Last Monday I shared a way I'm helping my seven year old twins with spelling. I'm making a list of words I find in their school work and journals of common words they misspell. Then they practice these words by mixing up magnetic letters and putting the words back together. Their lists are put on the refrigerator to see everyday.
I think this is a good way to learn to spell words before a wrong spelling is practiced too many times. My son wants to know when he can get a word off the list. I should make a plan for that I guess. I'm thinking of making a monthly list, taking a test, and starting a new list every month. If a word is missed, it gets added to the next month's list.
Here are the words we added today.
These are the spellings I found.
These are the correct spellings. My children will mix up these words and put back them back together with magnetic letters a few times this week.
Here are their lists for the refrigerator.
I've been writing at Squidoo. I wrote a lens with information I put together for anyone teaching a child to read. I'd love for you to take a look and share it with anyone who may find it useful: Teach a Child to Read
Spelling Words with Magnetic Letters and a Resource to Teach Reading
Welcome to Surf's Up Saturday! I'm sharing two online stories for children (this week there's one story and one interview with the author), two reading games for children, and two resources for you to help teach reading every Saturday.
Beginning readers need to learn letter and vowel sounds to read. The individual sounds of language and the letters that represent these sounds are called phonograms. Children usually learn single letter phonograms including soft c, soft g, long vowels, and short vowels first. There are many resources to teach these sounds.
This post gives you a video and free phonogram flashcards to use to teach and practice some common two letter phonograms.
Here's a video I found with the following phonograms. (ee, ea, sh, ch, oo, oo, ou, ar, or, ir, ow, oy, oa, ow, ay, ai)
You can print common two letter phonograms on heavy paper to make your own flashcards.
Visit this link to find free phonogram flashcards I created just for you.
You may want to print your cards on heavy weight paper.
You will need to cut half an inch off the top and bottom to make the flashcards a uniform size.
When you cut 1/2 inch off the bottom, your paper should be 10 inches long.
Next you cut 2 inch strips.
Cut them in half at 4 1/4 inches.
Stay tuned.
I'll be sharing ways to teach phonograms every Friday for awhile. Please follow or subscribe with email if you don't want to miss a post.
Common Two Letter Phonograms to Learn and Practice: Video and Flashcards
Last Monday I made a post suggesting parents make a list of words their children misspell regularly in their writing.
My second grade twins have become pretty good spellers, but I found a word for each of them to practice with magnetic letters from school papers this week.
My seven year old daughter needs to practice the word answer.
I've added the word answer to a list I'm making for her. This week I'll leave these magnetic letters on a magnetic board, mix them up, and have her put them back together a few times. Her list of words to start spelling correctly is on the refrigerator, so she can see it everyday.
My seven year old son needs to learn to spell does correctly. This should be a pretty easy fix. I'll let him know to think of the word do before spelling the word. I caught him spelling deos and deosn't.
I'm leaving this word out for my son to mix up and put back together. His list of words to spell correctly is posted on the refrigerator also. I'm searching with my eagles eyes for more words this week.
What do you think about this idea to help children learn to spell?
I Found Two Spelling Words for My Twins to Practice from Their Writing This Week
I'm always finding links I'd like to share on this blog. You will find lists of links in pages at the top of this blog. Sometimes it can be a little overwhelming looking at a whole list of links. I've decided to make Saturday a day to highlight a few links you may want to check out. Then you can explore a few at a time and bookmark your favorites. I don't know what people did before the internet. I sure love it! There are so many resources and fun things!
I'm calling these posts Surf's Up Saturday! I'm inviting you to surf the web with me. Please share a comment about your favorites or share a link you think I should check out. Sign up with Feedburner or follow this blog, so you don't miss a post. You'll find options in my sidebar to follow Beginning Reading Help. This blog was recently added to a list of 50 Best Blogs for Reading Teachers.
Phonograms are letters or letter combinations that represent a sound. I will be focusing on teaching phonograms every Friday for awhile. Here's a link to common two letter flash cards to print and cut for practice.
My previous Friday focuses have been Phonological Awareness and Flashcards. Click on the highlighted links to view these posts starting with the most recent and working backwards.
Learning the alphabet and the sounds each letter of the alphabet makes is a good starting point for learning to read using phonograms. I recommend teaching the short sound for vowels first since most beginning reader books have words with short vowel sounds. Try out Starfall for letter learning and easy reader books online to get a child started reading. Here's a post of mine sharing ways to learn letters and letter sounds.
Learn about two common short vowel phonics rules here. Watch a video demonstration of short vowel and long vowel words here.
