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| Date: From: Subject: | 1/13/2011 10:21:57 AM Home School Legal Defense Association HSLDA's Homeschooling Your Struggling Learner Newsletter |
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---------------------------------------------------------------- HSLDA's Homeschooling Your Struggling Learner Newsletter January 2011 -- "HLEP! My Kid Can't Spel!" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---[ Learn Times Tables with Stories! ]------------------------------- Learn the Upper Times Tables with fun stories! Now on DVD! Great for learning disabilities. http://www.hslda.org/alink.asp?ID=300 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- By Faith E. Berens, M.Ed., Reading Specialist HSLDA Special Needs Coordinator "Please help! My child is a terrible speller." This is a common concern the special needs coordinators hear from many homeschooling parents. We all want our children to be good spellers and know that spelling is an important skill area. Particularly, remediating spelling difficulties should be a crucial piece of our homeschooling plans. We don't have to resign our children to relying on spell check or the use of a Franklin speller for the rest of his life. In this newsletter, we will discuss traditional spelling strategies as well as investigate alternative instructional strategies, such as right brain and multi-sensory strategies, for those children who are experiencing spelling difficulties. Traditional Spelling Instruction Practices I have always been a good speller and, in fact, I really enjoyed spelling. I also happened to enjoy the routine of spelling instruction while in school. You know the drill: Mondays entailed getting the spelling word list and copying the words three times each (in your best handwriting). Tuesdays meant using each word in a sentence. Wednesdays and Thursdays usually involved other exercises such as completing fill-in-the-blank sentences with the correct spelling word or a crossword puzzle. Fridays, of course, were test days. Sound familiar? Notice what all these practice methods have in common? WRITING! The muscle movement, as well as the drag of the pencil on the paper, actually helps to neurologically imprint the information into long-term memory. I learned by copying and writing, so those activities helped me commit things to my long-term memory. However, a child with a blocked writing gate cannot successfully transfer spelling into his long-term memory using these writing methods. Also, many spelling programs utilize phonics rules to teach children to spell successfully. For most struggling learners and children with severe dyslexia (reading disability), there are too many rules to memorize, so we see these children become spelling "guessers" or phonetic spellers, just spelling words how they sound. (By the way, these children are often "word guessers" in reading, as well.) I am sure many homeschooling parents use some of these exact methods and materials with their own children and become frustrated when they do not work. We frequently have parents report that these practices only work long enough for the child to pass the spelling test on Friday. But the parent soon discovers most of the words are still being misspelled in the child's daily writing tasks. When these methods don't work, parent-teachers often resort to doing more of the same--but teach louder, slower, and use more repetition. The traditional spelling strategies worked fine for me because I (like many others) had a good orthographic memory--(memory for letters and letter sequence)--what words looked like, as well as an unblocked writing gate. For many of our most struggling learners, who may also have poor phonological processing skills (the ability to hear and manipulate the sounds within words), memory difficulties, and/or other weak processing skills that impact spelling, we must try alternative methods that will lead to more efficient long-term memory storage. As a classroom teacher, having graduated in the early 1990s from a teacher preparation program that fully embraced the whole language philosophy, some of the ideas at that time were that children would naturally pick up on spelling patterns and rules; we were told to guide students to make the discoveries of the patterns and let them use invented or transitional spelling. While this worked for many of my "regular" education students, my children with learning disabilities who were already struggling did not thrive with such "loose" instruction. I quickly realized that these bright, yet struggling, students needed direct, systematic, and explicit instruction. In addition to this, I gave them lots of practice with the spelling patterns, used multi-sensory teaching methods, and taught them strategies for looking at words, studying them, and memorizing them. Right Brain Memory Strategies--A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words You can help your child learn to study and store data, like his spelling words, into long-term memory by using right brain teaching strategies. Right brain strategies utilize pictures, color, stories, humor, and strong emotions. When we add these elements to information, such as spelling words, the right brain stores it easily, in its long-term memory. It is as if you put "Velcro" on the information, helping it to stick! Your child's visual memory can be his greatest strength. As you help him develop his photographic (visual) memory, using