spelling curriculum

Yes, this is a common exercise in good spelling programs, and yes it is worthwhile. After all, nobody in the real world ever writes out a spelling list.

When students meet new words with me, I first ask if they know them, then if not I define them verbally in a casual fashion and use them in a sentence. I don’t make a fuss and have the student copy out a dictionary or anything, but just make sure they hear the word used meaningfully two or three times. When the word comes up again, I go over it again, and many times it is remembered from one introduction; if not I go over it again.

For the writing exercise, try approaching it with a sense of humour. It doesn’t matter how dumb the sentence is as long as it technically makes sense. At first I make up several sentences using a target word. With luck the student gets into the game and tries making up a few himself. After we get that far, *then* we write some down.

I agree with you that those extension exercises are about three quantum leaps beyond “spelling” — and basically, they fly in the face of one of the primary principles of Orton Gillingham methods — you do not expect students to do something you have not directly taught them to do.
So, unless they have been teaching the skill of composing a sentence about subject x using words a, b, and c - which I seriously doubt — then they are asking for frustration.
One of the main reasons for students to need things like O-G is that they don’t transfer skills and intuitively figure out the “next level.” Boy, is sentence creation a “next level.” It’s a *couple* of levels up. It’s comparable to learning the rules for levers and saying “okay, now please do the blueprints for a catapult using the materials from your local junkyard only.”
When I’m tutoring somebody with an assignment like this, I spend the time the student would have spent wallowing in frustration asking context-based questions with the sentence (which often *does* get them to where they can construct sentences, but not always), and then I’m liberal in my help with the sentences (especially if the student struggles with that skill). I’m thinking that if your kiddo is strong in vocabulary, then he probably does pick ‘em up fairly easily.
So, if the word is “drudge,” you resist the urge to google “Drudge report” and you talk about the meaning and ask “what are three things that a drudge might have to do?” “Why don’t people like drudge work, also known as drudgery?” “Would you invite drudges to a birthday party?”
Whether or not you challenge the notion of teaching an untaught skill — which I would consider, since if she’s making these kinds of pretty amazing demands on language skills on students who have challenges in exactly that area — depending on her training it might serve her well to remind her of the basic principles of O-G. (Of course, if she just has specific training in a specific reading program based on O-G, the training may not have had the emphasis on principles. And you may not want to deal with the fallout of assaulting someone’s ego if you aren’t a skilled diplomat.)

Oh my, can I relate to this. My child has LD and is in third grade. She has a very nice phonetic spelling curriculum that I chose for the school. So I thought we had it made in spelling. But her third grade teacher just couldn’t stick with the nice supplemental pages for homework. She started to assign the kids to write a story using FIFTEEN of the words each week!

Now let’s think about this. Those 15 words have phonetic spelling patterns in common. They are not a topical spelling list. I had trouble doing this assignment myself as far as having the story make any sense. I felt it was going to be detrimental to all the kids actually, because there was no way to write a GOOD story using those 15 unrelated words.

So when I had the opportunity to speak with the teacher, I expressed this to her and told her I felt writing individual sentences with those unrelated words made much more sense for my daughter. Because she has an IEP, I knew all I had to do was request a meeting and ask for a modification in the homework. The teacher knew that so she complied.

In your case, does your child have an IEP? If so, you can do what I said in the previous paragraph. If not, my suggestion is to do the assignment with your child. Discuss the meanings of the words and try to get some sort of paragraph written with them. Then he can copy it. I hate it when school assignments are clearly inappropriate. But the one thing I determined a long time ago was that if the assignment is absurd and inappropriate for my child, I will not have my child suffer as a result. I either write a note that we are skipping that homework or I do it with my child to model the exercise.

Janis

When teachers are showing their adamant “don’t change it, it’s character building, do the best you can” side … yea, it is true that we all should do things our mother doesn’t think we’re able to. (I’m scanning an article about that to put up on my site as we speak.) Not sure this is one of them, though.
THis is one of those kinds of “Traditional” assignments which, I strongly suspect, are written with parental help by a percentage of students which would simply shock and dismay the teachers. It’s another one of those little dividers of the ‘I’ve got parents who can help me at home” group from those who don’t. He may have fun doing it with you, and he probably will learn from teh exercise (and learn a lot more than from wallowing in frustration; definitely learn more language skills, and also learn more of the hidden agenda the teacher is trying to impart. I’m not sure teachers realize that the “do the stuff even though you think you can’t do it” only works if you figure out that you can do it. THose who can’t learn that they’re in The Group Who Can’t. Effective, but inherently unjust, way of keeping the college-prep class sizes down.)

These posts made me smile. My ds, who is a good speller, had absolutely no idea where to begin with creating a story from his spelling words—I just had him write sentences, wrote a note to the teacher, and called it a day. My dd, who has great difficulty sustaining her spelling when she writes, on the other hand could write wonderfully imaginative and engaging stories with the most unrelated spelling words—some of which of course she spelled wrong during the exercise. To reiterate what those above have said, this type of assignment is not a spelling assignment.

