Hi,
I’m writing to gather some feedback on what seems to be a well entrenched spelling curriculum in my son’s elementary school. He is a 4th grader and the school has just this year adopted a rule-based spelling curriculum based on Wilson/Orton-Gillingham. While this is a positive move, they have devised extension activities that are completely unrelated to these program. For instance, each week, my son is asked to produce a paragraph on an assigned topic using 6 of his spelling words.
This is how it plays out in our house: My son is an excellent speller who is assigned the bonus words each week. This means that the week they learned the soft and hard sounds for ‘c’ and ‘g’ his list included the words ‘impinge’, ‘expunge’, ‘drudge’, ‘dredge’ and so on. Despite his excellent vocabulary (19 on the WISC-III), these words are not in his vocabulary. That week, he was asked to use 6 words of his choosing to write a paragraph thanking a friend for a birthday invitation. My son struggles with writing because he has weak executive functioning, i.e. organization, prioritization, planning, cognitive flexibility, self-monitoring. Because of his difficulties he is also vulnerable and anxious when confronted with these open-ended tasks. His teachers are adamant that they will not modify the assignment, that this is good practice, and that he should do the best he can.
Here is my argument: if the spelling words were drawn from content/literature, it makes sense to ask students to use them in independent writing. On the other hand, Wilson/OG train kids to spell patterns and a measure of their success is how well they spell nonsense words. In effect, because my son is such a good speller, he is being asked to write using what are essentially nonsense words to him.
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 seemed compleltely unaware of how to manage his needs.
Any help will be greatly appreciated!
Thanks ,
Kalyani