My DD7 told me when she is writing she thinks of a new sentences because she can't spell some of the words. That's like dumming down the writing to avoid words. I'm sure her Vocabulary is beyond her spelling ability. Maybe this is a little bit of perfectionism - wanting to do a good job, not wanting to write the words wrong. Or not wanting to take the time with the dictionary, which was a bit overwhelming last year during school.

I didn't bring up the dictionary with her because that became stressful in the past. I suggested when I see some errors in her writing, I would put them on a Spelling City.com list. She thought this was a good idea. She said she knows some big words she just can't spell.

Any suggestions?

Thanks for the website. Would it be possible for her to write down new interesting/possibly-tough-to-spell words she encounters in a little notebook, to double-check that she can spell them later, learn the word roots, etc.? It might help make sure she stays caught up for a while, until this becomes a non-issue.

DD's teacher has the kids take their best guess at the spelling, and circle the words they're unsure of. Then she goes over their writing individually with them, and gives them the correct spelling for any that they didn't get right.

We have seen the same phenomenon with our DD. Does your DD type? We have found that DD8 is more willing to take risks with harder words when she is typing. We've told her to ignore the squiggles (errors) until the end. Since fixing things on the computer is easier for her, she doesn't seem as upset. She also gets to look at the spelling suggestions and find the one that looks right.

I like this idea with circling. The circling would be a nice way to not interrupt her writing yet realize she could correct/learn those. What's a good way to learn word roots?


She doesn't type. That would help but she is just learning that this year in school.

DD6 has similar issues. We do encourage her to use the dictionary. But if she has a writing topic, before she starts to do the actual writing, we ask her in advance to think of the words she might need/want to know. We sit down and go over the spelling while DD writes them down on a piece of "words list" paper. Then when DD is writing the story, she can refer to the "word list" for spelling. Sometimes, the process of making the "word list" is enough to help her learn the spelling for the words and gain some self-confidence in writing.

both my DD6's do the same. Their narrative is at the level of about a 200 word story but they rethink every sentence and reconstruct before writing into simple language to avoid errors. It took me a while to work out they were doing it. They also have a dictionary but they find the children's dictionaries never have their words in them and adult dictionaries too intimidating/difficult/time consuming. They do type but their typing speed is way below their writing speed but they do find the computer spelling options handy.

My only solution so far has been to pretend I can't understand a sentence that is missing complex descriptors. So for example if they write "the pink princess" I would say "oh what a nice character for a story an ugly princess with awful pink hair" they of course respond "no she is beautiful" and I let them know "no she is just pink that sounds awful maybe write beautiful or goregous instead". This seemed to get the message through to them that simple words, although enabling correct spelling, did not enable the reader to understand their story.

Yep, circling is a great idea for anything she can write on. For teaching word roots, prefixes and suffixes, I generally wing it from memory most of the time with DS5, and he knows how to use dictionary.com, but that's just a stopgap solution for now.

A Google search to get you started on finding online resources

Here are some book ideas. Shop around for your best deal on books; I am using links from Amazon because the site has good cross-product links and reviews to help you:

Red Hot Root Words, Book 1: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1593630379 (depending on her level of advancement, Book 2 may be more appropriate)
Greek and Latin Roots, Gr. 4-8: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0881603813 (check out the similar ones on prefixes and suffixes, too)

Etymological dictionaries are also a good source, of course:
Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0062700847
Dictionary of Word Roots and Combining Forms: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0874840538/
English Words from Latin and Greek Elements (textbook): http://www.amazon.com/dp/0816508992
Oxford Pocket School Dictionary of Word Origins:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0199111936
The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0198611129
Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0415050774
The Origins of English Words: A Discursive Dictionary of Indo-European Roots: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0801867843

... and, of course, the OED can be bought in both printed and software versions, the latter I believe for around $300 on CD (I have hard and software copies lying around somewhere but these days just use the web). They also offer an online subscription for an absurdly high price.

Iucounu - wow! thanks for all this info. I will check it out.

I wonder if there are any games that could be done in the car that folks here would reccomend?

I have a DYS DS10 and DD7.

We play car games all of the time.... We play blends which is a game in which you give a blended sound, say "st". They get one point for a word with the sound at the beginning or end. They get 3 points if the blend is in the middle like "estimate". We do similar games with prefixes/suffixes. With my littles, they get a point for each word they rhyme.

You can make these games harder by only allowing words that have 3 or more syllables.

I guess you already thought about playing scrabble. (not in the car but af the house).

DD7 has never been interested in playing scrabble. Probally because her brother does. She shys away from following in his footsteps in many ways. Maybe I will try suggesting it again, when he is not around.

Just noticed that Critical Thinking puts out some word-root stuff:

http://www.criticalthinking.com/getProductDetails.do?id=03701&code=p

thank you, I was thinking of order that. I found it on Mindware.com. too. Just waiting to include it in my Xmas order.