spelling words, math facts, or any information, he will discover learning and memorizing becomes much easier. The success a child feels when he can "see" it is truly priceless! The Eyes Have It Let's think about one thing good spellers do in particular to store and retrieve words in and from long-term memory. Have you ever noticed, during a spelling bee, a student's eyes in an upward position? It looks as if he is looking at the ceiling for the word. In fact, he is actually "seeing" the word in his mind. The physiological movement of the eyes upward helps to stimulate the right brain, which causes the right brain (the hemisphere that houses photographic memory) to become more responsive. Because the student is actually "seeing" the printed word in his mind, he can spell it backwards and forwards. "Right Brain Spelling Strategy" (Courtesy Dianne Craft) You can train your children at home to utilize this very efficient strategy. Not only will you find that it is easy, but you will also discover that the right brain is responsible for visual memory and long-term memory, so your child will be able to retain his words long past the week of the spelling test. It is easy to incorporate with any spelling curriculum or program you have. Steps: 1. Give the child a pre-test from a short list of words, such as high frequency words or any list of words from a spelling program/curricula you are using. 2. For the words that were spelled incorrectly, take the letters that were wrong, or left out, and color them and "weird" them up (decorate them, use wavy lines, add pictures around letters or around part of the word). You can do this for the child, using his ideas if fine motor skills are difficult for him. 3. Hold the card with the spelling word straight up, high, in front of your child so his eyes are looking up. Have him glance at it, then bring it down while his eyes remain looking up where the card had been. Flash the card in the air five or six times until your child can "see" the word in the air and easily spell it forwards and backwards. If your child can't "see" the word in the air, show it more times, or put more "Velcro" on it by adding more color or a more detailed picture. The more humor, emotion, silliness, the better! Some modifications you are probably already doing: > Reduce word list > Allow for oral testing > If writing is difficult for the child (writing gate blocked/dysgraphia) have the child make words with letter tiles, magnetic letters, or other tactile method, such as stamping words with alphabet stamps > Form letters with dough/clay and spell out words Other multi-sensory ways to practice spelling: (see our website, http://www.hslda.org/elink.asp?id=9954 , to access downloadable handouts for these methods) > Spelling Cheerleading (kinesthetic) http://www.hslda.org/elink.asp?id=9959 > Making Words method (kinesthetic and tactile), see Struggling Learner website for downloadable handout http://www.hslda.org/elink.asp?id=9960 > Sky Writing method (kinesthetic) http://www.hslda.org/elink.asp?id=9961 When we present spelling instruction and allow spelling practice in these right brain and multisensory ways, it helps students to more effectively store the items/information into their long-term memory. So, do not be discouraged. To help your child become a successful speller does not require an entire curriculum change, but rather some changes or additions in your teaching strategies. It can be easy, fun, and inexpensive! By tapping into your children's strong areas (such as visual memory) and preferred learning styles, you can help them develop better spelling skills and strategies for remembering how to spell words. While spelling difficulties may be long enduring, specifically for individuals with reading disabilities even after there has been successful reading remediation, if you keep working at spelling utilizing some of these recommended multi-sensory teaching methods, as well as training your child's photographic memory, we are confident you will begin to see improvements in your child's spelling skills. You may see your child transform from a terrible speller to a terrific speller and he may even start to enjoy spelling! Recommended Resources: "Use Both Sides of Your Brain" by Tony Buzan Sequential Spelling, available through AVKO publishers, http://www.hslda.org/elink.asp?id=9955 Right Brain Phonics Cards and Spelling, by Dianne Craft, http://www.hslda.org/elink.asp?id=9956 Spelling Power, available at http://www.hslda.org/elink.asp?id=9957 Barton System for Spelling and Reading, http://www.hslda.org/elink.asp?id=9958 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -> Is customer service an art or a science? For us, good customer service is both an art and a science -it should appeal to our members and be effective. Consider what our members say about us: The freedom HSLDA allows me to have as I homeschool is wonderful! They handle the law and I get to dedicate the time to my daughter. - National City, CA HSLDA members since 1993, our membership is just as important to us as our children's curriculum. Thank you HSLDA for all you do on our behalf! - West Valley, NY More reasons to join HSLDA... http://www.hslda.org/elink.asp?id=1941 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ====================================================================== The HSLDA E-lert Service is a service of: Home School Legal Defense Association P.O. 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