Hi
I posted another question on here yesterday about my son bring home papers with 100% all over them but not able to do any of it for me. Now I am wondering what to do about homework. Here is an example
He will have spelling words to write on Monday this is not bad he just copies them and we practice how to spell them they are pretty simple like (get,met, set) hard for him but getting better.
Tuesday he will have ABC order. I think this is just crazy he doesn’t have any skills yet to do this. Remembering the letters is still hard at this point. Still mixing up lots of the sounds too. So I tell him what order they go in and he just copies it. Should I do this or let him do it how ever he sees it? He really gets fustrated.
Wednesday he has to write senteces using spelling words. I have been getting him to write down the way he thinks it should be and then I write underneath it what it really is. Should I do that or send it in without my help? When he writes a sentence the only words that are real words are the spelling words he copied. The rest of the sentence is just a series of letters that he put down.
So please give me some ideas of what to do. It is really easy to do it for him but it is not helping him. I know what they are doing at school is just passing him along, and I don’t want to do that.
Thanks
Michele
homework
What grade is your son in? It would be good to know if the curriculum and expectations of his classroom are age appropriate. If they are - and he is having trouble meeting those expectations- he might need more help than you alone can give. I certainly wouldn’t hesitate to help him with homework in every way you can but I’d want to be very clear in understanding what the teacher’s expectations are and to do that you need to talk with her. Does she expect him to be able to write out a clear sentence using his spelling words?
Does your son have an IEP? If not, he perhaps should. If he does, that IEP might need to be specific.
Re: Homework
This is a common “recipe” for teaching spelling. The sentence aspect always surprised me though for the kids with goold language skills, it’s kind of fun.
When he’s writing those sentences he’s practicing writing things wrong — not a good idea. If the sentences are good, try Victoria’s process for X reasonable time and then perhaps make him tell you the first letter for each word for the rest of them, then let him copy your scribing of his dictation.
And if he can sneak in a few other common words to learn to spell right doing it, great.
And yes, tape a version of the alphabet for a reference. That’s just a good idea for a lot of people ;)
Re: Homework
(by the way, that was me above — apparently the “automatically log in” thing got turned off when I tried to turn on HTML which it would seem one can’t.
Re: Homework
HI
I have tried the abc strip and that works if we are just looking for the A’s then the B’s and so on. He gets that with help from me but he will have 3 A words and he doesn’t understand the process of then going to the next letter and so on some times it takes getting to the 3rd letter in the word and by then he just doesn’t get it.
The sentences he can do if he just tells me one but to write a sentence he can’t. no one would know what it was.
He is 7 years old he is in 2nd grade but he is at a first grade 3 month level in all areas of reading and spelling ect… Math is his strong point. He does have an IEP. He learns better visual than auditory. He also has handwritting problems but that is getting better still all over the place but the letters and numbers are starting to look good.
Thanks if you have more ideas let me know.
Michele
Re: Homework
Welp, I’d have him do the first letter and then give hiim the rest of it until he’s good at it, then move to that second letter.
The lucky people get to work at something, and when they’re feeling confident, get to take that next step — confident that while at first they’re unsure, they’ll get better. When we always have a kiddo at the frustration level, well, gosh, they start thinking education is just frustration.
alphabatizing
Hi. I also taught my kid how to do this, because they did not teach it at school (explaining it to the class once or twice is not teaching…)
Here’s how I did it:
1. Have child highlight first letter of each word in one color.
2. Cut the words into strips
have child make piles looking only at first letter
3. put the piles into order on the floor/table in alphab.order in a verticle row(singing, of course, “abcdefg”…no singing talent necessary!)
4. I agree, the second letter concept is more complicated. Once the piles are laid out in order, the first pile (if there is one) of “a” words are spread out. You then can take a different color highlighter and have your child highlight the second letter. Then, he puts those words in order based on the second letter.
I can not imagine in 2nd grade there are a lot of words in the spelling list, so there might only be 2-3 words beginning with the same letter.
You might as well help with the homework — he isn’t getting anything out of it without your help, is he?
For the alphabetical order, how about taping one of those alphabet strips to the top of the desk? Then you point to the first letter, a, and see if any of his words start with that. And so on. Slow, but actually a learning process. By the way, I try hard to teach kids doing a job like this to checkmark words used rather than crossing them out — if you cross them out, you can’t go back and check.
For the dictation of sentences, I dictate them sound-by sound — for example, the word “sentences” I would dictate sen - sss- eh eh eh - nnn – ten - t t t - eh eh eh - nnnn – ces - c saying sss — eh eh eh - sss. I sit beside the student and suggest/correct letters as needed, but let them get as many as they can independently from the sounds.
Yes, this takes forever. On the other hand, again it is actually a learning process. Usually the student starts to pick up on the idea and needs less and less support as time goes on.
Obviously you can’t do a massive amount of homework this way. Do a sufficient amount of time, and then stop. I do one-hour intensive tutoring sessions and for elementary students, this is about the maximum for heavy concentration. Some parents send a note to the teacher at this point; others get limited time written into the IEP.