heartofdakota.com

Some of my daughter's ps Kindergarten friends are starting to have a few spelling words each week. When I heard this I started wondering if I should be doing spelling with my dd. When does HOD start spelling? We are just in LHFHG right now. Also, what is dictation? I noticed that HOD uses dictation, but is there a thread somewhere about what that is?

I would not do any spelling in K. Spelling starts in the Beyond guide and Bigger starts the dictation, if you don't do the spelling words.

This thread should help in understanding dictation. Julie posts links to other threads here as well.

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=7231&p=52636&hilit= ... ger#p52636

HTH!

The ladies have already done a great job of answering your questions! I'll just mention that it is quite typical, even in the public school setting, to begin formal spelling instruction after a firm grounding in phonics has been laid first. Often spelling lists are begun after the first 9 weeks or so of first grade.

LHFHG is a year spent gaining a good foundation in the 3R's. Spelling is a natural application of the phonics foundation laid down in the phonics program. Beginning spelling too early can actually be a detriment if kiddos learn to practice spelling words incorrectly. This is because the incorrect spelling is then imprinted on the brain multiple times making the wrong spelling "look right". Undoing the habit of incorrect spelling is much more difficult than it is to make large gains in spelling once a child is reading well.

The only way, I'd recommend beginning spelling lists with a child in LHFHG is if he/she has already almost competed phonics instruction.

Blessings,
Carrie

Thanks everyone for your responses. Carrie, it does make sense to wait until phonics instruction is further along, but I am curious to hear about what you think of invented spelling? Have you heard of that? If I understand it correctly, its where the children spell words the way they think they sound phonetically, and the teacher doesn't correct the mistakes. Has anyone heard of this or used this method in the early stages? It seems a little strange to me to allow the child to misspell a word. But, I don't really know too much about it. I have heard that it helps the students write creatively at a younger age because they don't have to worry about spelling everything correctly.

I'm no expert but I think inventive spelling is a terrible idea. Once a child imprints a certain spelling whether right or wrong in their mind it is hard to retrain them. If you want your kids to do creative writing have them dictate a story to you, and then they can copy it correctly from your model.

In my unprofessional opinion, inventive spelling just doesn't seem right. Whenever my public school friends would tell me I should use it with my son, I always had an uneasy feeling. My ds is a very visual learner, and I definitely didn't want the sight of misspelled words in his brain, not to mention the actual act of writing the word was embedding it even further into his brain. I don't think it's for us.

The public schools around here allow the kids to use that invented spelling so they can get kids writing sooner as well. I think it is a terrible idea and creates poor spellers. I think it is the CM philosophy to correct a misspelled word immediately so that the child doesn't see the word spelled incorrectly. The more you see it spelled wrong, the harder it is to remember it correctly. I forget where I read it, but I remember it saying that it took numerous times of seeing the word spelled correctly after seeing it misspelled to get the correct spelling back in the brain.

In my opinion, Invented spelling (I call it phonetic spelling) is helpful only in creative activities in the early grades. When your child just writes a story for fun and is so excited to have expressed herself in this way, don't ruin the moment by pointing out all the errors. You might add a misspelled word from that story to her spelling list for next week.

Just as you wouldn't tell a three year old that her artwork is missing certain accuracies, don't smash the budding writer's desire to write.

I was shocked as a highschooler to find a story I'd written in 4th grade, and it was full of spelling errors! My mom said, "You got so discouraged if I picked at all the spelling errors in your writing, so I just let writing be writing, and we focused on correct spelling during spelling lessons and language lessons."

FWIW, my sister's public school where she teaches is no longer having them do invented spelling. They're not even having them look at and correct passages that are done incorrectly. They are now having them look at beautiful work and comment as to why it's done well (kind of like what we do with copywork-like with the poems that are in Beyond and up) and they have them dictate their writing and the teachers write it (in the younger grades) and then they give them the help to do it correctly in the older grades.

That's why I try not to have my kiddos write creatively yet-they dictate and copy, like a pp mentioned.

I totally understand the comparison to not correcting early art. I guess there are two sides to everything, huh?

In answer to the original question, we've had great results so far with waiting to start spelling in Beyond. We've just about finished Beyond (as well as finishing up phonics) and she is a fabulous speller. She gets the spelling lists correct each week, usually on the first try.

Both Carrie and I taught through the "invented spelling" years of ps. Many ps have now banished the practice of invented spelling due to the problems it causes for years to come. Charlotte Mason's theory is that the mind is like a camera taking a picture of a word and remembering what it looks like so that the mind can recognize when it "looks right". This is why copywork and dictation are so effective, because the mind is taking a picture of words correctly spelled and passages correctly written.

In contrast, inventive spelling causes dc's minds to take pictures of misspelled words and inaccurately written passages. The end result is the incorrect begins to look correct to the mind's eye. For example, when I taught third grade, so many dc spelled "friend" like "frend", and I had seen it spelled that way hundreds of times, which caused it (almost) eventually to appear to be spelled right like "frend". This is what happens to dc who use invented spelling year after year.

I agree that you don't want to burst the creative bubble in dc if they are wanting to write. When possible, offer to have them dictate what they want to write to you, so that dc can copy it correctly. If the child has already written something and is excited about it from an artistic point of view, I'd let it ride if it's going to make them very sad to have to fix words. HTH!

In Christ,
Julie

I'm a little late in responding ...
My nephew is in ps and i was shocked to find out he had spelling words and spelling tests. What happened to learning to read first? He has to come home and "study" after already being at school all day.
My daughter is the same age as him and we are learning to read. If she wants to spell a word, she just asks me. I think it makes more sense this way and it will come more naturally.

Jenn D.

I appreciate this discussion as it relates to our situation, too.

This is sort of hijacking, but I think this question is relevant to the discussion: Would you strongly advise starting spelling lists with a young K'er who can read independently? My son has been spelling "inventively" for awhile... not because I assign him creative writing assignments, but because he just likes to write things himself. I typically will correct a few errors, but not all of them, as I try not to quench his enthusiasm for writing.

I've been holding off on the formal spelling instruction, but now I'm thinking maybe I should start since he's spelling (and misspelling!!!) words all the time just because he likes to write things by himself. Would you start spelling instruction even if the child is still working on handwriting? (We are working to correct his "invented" method of handwriting at the moment. )

At what point is spelling instruction not only acceptable for a K'er but advisable or even imperative? Would you recommend it for an accelerated learner?

What is he writing - letters, words, or sentences? How accurate is he in what he's writing?
In Christ,
Julie

Thanks for your question, Julie.

My ds5 writes words, lists, sentences and some short stories. Here's an excerpt of a story he wrote this summer on his own for fun:

2 CaTS FROM CAT STRET WANTO GO CAMPING
THE 2CATS DRiVE A TRUK
HERE A RE THE 2 CATS
PITOD ERS [pointed ears] AND TABY
THiS iS THE FIRE
THE CATS ROST MRSHMEOS!

I didn't really want to start doing formal spelling drills and such because I didn't want to add too much to our school day for K. But now I'm beginning to worry that he'll develop bad spelling habits if I don't intervene. We do a little copywork for phonics review (e.g., find all the words in the story that have the "long o" sound and copy them), but I don't make him study word lists or anything. Do you think that's enough?