My Mother’s Nerves
One of my latest forms of school torture is to have the children do a Dictation daily. I’ve found that doing spelling for the sake of spelling doesn’t happen at our home. I’ve found that journaling is an exercise in annoyance for myself. At the least it doesn’t achieve the goals I had hoped it would achieve. Copywork, well that is so grade 2! So this year, I decided Dictation would be the quickest means to the end I wanted.
They are given some time to study the poem, at this point because we are easing into this new art, I have allowed the poems to be child loved. Later on in the year we will go into more ‘upper-crust’ poetry, lol!
After an appropriate time to study the poem we go right into Dictation. Again, because we are starting out I include spoken punctuation marks and allow them to work on the spelling of words together and give slight head nods to let them know if the spellings are okay.
Then after the dictation they have a chance to self-correct the work. After which I receive the work and give the final correction.
Today’s poem provided much joy and so, we decided that we’d illustrate them while we studied Greek and Canadian History lessons and then post them here for you to enjoy as well!
Um, in case you can’t read the words because they aren’t showing up the best they are:
“Mother’s Nerves”
My mother said, “If just once more
I hear you slam that old screen door,
I’ll tear out my hair!
I’ll dive in the stove!”
So I gave it a bang and in she dove.
Excerpted from Exploding Gravy: Poems to Make You Laugh by X. J. Kennedy, Illustrated by Joy Allen.
Nice – thus why I steer clear of threats here! I would be twice baked! (Or more…)
I wish our school would go back to that! Tons of studies say lists don’t work, but, “Parents expect spelling lists.” And, “We can’t take marks off for spelling, it inhibits creativity.” I get that, I’ve seen it inhibit my kids, but they need to choose some subjects where they get two marks: One for creativity, and one for presentation.