damp, fancy, file, grapes...
I’m feeling like a bit of a mean mom today. Charlie has a spelling “pre-test” every week – his teacher gives him a quiz on the week’s spelling words, prior to practicing them. Any words he misses on the pretest are highlighted for additional work (he has to write each one five times), to be completed on Monday evenings (Tuesday and Wednesday these same words are to be written in sentences). Kids that miss no spelling words on the pretest are excused from spelling work for the week. It was clear early in the year (after acing a couple of pretests), that Charlie needed a supplemented list, or he would have ended up homework free more often than not. I wanted to come up with lists that were more difficult for him to master. His teacher has been quite supportive of this. We have been giving him a list of 20 words each week, selected intentionally to challenge him. This week’s words were:
damp, fancy, file, grapes, leave, notice, scooter, toad, want, whistle, bid, coffee, duty, lock, rush, saddle, sandwich, slipper, slippery, tax
After picking up Charlie from school this afternoon I got an email message from his teacher explaining that Charlie missed 6 words on his pretest, and that he left his homework at school in his desk.
I told Charlie that since we had no idea which ones he missed, he could write all the words five times. (I’m a big believer in natural consequences – along the lines of it is too bad you are cold honey, you should have brought a coat). He didn’t do the math (thankfully) until after he got through the first 17 words (each written 5 times). “MOM! That’s 100 words!!” then there was much sighing. The whole exercise was made especially painful since Richard was over waiting for him to finish all these words so they could take some string, pieces of wood, a rubber band and some construction paper and make a “sick baby animal radar" device.
Charlie actually finished rather quickly, filling two lined sheets of notebook paper with neatly printed loopy letters with each of this week’s 20 words written five times.
damp, fancy, file, grapes, leave, notice, scooter, toad, want, whistle, bid, coffee, duty, lock, rush, saddle, sandwich, slipper, slippery, tax
After picking up Charlie from school this afternoon I got an email message from his teacher explaining that Charlie missed 6 words on his pretest, and that he left his homework at school in his desk.
I told Charlie that since we had no idea which ones he missed, he could write all the words five times. (I’m a big believer in natural consequences – along the lines of it is too bad you are cold honey, you should have brought a coat). He didn’t do the math (thankfully) until after he got through the first 17 words (each written 5 times). “MOM! That’s 100 words!!” then there was much sighing. The whole exercise was made especially painful since Richard was over waiting for him to finish all these words so they could take some string, pieces of wood, a rubber band and some construction paper and make a “sick baby animal radar" device.
Charlie actually finished rather quickly, filling two lined sheets of notebook paper with neatly printed loopy letters with each of this week’s 20 words written five times.
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