Spelling

I'm going to share how we are working the parts of Mark's education.  The first one is spelling.

Mark has had very little instruction in spelling.  Most of it consisted of computer based spelling games.  So spelling is proving to be a challenge for him.  What Mark is doing now is not spelling so much as letter matching, which is the same thing the computer games do.  There are several differences though.

First I'm going to explain the tools we are using for spelling.  The first tool is a small magnetic dry erase board that is divided down the center and has ten rows.  Right now we do ten words at a time for each spelling lesson.  The words are based on the word list in the book he is reading for the week.  The second tool is a black dry erase marker.  And the third tool is a set of homemade magnetic letters.  I designed the letters on the computer and put the HWT lines on each tile so that when he gets to writing he has already got the visual of how the letters go in his head.  Each tile is 1/2" wide by 3/4" long and only slightly thicker than a sheet of paper.  These were printed on the magnet paper that you can buy for your inkjet.  I have both lower case and upper case letters but right now we are only working with the lower case letters.  In the long run (in 3 or 4 weeks) I will add Scrabble tiles with upper and lower case (home made) letters.  And possibly stamps and sensory letters.

Now to the differences.  The first difference is that Mark has to choose the correct letters out of a field of ten letters.  Eventually he will have to pick from the full field of 26 letters.  On the computer games only the letters needed are available.  On the computer games he just has to put the letters into the matching spots.  For our current version of spelling Mark has to pick the correct letter from the field of 10.

The second difference is that Mark has to put the letters directly on the correct line, in the correct position.  He can't just "float" them across and let go.  So he's having to deal with two issues.  The first is his preference to have all the letters together thereby running one word into another.  The second is having to work from right to left to spell the word.  Somehow, despite years of schooling, Mark has missed the basic knowledge of left to right progression.

The next difference is the left to right progression.  On the computer games, he could put any letter into any place at any time.  Now he has to put them in place from left to right.  He's having big issues with this, and not just in spelling.

The final difference is that Mark is having to match written letters to printed letters.  This is something that he's going to have to work through since, to my knowledge, he's never had to do it before.  When I'm writing the words I try to make the letters look as much like the print letters as possible but there are still differences.

An "add-on" to spelling will start once he's relatively stable with the current activity.  At that point I will take words and start dropping letters out.  Mark will then need to spell the word I say and get the missing letters correct.  Eventually this will completely transform to the type of spelling lessons that his peers complete.