Speling,speeling, Oh, wait: SPELLING!
I was always the first one to sit down during my class spelling bees in grammar school. I am the one that shouts out “hey, how do you spell…..” because I can never remember if I is before C or is C before I? And with the integration of spell check into my life, I have fared well—the truth of my weakness has remained a well-guarded secret—until I started having to home school my kids in spelling!
The knack that my husband has for putting letters in the correct order is not one of the traits handed down to my girls and I fear that I must admit the truth: we are floundering in the phoneme department.
Last trimester I put both of my girls into Denise Indvik’s spelling class (Friday Mornings) and we have all been pleasantly surprised with the success it is having for us. She is introducing language in a way that resonates with them—acknowledging that English doesn’t make sense, so let’s just make the best of it, kind of thing. Instead of learning and trying to memorize more and more words that are either spelled right or WRONG (because WRONG is all these two hear when we work on spelling), she is using a curriculum that isn’t just memorization—it’s about understanding English and how it is put together. The class is conceptually bigger than simply spelling and after only four weeks both girls are thinking differently when they attempt to put letters together, they are pronouncing words differently as they attempt to decode the verbal and recode it correctly into a written format. We also have optional packets that Denise sends home with them so that I can keep infusing some of this into our home lessons—and it’s not killing us! In fact I think it possible that perhaps these two little loves of mine just may exceed my own personal spelling spectrum (as they will clearly do in the height department as well, but THAT’S a whole other set of issues I will have to deal with!)
