Make a Book Together

It has always been my dream to write books together as a family.

One day, my 5 year-old daughter decided she wanted to make a book with me.

• She put the pages together, stapled them, put stickers on and colored in the sky.
• Then she said that it was my job to put in the words.
• I asked her what she wanted to call the book. “Zebras of Cazooby” was her reply.
• She also wanted me to write everything on the cover that a regular book has, such as the author (me) and illustrator (her).
• After it was finished, she showed the book to people, reading the words to them.

Other book making ideas have you punch holes in the paper and thread yarn through the holes.

You can use any kind of paper, cardstock, colors, stickers, glitter glue, crayons, or cut out pictures from magazines.

Other Resources:

• Make Books on your computer using Real E Writer, FREE download.
This simple program allows you to insert photos, scans and words before printing out small books.

• Order inexpensive empty books with hard covers from Barebooks.com!

More online great book making ideas: http://library.thinkquest.org/J001156/makingbooks/makeown.htm

A Word & Its Meaning – Put it Together with a Picture

In kindergarten, my daughter refused to read words in isolation. So I started drawing pictures around the words to give them context.

Upon looking for flashcards with pictures, teachers told me about the Bob Books. They are the only kind of reading system that incorporates words with pictures. Cheaper yet, we turned to the Dick and Jane books. These books have the sight words and pictures with enough repetition to learn the words.

How can we make learning sight words fun and effective?

Make your own pictures that go with word meanings.

In fact, have your child dream up pictures that go with word meanings – preferably with a friend! Use a white board as this takes a lot of erasing.

This is an effective learning strategy for primary, intermediate, and ESL students to connect the meanings and spellings of words.

 At the bottom of this entry is a page from Purple Cows & Potato Chips (1995) which gives more examples of how words can be turned into pictures.

One More Spelling Helper

http://www.spellingcity.com/ is a fun place to work with spelling words.

At the end of a long day, you and your child might not feel like doing formal spelling exercises. Instead, you can enter and save the word lists on Spelling City. The server automatically creates context sentences for the words and generates games.

Your child can learn new words, test themselves online, play hang mouse, matching games, cross-word puzzles, word finds and make printable worksheets.

Free!

Spelling Strategies 2 & 3

Strategy 2: Make Observations about the Words.

Make flashcards of the words. Write on the flashcard. Outline the word to emphasis the tall letters and short letters.

Poor spelling has to do with poor visual memory of words. So the outlining process reinforces visual memory. For example, the word “corn” has no tall letters or letters that hang low. This will help one to remember that it starts with a c and not a k.


Strategy 3: Constant Time Delay

Constant time delay gives students time to think of the correct answer. If they do not know the correct answer, then the teacher or parent shows them the correct word after a few seconds. This way, students form only correct connections in the brain. This is called “errorless learning.” This is better than forming incorrect connections with guesses, having to break those connections and then forming the correct one.
Clear step by step directions

Spelling Strategies

Good News! There are things you can do to help your students learn spelling words!


Strategy 1: Cover, Copy, Compare

This strategy is a good way for students to work by themselves on their words. They cover the word they want to spell, write it, and then compare it to the original.

Small white boards and markers are good for this, because students usually enjoy white-boards more than pens and paper. In fact, you could save the white board just for this purpose to keep it special.

Also there are many sites online that will make worksheets of your list of words.

Click here for more directions.