Once a child has a good understanding and experience reading and spelling words with single letter phonograms you can start teaching about letter combination phonograms. The links to these next sites will give you a little more information about phonograms, so you will be ready to teach a beginning reader phonograms needed to read and spell.
All About Spelling - All About Spelling lists phonograms and offers flashcards and audio for sale. (I'll be sharing free flashcards for phonograms next Friday.)
Daily Writing Tips - Daily Writing Tips offers advice about learning to spell and validates my thinking about learning sight words with phonics. Have you printed and used my 70 free sight word flashcards?
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Most elementary school aged kids have a test for spelling words every week. Many do well on these tests, because they study. Many spelling lists show children similar patterns and rules. (You can make this kind of studying fun by using magnetic letters. I've made a video showing how to make and break words with magnetic letters.)
I'd like you to try something new with your child. Make a list of words YOUR child needs to learn. It's easy to find words your child uses a lot and consistently misspells. Just look at what your child has written over a period of a few months.
My youngest son spelled quite a few words consistently incorrect in first grade. I looked at his writing from school and his journal to find words he needed to learn. I made a list of these words and put them on the refrigerator. He looked at them everyday. We didn't use magnetic letters. That would've been fun I think. He's in second grade now with his twin sister. He doesn't spell many words wrong anymore. It helped to draw his attention to the words HE needed to learn along with regular spelling words from class.
My daughter's spelling was very random in first grade, but she had a skill of spelling sight words she learned in school correctly. She was different from her brother. She grabbed on to high frequency words. Her twin brother tried to use phonics and sounding out to spell words. (He spelled w-u-s for was, but his sister usually spelled that one right.
I didn't make a list or focus on my daughter's spelling in first grade. I didn't think of using magnetic letters and making it fun until now. My second grade twins are doing great in spelling now. They usually get 100% on their spelling tests. I'm going to start looking for any consistent spelling errors this year and have them practice with magnetic letters. I'm only finding a few to work on. Here are examples of some of my daughter's writing from first and second grade:
Every was a word my daughter did not know how to spell in first grade. I underlined the word with Wikki Stix.
My daughter is still having trouble spelling every in second grade. This is a word she spells a lot. If I help her with this word, then she won't be practicing spelling it wrong over and over.
Here are a few more words I can help my daughter practice I found in some of her writing this year.
My children keep their favorite work from school in a box and write in journals. Do you keep some of your child's work or have your child write in a journal? Start collecting or have your child write in a journal and use this writing to find words to practice. If children spell a word over and over wrong, it takes extra work to learn to spell the word correctly. If a brain practices something many times, it remembers it this way. It makes sense to catch common spelling errors your child makes early, so they can start writing them correctly. (Try to teach only a few at a time with young children. Don't overwhelm! Invented spelling and attempts to sound out in the early stages of writing is normal. My advice in this post is for a first grader and up who seems to consistently spell the same word wrong over and over.)
Did you notice how I used Wikki Stix to underline the words in my daughter's writing samples? Wikki Stix are fun and can be used to help teach reading. My youngest son is home sick from school today with a stomach ache. He made a guitar with Wikki Stix while I wrote this post.
Make a List of Spelling Words From a Child's Writing and Practice Spelling with Magnetic Letters
Welcome to Surf's Up Saturday! I've surfed the web just for you and your kids this week. I found two links with resources to teach reading, two online stories, and two online reading games.
I shared free high frequency word flashcards on this blog recently with directions to print and cut. Every Friday I posted ways to teach with these flashcards. This will be the last post about these flashcards.
You will find links in this post to help navigate my previous posts related to these flashcards. Please share this post with others if you like.
Teach High Frequency Words or Sight Words with Free Flashcards: Final Post
Monday
Welcome to the ninth Magnetic Letter Monday post. Do you have magnetic letters? Are they organized? Find an easy way to organize magnetic letters here. You will find many ways to use magnetic letters on this blog. I've collected most of the videos I've created using magnetic letters to teach phonics in a lens I created with Squidoo called Teach a Child to Read with Phonics.
It's Magnetic Letter Monday and I have writer's block. I didn't want to skip posting, so I decided to share a review of magnetic letter resources I've already created with you. You can find some more ideas to teach with magnetic letters in the magnetic letter label in my side bar.
Since my brain is not coming up with something new and useful today, I'm sharing links to other bloggers' posts with ways to teach with magnetic letters. My next Magnetic Letter Monday post will be amazing! Well good at least. I hope you find something new and useful from this list of links.
