Sunday 17 January 2016

Charlotte Mason and Spelling

I have to admit that I am not actually sure what you do with regards to CM and spelling. After reading quite a few books about CM and some of her original writing on Ambleside online I thought that the act of regular copywork would somehow create the ability to spell. It does not. My son is now 8 and whilst he makes excellent phonetic choices he does not spell correctly. He can spell cvc words correctly and some cvcc or ccvc words correctly, basically the words that we covered in Montessori Pink and Blue series, but anything else is spelled phonetically. I have to confess that I found this a little disappointing but, I always planned on a back up if it did not work. I remember right at the beginning of our CM journey being mildly sceptical of learning spelling by osmosis as it were, however I was willing to give it a try. The underlying premise of copy work is that by regularly exposing the child to grammatically correct sentences, with correct spelling they will internalise the exemplar writing structure and spelling.

 I also admit that I may well have done something wrong or missed a key aspect of spelling/copywork protocol. To this end I hit the Internet and went searching for more guidance which i found on the Simply Charlotte Mason site, apparently you should  ask the child to spell two or three words from the copy work that day. Now I do not know if I simply overlooked this important fact or it was missing from the material I read, however I am a bit puzzled. If learning to spell is in context so is done through the copy work, then how do they learn the rules of spelling this complicated language that is English? As such I have abandoned the CM spelling experiment and I have ordered All About Spelling. I have chosen this curriculum as I was all ready using their materials for reading instruction and they are excellent and very thorough.

 I don't want to put people off of using CM for spelling rather make them aware that simply completing copywork each day will not bring about a magic ability to spell. You must do something with the copywork, also I think if you have followed the Delightful Reading program which is CM based you may be able to use copywork for spelling instruction, however this is just an assumption and opinion and not based on any real knowledge of the program. I have not used it, although it does seem to receive good reviews.

I encourage you read this article on the All About Spelling site:

http://blog.allaboutlearningpress.com/why-copywork-doesnt-always-work/

NB: I am not linked in anyway to All About Reading/Spelling, nor have I been paid by them. These are simply my views and opinions based on my experiences educating my children.

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