Having always found this site helpful.  I thought I would ask a question.  Does anyone have any good ideas about learning spelling words for school.  Any good books on the subject or methods that have been successful for you.  My daughter is in the second grade, and her lists are getting longer (from 10 to 15) and harder.  We have tried writing them about 100 times it seems, but aren't having success this year.  We get her words on the friday before and start working on them (in small groups) on Saturday.  This is NOT working.

any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

when my adhd son was in school the spelling was a real stumbling block. what finally helped was that we walked around the block every day spelling the words outloud. It would have helped so much if the teacher would have given him his spelling tests orally- he couldn't keep up with the class due to fine motor issues. Now that I homeschool we practice orally and have a pretest orally. Then, early in the day we will take our time and he writes them out. He has aced them every time.

Hope some of this helps.

Our daughter was in second grade last year and we got her words on Monday and had her write them 3 times each, Tuesday we would call them out to her and she would verbally spell them, Wed and Thurs. she would manually write them as we called them out.  We always did them first thing we she got home from school.  We found that if we waited until later in the evening it was difficult for her to focus on the task. 

My wife and I would keep a copy in our vehicles and practice the difficult words with her when driving to/from gymnastics practice.  And on Fridays (test day) we would go over the the entire list on the way to school.

I think for us it was the routine of it and she knew what was expected each day of the week.

Hope this helps

Josh

thanks, i can always count on great ideas.  when i said she wrote them about 100 times, i mean over the course of the week, although i am crazy, i don't even think i could do have her do that all at once.  she just has no memory. 

we have tried writing them with puff paint on a piece of paper and tracing them with her finger, and even using blocks, wiki sticks and tossing bean bags while spelling (I read that in a book).  although the tossing was the most fun, she just can't seem to make the connection of remembering them.

You could try only 2 words each night - then add on each night. I teach grade 3/4 and here is my spelling guide for my students:

blends - purple  "bl, thr, cr, tr" etc.

vowels - red

double vowel sets - first vowel red; second - green (friend)

endings - ing, ed, er etc -

silent letters - blue (sometimes underlined)

And yes, the BIGGER a work area you can get the better. I suggest painting a large area as a chalkboard in your house so they can practice the large strokes essential.

like i always say this site is extremely helpful.  she got a 70% this week (last week was a 50%.)

MACSMOM, get a meeting asap. We had a meeting to "touch base" this past friday (i scheduled the third day of class).  the para pro was off base (we had that fixed by the third day of school).  but her speech therapist (she has an expresive/receptive lang delay, as well as social skill issues and pragmatics) was so off the mark i thought i was going to loose it.  long story short we lost the first two weeks of school, but we have a meeting in five weeks to see how the "adults" are behaving.  Also get a copy of the notes and DO NOT LEAVE WITHOUT PROOFING THEM.  i was there an extra hour proofing the recomendations.

THE SQUEEKING WHEEL ALWAYS GETS OILED!!

macsmom, you are right to worry. Get a meeting scheduled and fight HARD....NOW. My daughter was in the same boat and at the time I listened to the school. Unfortunately she never caught up. She then got into the hgiher grades where they stop teaching reading. The focus is reading to learn not learning to read and then she fell behind in everything. She does have co-exisiting LD's and was never going to be at grade level and certainly not top of her class, but it's tough to get a good reading program in place for a 5th or 6th grader. She is now still reading at basically a 3rd grade level (going into 8th). We've moved schools and she will get the support she needs, but we wasted a couple years in the higher elementary levels.

Does he have an IEP? Make sure you have solid attainable, MEASURABLE goals in place. Find out the reading program they use. If you dont have luck........hire an advocate........................

 I agree with HorseMom. Research different learning styles and experiment with what approach works best for your child. When my oldest was in 5th grade in MN, his teacher gave them a list of different activities that the kids could do to practice their words, then they would have to perform or demonstrate it for the class. For example, a kinesthetic learner could fold a paper cube, then bounce it in his hand while spelling out the words. A musical learner would use the words in a song. They could make word searches, write poetry, draw posters, do interpretive dance (that one always made me chuckle...spelling and interpretive dance??), etc.

My youngest son uses a method that I kind of came up with as a kid (though someone else may have come up with it sooner, I just never heard of it then). I break the words up into recognizable or memorable sound bites in my head, things I can easily remember or spell. Like beautiful becomes "be a utiful". Or thief is remember by "if you can see the if, it's wrong" ( get it? "the if" instead of "thi ef"?) Anyway, that's what we do.  

Try to find out what kind of learner she is.  I am a visual learner - so reading/writing the words works for me.  Others have mentioned singing (auditory).  Also get magnetic letters on fridge and have her spell with those and run her finger along them or sandpaper letters or have her actually try to form the words with her body lol (have her figure out ways to form each letter so she remembers what letter it is - kinesthetic).  If she has an IEP you could even request she go to a private room for the test so she can sing or make letters and the teacher can repeat the words more times for her.  If she falls behind on one word she may miss the next couple words and then be discouraged and not do well on the rest - so a private room would help.

Also when she writes out the words correct anything she heard wrong.  help say words the way they are spelled - such as friends (i think fri-ends when spelling).  Or if there are words she won't get at all then pay only a little attention to them, and almost ignore ones she knows, and choose 5 words (or however many she can handle) she could learn to spell correctly and work mostly on those.

After all, what is the point if she has 10 words and doesn't learn any because she can't remember it all!  It's better she learn to spell 2 new words each week then 0.  When she brings home the words have her spell them (or look if she had a pre-test) and remember what she had - 2/10 correct - then on the day of the test don't reward perfection but progress.  Wow, you got 4 out of 10 correct lets order pizza, lol.

thanks for the advice. 

(i started typing and then got frustrated so i am just going to vent a little.)

i have been spelling the words with glitter glue and having her trace them.  we have also been using a hopping game with the letters on the floor.  where she hops on the letters in a line and at the end is the complete spelling of the word.  what i am running into is when i ask her to spell a word, ie some.  she can do it.  however when i ask her to write it she writes som, or sum.  completly forgetting that she know how to spell it orally, she sounds it out.   however some words are easier for her to remember by sounding out like acrobat.  so we havn't even worked on memorizing the letters orally.  NOW I am just cranky but the word so, she spells sow.  it is the easiest word on her list this week and she spells it SOW.

she has some speech issues (receptive/expressive) and had tubes placed about 18 months ago.  although her articulation has improved to within normal limits she still replaces or drops sounds. 

some days i just want to scream.  fortunatly they are going to try and pull her for  all of her tests this friday to see if that helps. 

Just adding a few resources that I love! (as a teacher)

Reading Rods - you can purchase this for home use as well. Google it to find out more. It's tactile, hands on.

Spelling - I just received my order of lower case plastic sand/clay moulds.  The kids in my class tried it out today and loved it - and it really seems to work to make them think about the spelling of their weekly words.  I color coded the parts in an earlier reply, but the kids used playdoh today to "cut" out each letter and spell the word in palydoh on their desks.  It was time consuming, but it was good because while they had to think about what color each letter had to be (I had already given them the words color coded on the board and we'd figured it out together beforehand) they'd transfer the word from the board into playdoh letters.

And, I bought letter beads fromt eh dollar store.  antoehr "center" activity - they spell out their words using the beads linking them on pipe cleaners.

yet another tactile spelling center, i use letter stamps with different coloured  pads of ink same pattern as other activities.