“Some of the questions I have about his work are: 1) For the "ck" words, he wrote cack (cake) and tock (talk). I did not correct him while he was thinking and writing…
…Please guide me on if I should correct him or not and if yes, how to correct him. 2) He made almost 15 strips for the acting and guessing game you suggested and many basic words' spellings are not right on them. Will it be good idea to draw his attention to that? Thanks for all your help!” -JR
Dear JR -
For the spelling words that he came up with, please ask him to review his list and see if the words he came up with follow the rules for the spellings. Maybe he came to this conclusion after I sent out the new list? Otherwise, show him that the words he came up with can join the second list, that follows the second rule with the 'k' spellings. It's ok to be frank and because he has been given the rules, he can run any words through the test to see which one it passes. Yes, please do ask him to correct the spellings once he sees that his words 'talk' and 'cake' don't pass the test to be spelled with 'ck'.
We can approach spelling of other words in a couple of different ways. Since these are words that he's interested in using (because he has written them), in the classroom I would tell him the correct spelling and ask him to add it to his Spelling Dictionary. If he wants to make one at home this week that would be great - a simple notebook or small homemade booklet where each new page will include words that start with a letter of the alphabet - so, a page for 'a' words, then a page for 'b' words, then a page for 'c' words, and so on. He can add many words to his own personal dictionary to start:
You can write the correct spellings of the words he misspelled on those strips and he can write them again on the correct pages of his spelling dictionary
He should add all the words from his spelling lists to the correct pages of his spelling dictionary
Any word he ever asks you to spell, can be written by you or by him on the correct page of the spelling dictionary
We won't usually ask children to 'look up' a word in the standard dictionary for help with spelling because if they don't know how to spell the word they won't be able to find it alphabetically! But when he wants to know how a word is spelled, you can either send him back to his own spelling dictionary to find it (if you know he has added it already) or to his spelling dictionary to collect the correct spelling from you.
I hope this helps! I'm looking forward to our video chat later this week.
