Spelling

Your child should do two lessons each week following the instructions given for each lesson in the Using Language Well book. If needed to keep the lessons short, you can spread the each lesson out over two days by having your child do the English/grammar portion of the lesson one day, then the transcription portion the next day.

Two lessons per week is plenty. You want to allow some time for your child to think about what was learned between lessons. This time to think helps the child to internalize the lesson and increases the likelihood that the child will remember what was learned.

Also, transcription is one stage of spelling. Encourage your child to carefully look at a word or two in the passage to be transcribed, then write those from memory in the Using Language Well book or on a separate sheet of paper. If your child can’t remember how to spell the word, allow her to look at the passage in Spelling Wisdom to get the correct spelling. Transcription trains the student to look carefully at the words and prepares her for the final stage of spelling which is prepared dictation. Transcription is used in the first 70 lessons of Using Language Well/Spelling Wisdom books 1. Starting with lesson 71 of ULW/SW books 1, the child does prepared dictation.