My twins are in the 1st grade and they are having some problems with there spelling tests. We study them Monday thru Thursday and they are still not doing so good. So I was hoping maybe some of you may have some creative ideas to get them to remember them.

By Cat on Thursday, December 6, 2007 - 03:21 pm:

I did word searches for my youngest, who's a terrible speller. Try PuzzleMaker.

By Tarable on Thursday, December 6, 2007 - 03:28 pm:

I know when my kids had spelling tests weekly they were always "themed" like they were all words ending in the same thing like "ing" (bring, king, sing) or they would be word with "ough" in them and thins like that. If your kids have the same kinds of themes you really need to point that out to them. When I finally started pointing that out to my kids and making them remember the theme every week and not just study the words they would get the words a lot faster. Also I know there are games that my kid"s teachers gave me to help with it but I can't remember them right now.

Do you test them? because I know that when I would test my kids they would do better on the test. But make sure you don't really emphasize the word.. just say it like the teacher would because that would also throw my kids off.

Good luck! I am a horrible speller and I always wanted my kids to know how to spell and not have trouble like me.

By Yjja123 on Thursday, December 6, 2007 - 03:31 pm:

We would make up funny sentences to put the words in. It helped then understand the definition and remember how to spell it.
We also would study a few words a night. Say they had 20 words, we would study 10 Monday & Tuesday. We would review all of them on Wednesday & Thursday.
I always had them write it on paper, when I tested them.

By Tsa on Thursday, December 6, 2007 - 04:18 pm:

My DD 10, was a great speller, so studying the normal way worked for her. My DS 8, is HORRIBLE, with a capital H. So, we struggled coming up with a way to study for him.
This is what we have to do.
We say it out loud
We write it down
Then we Act it out--YMCA style.
We giggle and have fun with it.
There has been several times when he told me he remembered mom trying to make a "E" after the F. ie-few.
We also spread out the process over the week.
It works for us. Good luck

By Kaye on Thursday, December 6, 2007 - 04:51 pm:

My children who are not great spellers just really benefit from daily work.

Monday, write the word three times
tuesday, write a sentence with the word
wednesday draw an illustration for the word (and write it above)
thursday, practice test

You can certainly vary activities, but I found that the routine of spending 20 minutes each day was the best plan.

You could have them mold the words out of playdoh,
write them in sand
use magnetic letters on an old cookie sheet
write them on a white board
write in glue and then glitter or "bean" them

But again, all in all they need to of written them at least 3 times on regular paper the regular way, if they are strugging.

We do a pretest and anything he misses we rewrite.

By Pamt on Thursday, December 6, 2007 - 06:49 pm:

I work a lot with kids who are poor spellers. Can you give me an example of about 5-6 words on their list and I can teach you some strategies to use? Also, do they know all of their letters and what sound each letter makes?

By Marie on Thursday, December 6, 2007 - 11:23 pm:

This weeks words were sleep, brisk,sanding,We, with, been, does, like, long,must, Dd seems to be doing okay but ds isn't he has some speach problems and sounding out the words. For example when we say Sleep he says sweep he is in speach but I personaly don't think he is getting the help he needs. We start Monday which is We sing the words and spell them and they will write them as we spell them. Tuesday we take a test and they will write them 3* each and as the week goes on the will add 2 more to each time the write them so by Thursday they are usualy writing them 6 times each. ds took a practice test today and missed 8 out of 12 and dd missed 2

By Unschoolmom on Friday, December 7, 2007 - 08:53 am:

This is sort of from left field but we've changed from unschooling to something a little more structured in the last 6 months (However, I plan to unschool my son until he's at least 8 or 9 as well). Spelling was one area where Catherine needed some work.

Sequential Spelling from AVKO (http://www.readingandspelling.org/educationalmaterials.html) is the spelling program we choose to use. It's very different from the usual tests in that kids get a 25 word list everyday. But it's a little easier in that the words on the tests are in the same word families (dot, pot, dotted, spotted). Each test builds on the previous one. They aren't arbitrarily chosen and my daughter has a much easier time with them.

I know it probably won't help with the specific tests your kids have to do at school but if you don't find the school spelling program is working for your boys it offers a really good option for you at home.