Spelling? Composition?

[stm4him]

What curriculum will be used for spelling and what grade level will it begin? I just realized that wasn't in the list of curriculums listed and I was wondering if you were planning to use Rod and Staff for that too or if it is included in the literature or phonics somehow instead.

And is composition going to be in the Rod and Staff English books?

If you haven't gotten far enough in your planning to know the answers to those questions that's fine too. I just know spelling and composition usually start in 2nd grade and wanted to see what you were thinking.

Thanks!

Shaina

[stm4him]

Tanya, I saw that there is some spelling covered in the SRA 2 and 3 and in the literature guides. I couldn't tell in the literature guides what the directions were for pronounce and spell. I'm thinking of having my daughter do the R & S Spelling 2 this year. Or will she be overloaded by spelling in those resources? I just want to make sure I teach her how to spell and not just practice word lists.

With composition I'm guessing that is taught in the English books?

Shaina

[tanya]

Shaina,

We do use SRA 2-3 to help students with spelling for 1st-2nd grades. And we have spelling lists in each week of the curriculum guides for these grades so you can give a spelling test each week. These words come from what the students are doing in SRA - like, if they are studying contractions, their spelling words will be contractions for that week. We are putting worksheets in the back of the curriculum manual that list the spelling words with a place for the students to copy them on 2 consecutive days before taking the spelling test on them.

We begin using Rod & Staff spelling in grade 3. But we actually have upped it a grade level because we felt the words were too easy. So, in grade 3, we do grade 4 Rod & Staff spelling and so on.

In the literature guides, we just point out difficult words and talk about what makes them difficult to spell. And we let the students see if they can find the words as they read aloud and highlight them in their books. We also begin doing some work on word meanings in 1st grade by talking about what certain words can mean within the context of their use in the sentence.

So, if you want to add Rod & Staff spelling to your curriculum, that is fine, but I don't think it is necessary. We are looking at/talking about words a lot!

For composition, our goal for grades 1-3 is that the students master a good sentence. That is so hard, and we require it by asking students to answer questions in our literature guides orally, then modeling the sentence by writing it down for them and making them copy it perfectly. That way, they aren't being asked to use too many thought processes at one time. I really like Susan Wise Bauer's Writing With Ease manual that lays out what we need to do each of these early years. We follow it pretty closely.

After 3rd grade, we start asking more of students, but not too quickly. We have writing assignments in our lit. guides for grammar school, and Rod & Staff has regular writing assignments in their grammar books. So, all that will be covered when we get 3rd-6th grade lesson plans completed.

Tanya