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| Date: From: Subject: | 7/8/2010 10:40:45 AM Home School Legal Defense Association HSLDA's Homeschooling Your Struggling Learner Newsletter--July 2010 |
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---------------------------------------------------------------- HSLDA's Homeschooling Your Struggling Learner Newsletter July 2010--A Primer on Using the Dictionary ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---[ Take the struggle out of spelling! ]----------------------------- Are you looking for the best way to teach spelling? All About Spelling brings clarity to spelling, with step-by-step lesson plans, multisensory learning, and built-in daily review. http://www.hslda.org/alink.asp?ID=241 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- A Primer on Using the Dictionary by Betty Statnick, M. Ed HSLDA Special Needs Coordinator "One of the most important skills students can learn in school is the ability to use language in an effective way...the single most important tool in the educational process of acquiring language skills is a dictionary that meets the needs of the student." (from the foreword to "Webster's New World Children's Dictionary") One homeschooling mom related to me what the college registrar stated when her son was enrolling for classes, "We find that all students, not just the ones who have some learning struggles, are very deficient in study skills." Since using the dictionary is one of those study skills which must be learned, this newsletter will give some guidance for teaching children how to use the dictionary. There are three types of skills involved in using the dictionary: locational skills, pronunciation skills, and meaning skills. This newsletter will give some helps for you in each of those areas. However, I recommend that the first dictionary assignment you give your child be "Look through this book." (I urge you to make that your first assignment, also. You may be amazed at some of the "extras" between the covers of various student dictionaries. See information in resources section.) After several sessions of his exploring the dictionary, let him tell you what he discovered, what he liked, or anything that was puzzling to him. After doing that you can launch into direct and progressive teaching of locational skills, pronunciation skills, and meaning skills. LOCATIONAL SKILLS The words in a dictionary are entered in alphabetical order. The word you are looking up is called an entry word. It will be in heavy black letters (called bold print) to set it apart from all the other information and make it easier to find. There are guide words listed at the top of each page. They will help you quickly find words in a dictionary. (You wouldn't want to start at page one and go from page to page until you find the word you are searching for.) The guide word on the left is the first entry word on that page, and the guide word on the right will be the last entry word on that page. All the words in your dictionary that would alphabetically come between the guide word on the left and the guide word on the right will be on that particular page. NOTE: If your child hasn't yet learned the letters of the alphabet in order, you can tape an alphabet strip to his desk so he can refer to it as needed. Place the dictionary on its spine (the part of the book to which pages are attached). The spine is also defined as "the back part of a book--the part that faces out when the book is placed upright on a shelf." With the dictionary in that position, open to the middle of the dictionary which will probably be open at words beginning with the letter "m". (There are 26 letters in our alphabet, and "m" is letter 13--midway through the alphabet.) "Webster's New World Children's Dictionary" --for ages 8 and up--uses color tabs (rounded, colored tabs--printed rather than glued on the pages) to help you find different parts of the alphabet quickly: red tabs for letters A-F, green tabs for letters G-P, blue tabs for letters Q-Z. Inside the back cover of that same dictionary there is a three-column Word Finder Table. It will help a person (who doesn't know how to spell a word he is searching for) find the different ways to spell that sound. "For example, if the sound is like 'n as in nose,' try spelling it with the letters in this column: nn as in dinner or gn as in gnome or kn as in kneel or pn as in pneumonia." You can play games with your child to help him develop his ability to find words beginning with various letters. Similar to Bible sword drills, you can ask your child to open the dictionary to a page with words beginning with a specific letter. Joyce Herzog, author of Scaredy Cat Reading System, lets a student roll letter cubes (like throwing dice). Next, the student has to open the dictionary to a page which contains words beginning with the letter exposed on that die. Of course, your child will have to be taught how to alphabetize not only words which have different first letters but also words which have the same first and second letters, and so forth. PRONUNCIATION SKILLS A dictionary helps you say and spell a word the right way. The pronunciation shown in parenthesis