Marie, it kind of depends how you define “spelling”.
If spelling is a ritual that is performed only in school and consists only of writing meaningless disconnected lists of memorized words, which are then immediately forgotten to make room for the next list, and that has no connection whatsoever to the real world — then no, this isn’t a spelling exercise.
On the other hand, what you’re going to do in the real world is write connected sentences, often on topics of other people’s choosing; and you are judged on your off-the cuff memos, not on your pre-memorized lists, so it is worth teaching people how to do it.
I agree that sentence writing should be *taught*; I prefer as above to use modelling and humour to approach it, but yes, direct teaching is a good idea.

Victoria,
The problem originally spoken about was taking twenty unrelated words and putting them together into a coherent story as a spelling exercise. The thought process required for doing this is quite different from that required in simply putting a spelling word (or two or three as my ds used to do) in a sentence. It really is an exercise in writing composition, and one with quite restrictive rules at that. It requires the child to stretch his or her imagination in ways that can be quite difficult for an eight year old—I know quite a few adults who would have difficulty putting, for example, the words potatoes, telephone, notebook,skitter, and transparent (to name five words totally at random) plus fifteen other similarly unrelated words into a coherent paragraph. And yet they would be able to write separate unconnected sentences for each word or perhaps write unconnected sentences using two or three of the words in each sentence. The challenge is taking all of the twenty words and coming up with a story that hangs together using all of them (without writing more than a page). As I said my dd could rise to this challenge, but her spelling did not hold up particularly well—excused by the teacher of course due to the high imagination quotient in her stories. My ds on the other hand simply could not look at the twenty words and think of a way to link them all into a story line although he could spell them all and the spelling would hold up in everyday usage. This is a very challenging language exercise, but I continue to doubt that spelling is the main skill that it calls for.

Okay, gotta pick a small hair here — they weren’t *random* — they were unrelated in meaning. (They were similar in spelling pattern.) The *spelling* lessons may have been wunnerful — though often the teacher who will leap to tossing in composition will also be cruising ‘way too fast through the spelling aspects.
And in defense of the teacher, this could be a response to students who have *gotten* the spelling part, in search of an interesting activity to reinforce it. It’s not necessarily an arbitrary “gotta think of something to give them for homework, and using spelling words in paragraphs is What Teachers Have Done For Years.”
Getting spelling words to transfer is a real *bear* even if you have taught ‘em well.

How common is this type of extension for spelling homework? Have any of you seen it used with Wilson/OG based regular ed. spelling curriculae? Any suggestions on convincing these obstinate teachers? They have an excellent evaluation on file that explains my son’s profile in simple and unambiguous terms but seem compleltely unaware of how to manage his needs.

At my school this type of extension is common for both spelling words and vocabulary words but I agree with you. As the words are drawn NOT from content, students are too often being asked to use in writing what are ‘nonsense words’ to them. I find my colleagues are often resistant to parent input on this matter and many others. The practice is well-intentioned and makes some sense in theory I suppose but in practice does not impact positively on a student’s ability to master the spelling words or their meaning. And it does have negative impact on their ability to complete their homework.

As a parent myself, I stepped in and wrote the paragraph(s) with my son. They’re not nonsense words to me and together we were able to ‘bang out’ the assignment(s).

Good luck.

that at my son’s school in the 7th grade the spelling words were:

promulgate
octogenarian

I rarely use the word promulgate in my speech or writing as an adult. yet my son was expected to know how to spell it, define it and use it in writing… Rarely have I heard the word ‘octogenarian’ used and by a 13 year old and in the same paragraph as ‘promulgate’?

I promulgate that the octogenarian will not see his 90th birthday???

i was very thankful i read your message for there i found out that you have also attempts in handling cases like your son. how did you do it will in fact you have’nt any materials to help you assessing your child? i’m very interested to know more about your experienced in handling the case of your son. i’m a student from the philippines and my teacher assigned me to teach children with learning disability but then i need more information or tecniques in handling with this case and i want to know some of it from you. kindly just reply on this message. i might help you in other things i know with the case of your son. thank you! :D

I hate it when teachers refuse to modify an assignment if the modification is reasonable. I think it shows that the teachers in question are more interested in power than in helping a student to learn. Nevertheless, you son has to deal with this teacher for the rest of the year. You should handle this with tact, or your son may pay. I would have your son write individual sentences with the spelling words as was suggested, but make sure they are really good, imaginative ones. Then I’d attach a note requesting a conference with the teacher. In the note explain that your son was having a great deal of difficulty with the assignment as given, but didn’t want to not do his homework. Ask her to please accept this for the time being and to meet with you and your son to discuss how she could help your son complete the assignment more completely. She will probably not want to spend the time in a meeting and (if the substitute assignment is good) opt to go with the individual sentences.

Good luck!