 2 months.  But then we gave her a week-long boost at a higher dose. Since then, she has been very interested in numbers.  She is always counting things and using ordinal numbers.  "That's the 9th time you said that, Mom." (that's typed in Adolescent Eye Roll font.)      And she was right. But maybe she should have listened the first time, instead of counting.

Disclaimer, of course:  I have no way of telling if the two things are connected  Math : Longvida Curcumin.   But it isn't hurting.  But it is very expensive.

We do lots of other stuff--right now we're reading The Little House books together.   We throw in some geography, calendar work, Thinking Skills books, nature stuff, etc.   Today she wanted to work with a dictionary, so she invented a game using the Bananagram tiles (similar to Scrabble tiles), picking a letter out of the bag, then finding a word in the dictionary that started with that letter, and writing it down.  Fine with me!   I told her she could play it 12 times.  Far be it from me to interfere with that kind of "playing"!

What I'm chasing down is not performance or mastery of any particular skill, I'd rather see her Think.  I want to help her learn to process information so that she can solve problems.   I don't think that average worksheets or memorizing math facts will necessarily will help her to do that.  I believe that reading good books results in good language patterns.  I believe that playing games can bring academic accomplishments and challenge social skills.  I believe that living life is much more effective a learning tool than learning about living life.

We spend focused learning time three or four times a week.  She can stay focused for 3-4 hours.  I should say that *I* can stay focused for that amount of time...I don't know how long she could last...   

Gnilleps

Hannah has a difficult time with spelling. Over the years, I have used many of the more common techniques with her--having her copy them, write them 5 times, recite them, etc. I tried various spelling lists, Dolch words, word families, and high interest words. We were both frustrated. Then one day I overheard a neurodevelopmentalist describe how her son learned spelling words. It's a simple technique that Hannah enjoys and that doesn't irritate me (VERY IMPORTANT FACTOR--keep Mommy happy. Sometimes Many times I am too impatient).

I already knew that I needed to use words that matched her short-term memory capability (also known as Digit Span). Hannah's current digit span is not quite a solid 5. That means she can only reliably keep four bits of information in her head at a time. She can hold five bits, but not on a consistent basis. Most typically developing kids her age have a digit span of 7 (so does the average American citizen--hence the seven digit phone number). So her spelling words are primarily 4-letter words, with a few "challenge words" with five or six letters.

I make flashcards on index cards (clearly written in Sharpie marker--red works best for younger kids; Hannah uses black now). I hold up the card, say the word, then spell it (visual and auditory input). She then says it and spells it while looking at it. I quickly flip it down, and she repeats the spelling. She usually can repeat without much trouble. Occasionally she needs to repeat the word on the first day or two. We do the cards for 4 days or so (twice a day would be twice as fast, but that just isn't going to happen in our house). On the day before I test her, I will have her practice writing the words once, immediately after she repeats the spelling. Sometimes I will let her spell the words with letter tiles (like Scrabble) as well, to keep it interesting.



The last day is her test. I say the word (no visual this time). She usually repeats the word, spells it out loud, and then writes it. This way I can tell if she's having trouble with penmanship, or if she actually has difficulty with the spelling.

If she misses any words, that card stays in the next week's pile. We do 10 cards a week. Hannah is getting good at "clumping", to bridge her digit span to 5 and 6. Usually these words have repeated letters, like "school". Or, I'll use a word like "chair", and really, that ends up being a two-digit word, since she already knows how to spell "air" (it's part of her long-term memory now), and she knows the "ch" digraph. We also use clapping to make a rhythm for the longer words, and also finger spelling (sign language) as another method to get the spelling ingrained in her brain.

Now, all this would be great if we actually did schoolwork every day. But, being relaxed, eclectic, barely-a-step-beyond-unschoolers, we feel so very accomplished when we get three days of school work in per week. Our schedule this year is not as interrupted as some years, so we can even get four days a week if we are energetic. It's not that we don't learn things on the other days, we just don't do formal sit-down work at the table.