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Downunder Literature |
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Spelling and Word Study
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Providing homeschool resources of enduring value |
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When you and your students are preparing a dictation passage, have the student look for words that they may find difficult and have them do a word study. This can involve: carefully copying out the word; visualizing the word in their mind with their eyes closed; practice writing the words (make sure they are practising the correct spelling). After the word or words have been identified, allow time for the student to learn the spelling. When the student feels confident that they can spell the word correctly, begin the dictation. Look at your student’s dictation and see where the errors are. From this you can make individualised spelling lists. You may also wish to introduce some spelling rules to help them with the word. Remember to correct misspelt words as soon as possible so that you don’t risk the student memorising the incorrect spelling. ‘The gift of spelling depends upon the power the eye possesses to “take” (in a photographic sense) a detailed picture of a word; and this is a power and habit which must be cultivated in children from the first. When they have read “cat”, they must be encouraged to see the word with their eyes shut, and the same habit will enable them to image “Thermopylae”. This picturing of words upon the retina appears to be to be the only royal road to spelling; an error once made and corrected leads to fearful doubt for the rest of one's life, as to which was the wrong way and which is the right. Most of us are haunted by some doubt as to whether “balance”, for instance, should have one “l” or two; and the doubt is born of a correction. Once the eye sees a misspelt word, that image remains; and if there is also the image of the word rightly spelt, we are perplexed as to which is which. Now we see why there could not be a more ingenious way of making bad spellers than “dictation” as it is commonly taught. Every misspelt word is in image in the child's brain not to be obliterated by the right spelling. It becomes, therefore, the teacher's business to prevent false spelling, and, if an error has been made, to hide it away, as it were, so that the impression may not become fixed.’ Charlotte Mason. Home Education. This is an excerpt taken from Downunder Dictation and Teacher’s Guide |
