Spelling Wisdom Question

My son will be in 6th grade this fall and we will be starting at lesson 95 in book 1 then.  Has your son always been homeschooled?  Always done copywork?  The copywork can help with punctuation.  When he does miss something, I just correct it by grading it and I let him know about it and we move on.  You will see all the various punctuations again in other passages.  If a word is missed, I carry it to the next exercise to practice as a “spelling word”.

Here is how we did SW, starting in grade 4: We did only one passage per week.  Day 1 we talked about grammar in it.  Capitalizations, punctuations, vocabulary, meaning of passage, etc.  He picked out several words to work on spelling correctly.  He used a notebook to copy the whole passage word for word (transcription) on the left side of a 2-page spread, with correct capitalization and punctuation.  Halfway down the page I wrote the spelling words he picked to work on more and he wrote those three times each.  Day 2 he pulled it out to study it over.  Day 3 he studied it again and then gave me the Spelling Wisdom book to dictate from.  He folded is notebook back and wrote on the right side of the 2-page spread.  He did well with this and he really liked the passages.  We got through about 25 of these at the last half of grade 4.

For grade 5, he did not have the day 2 review in between and we did 2 passages per week.  Day 1, we discuss grammar, punctuation, meaning, and words to work on spelling correctly by writing three times each.  Spelling practice can be done by saying the letters aloud (audio learners), using letter tiles, writing it in sand, rice, shaving cream (tactile learners), and/or writing them on the paper or chalk/dry erase board (visual learners).  He did copywork transcription for the whole passage.

Day 2, he studied it and then he wrote from my dictation.  Then I graded it.  He usually gets the spelling correct and if I used the sticky note as he is writing, it messes him up.  He really does not look back at the word once he has written it.  So for us, grading it at the end works best.

He sometimes misses some punctuation like a missed comma.  But comma placement can really vary from one writer to another.  Some tend to use more commas and some use less.  Of course we need to always use them when listing items or between city and state or to join two sentences together with a conjunction, but they can vary beyond that so I don’t make a big deal about it.   Or maybe a missed quotation mark or apostrophe.  We just talk about it and move on.

Next year for grade 6, we plan to do 2 – 3 passages per week and only spend one day on a passage, studying it and discussing it before the dictation, but no copywork.  I will see how that goes, but we may go back to spending 2 days per passage.

So that is our experience with it.  I hope you may find something to work for you.

I should have done it like that last year. We both got discouraged because I wasn’t letting her move on until it was perfect, spelling, capitilization and punctuation. I think we only completed the first 15 excercises in one year because of that. Sounds like you’ve found a good way to use it, wings to fly.

Also, when reading the passage aloud for dictation, I try to pause where the commas are as a natural break.  This is a clue to the writer for a comma placement.  What types of punctuation is he having the most problems with?  Would how you say it help him?