after the entry word uses both regular letters of the alphabet and special symbols. For most dictionaries, you will find those special symbol charts at the bottom of either the right hand or left hand pages. Those special symbols are used because some letters of the alphabet have several different sounds. For example, the "a" in "bat" sounds different from the "a" in "lake" or the "a" in "father." Depending on the age or performance level of your child, you may be able to teach the technical names for some vowel sounds: "breve" for the short vowel sound and "macron" for the long vowel sound. Frankly, I would delay teaching the "schwa" sound (the sound of a vowel in an unaccented syllable) until your child has had long experience with enjoying the dictionary. You don't want to squelch his joy (at having found "new friend dictionary") by overloading him and allowing discouragement to overtake him. MEANING SKILLS (and meaningful skills) You want to choose a dictionary with definitions written in language children can understand. That is why it is paramount that you choose a dictionary especially for children. The print will also be larger in a children's dictionary than it is in an adult dictionary. For children with visual impairments, you can further enlarge the print by placing a sheet magnifier overlay on the page to be read. Pictures, some in color, are included in children's dictionaries to give further understanding of an entry word. For instance, there is a colored picture accompanying the word history of the word "dandelion" (page 188 of "Webster's New World's Dictionary," 2006 edition): "That word came into English hundreds of years ago from the French words meaning 'tooth of a lion.' It is called this because the plant's jagged leaves have the outline of sharp teeth." The student can view the picture and relate it to the written information. Imagine how the self-esteem of a student with learning problems can be boosted as he (recalling from the visual stored in his mind) explains (and impresses a visitor to his back yard) about the dandelion growing there. Word choices are another excellent feature of the dictionary just referenced, and it can definitely be a resource for addressing both the receptive and expressive language weaknesses of a student. (So many parents have called me about their child's needs in those areas.) Your child can come to discover a rather painless way to enlarge both his speaking and writing vocabulary through information from word choices. Here is one example of word choices. It accompanies the entry word hide: The words hide, bury, and conceal share the meaning "to put something where it cannot easily be seen." The toy was hidden deep in the chest. The book was buried beneath a pile of clothes. The key is concealed under the doormat. One of the main things for you to remember is that your child's exposure to the dictionary should be a positive experience. You want him to recognize what a valuable tool that book really is. It can serve him as one ongoing Rx for language malnutrition. You don't want the dictionary to be a book he will look at only once, put on a shelf, and ever afterward "honor its privacy." RESOURCES All these resources include a section on How to Use This Dictionary. "American Heritage Children's Dictionary." Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010. ISBN: 978-0-547-21255-5 http://www.hslda.org/elink.asp?id=8610 For grades 3-6 (ages 8-11). There is a particular section on phonics and spelling and also one on geography. "American Heritage Student Dictionary." 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007. ISBN: 978-0-618-70149-0 http://www.hslda.org/elink.asp?id=8611 Grades 6-9 (ages 11-15). Special features include charts and tables of measurement, of the solar system, and others. "Scholastic Children's Dictionary." 2nd ed. New York: Scholastic, 2007. ISBN: 978-0-439-70258-4 http://www.hslda.org/elink.asp?id=8612 Ages 8 and up. Special features include maps of the United States, Canada, and the world; the alphabets of Braille and American Sign Language; grammar and punctuation guides; word histories; and the U.S. presidents. "Webster's New World Children's Dictionary." Cleveland: Wiley Publishing, 2006. ISBN: 978-0-471-78688-7 http://www.hslda.org/elink.asp?id=8613 Ages 8 and up. Special features include a children's thesaurus, album of U.S. Presidents and states, an atlas of the world, and others. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -> You can only do so much... No one can be everywhere at once. And you can't be at home, teaching your children, while monitoring your state's legislature. Through electronic legislative services, HSLDA is monitoring state legislation for you -- watching and listening carefully for any proposed laws that could erode your right to homeschool. Join HSLDA today-we'll watch out for your future. More reasons to join HSLDA... http://www.hslda.org/elink.asp?id=1942 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ====================================================================== The HSLDA E-lert Service is a service of: Home School Legal Defense Association P.O. 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