I have a quick enquiry about spelling. I have been working for 4 terms with a pupil who is now coming to the end of Year 3. He started as pretty much a non-reader and has made excellent progress with the BRI/ARI books. He will complete ARI 4 this term. For those of you who don't know the books, this basically means he will know all the code and he is now at the point of just reading many of the new words automatically. He is going to read Set 5 (and poss 6) at home, just to work on more m-w words and keep checking on accuracy. He still needs some support to decode new m-s words - I use the notched cursor. He also still occasionally misreads/ 'guesses' words as he is rather impulsive. As soon as I point to the word he will read it correctly.
I have found it a real struggle to get him to focus on spelling work through writing the words. He just wasn't interested and he is a child who needs to be motivated to learn as concentration has been an issue - this is generally much improved though.
However, lately we've had a major breakthrough with spelling as I've discovered that he loves Word Shark. I no longer use it for reading as I think at least some of the games are too whole-word, onset-rime orientated. It seems a lot better for spelling and he is really motivated to play the games and he loves doing the spelling test and wants to get it all right with no help! So I am very pleased.
He is a pupil where words have usually gone to 'sight' words quickly after decoding a few times and this has increased as he has progressed. He seems to remember the spellings pretty quickly too. I'll have to assess him to see if these stick long-term but I no we'll have no problem with him practising daily at home, so I think they will. So I have a few questions. My plan is to structure a spelling programme for him around Word Shark but I was just wondering if anyone had experience of using the CD and had any thoughts. My version is structured around Alpha to Omega and the old NLS.
As it is typing, writing the graphemes and saying the phonemes doesn't work (although of course we can include this too and I feel we should). However, when he is typing he always tends to say each individual letter sound rather than the phonemes and I'm wondering how to tackle this? I understand why he does this because he is thinking about which key he needs to press. He has also always tended to do this for spelling even when I reminded him that it is /sh/ not /s/ /h/ for example. One idea I have is to read the words first (which we do now) and then get him to count the graphemes on his fingers first. I believe Ruth Miskin's prog actually gets children to do this and then they say letter names (I can't remember if this is just for the digraphs). As this pupil is not a beginner perhaps this would work?
I also need to decide which order of intorduction would be best - he already knows the code for reading, as I said and now some for spelling too - eg ar, er etc but needs to work on spelling alternatives.
I also wondered, out of interest, i f anyone had experience of any other spelling CD roms and if there are any which are compatible with SP principles. Most that I've seen seem to be based on look, cover, write check.