I shared free printable flashcards on this blog through MediaFire. Many people have printed them. Every Friday I've been posting about teaching with these flashcards. Some high frequency words follow phonics rules and some don't. I think children should be taught to match letter sounds and adjust some sounds when teaching a child high frequency words. I'm not an advocate of teaching words by shape or sight. Sight word learning comes after learning to read a word and repeated exposure to a word.
My thinking about sight word learning has changed over time. My daughter began having problems with reading after learning to read many words by sight only. She looked in the air instead of at a word when she got stuck on a word in a story. As soon as I showed her to use letter sounds and blend those sounds together when reading, her reading improved dramatically. We used Phonics Pathways and Reading Pathways to practice blending sounds outside of books. She got frustrated and angry when reading books. She was used to guessing at words, knowing words by sight, and using picture clues without using letter sounds in books. When I helped her with books, it was all mom's fault she couldn't read. She'd roll and the floor and yell, "I know how to read, Mom! Leave me alone." She was a good reader in emergent reader books, but she couldn't read the harder books without being able to sound out words.
Now you know why I'm not an advocate for sight word learning only. I do think some sight word learning is okay. I compare sight words to training wheels on a bike. It gives an emergent reader a way to read before being able to sound out all words. Try teaching a child to use letter sounds and patterns to read high frequency words. I remember a study somewhere that concluded children learn words much faster by sounding them out than by sight word learning. Plus it gets them ready for the real reading that is necessary outside of emergent reader books.
Most Words with a Long A Sound at the End Are Spelled with AY
Wa Together at the Beginning of a Word -
Words that start with wa make the a sound like a short o. (walk, want, watch, water)
The Long U Sound of O at the End of a Word
OW and OU Sounds
Schwa Sound - Find a post about teaching the schwa sound here. Look for this picture in the middle of the post. All vowels make the schwa sound in some words. It's a very common sound. It sounds like a short u. I teach kids to think of the schwa sound like the "uh" sound some people make when they are thinking.
Use Phonics Rules and Patterns to Teach Sight Words or High Frequency Words
You can join this quest if you are a child, parent, teacher, blogger, grandparent, or just someone who loves children's books.
I wrote a lens at Squidoo called Reading Starts at Home. This lens has lists of Top 10 Children's Books separated by age groups. You will find the Top 10 lists toward the end of my write up. My goal is to get a ton of participation in these lists. I'd like to have valid useful lists by May 1, 2011. I may not reach this goal since voters must be signed up with Squidoo. If you'd like to help, here's a link to sign up with Squidoo. If you are a writer, you may find this a fun platform for writing. Once you have signed up with Squidoo, I think the voting plexos in the side column of this blog will work for you.
The lists I've created are plexos. Plexos allow others to vote, add, and share. You can participate by voting books up or down. Look for two important buttons at the bottom of the lists if you'd like to add your own book selections or share this list on your blog, website, or Squidoo lens.
I'll post the results in May. If you are a blogger, it might be fun to add these lists to your blog and announce the quest! You could post the results in May with your own Amazon links. I know I have some blogging followers. Can you help?
Join the Quest to Find the Best Books for Babies, Toddlers, Preschoolers, and Beginning Readers!
My kids and I got out our favorite Dr. Suess books. My second grade twins brought their favorites to school. My daughter brought The Sneeches and Other Stories. My son brought Green Eggs and Ham.
We have such happy memories of reading Dr. Suess books together!
I celebrated something all by myself. I woke up to find a lens I wrote and nominated to be a perfect Lens of the Day for Read Across America Day was given a write up and posted on a popular blog. Here's the link.
The lens I wrote is titled Reading Starts at Home. I'm happy and celebrating for two reasons.
The first reason I'm happy is because my ideas about teaching reading are being validated. I'm not the type of person who wants to be right and someone else to be wrong. My ideas about ways to teach reading have been developing over time. I look for the latest research and try to find the most effective ways. Many people are looking at the information I shared in this lens and telling me they agree and find it useful in comments.
The second reason I'm happy is because the information I worked so hard on is being shared with parents who may use it. Children will be learning to read from their parents!
We made green eggs, ham, and pancakes for dinner on March 3rd in honor of Dr. Suess and his popular book, Green Eggs and Ham. We used neon green food coloring. Funny how many eggs a kid can eat when they are neon green! Did anyone else have green eggs and ham this year?
I'd love it if you voted on some children's books. You'll find a place to submit books and vote for books in my Reading Starts at Home lens. There are links to vote in the top right section of my blog's sidebar too.
You may want to try of some ideas collected by Candance Lindemann for next year. You will find ideas to celebrate Dr. Suess's Birthday and Read Across America in this post. Have a Suess-tastic Day
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