The Alternative Story (TAS) - Discussion

[sean wife]

Hi hquek,


Ya, I think they do bulk of the memorization work in class, and I must say that the technique of making them memorise through doing the actions seem to be quite effective…at least without much follow up at home, they can still remember bulk of it a week later. Mine also only have a few words for spelling. No dictation if you mean those kind that teacher read out a passage and the child writes it out.

[hquek]

Hee, so far, Ds1 has to do spelling each week; nothing for Ds2. or perhaps I just don’t know he has.


Haiz…thought Ds1 should be ok in spelling. but lately I find that his spelling also koyak - a combination of careless and don’t know. I hate to have to make him do spelling (figure if he read enough should know), but then seems like I am wrong there.

[phtthp]

hquek:

hi sean wife,


yup Ds2 in P1 class. and yes, he is memorising passages. But this time a bit strange because he doesn't have to memorise at home and this only done in class. last time DS1 had to do dictation and spelling, so now DS2 is like having holiday.

I think my expectations more realistic with DS2 so i'm not unduly worried about him not being able to start writing. Will only start panicking when he reaches P3.

P1 duration is 1.5 hrs.

inside 1.5 hours duration - can breakdown roughly how much time is being apportioned to each section, to teach / learn :-
- compo writing ?
- memorize phrases ?
- grammar ?
- vocab ?
- spelling ?
- Oral ?

[hquek]

sorry dunno. these days I can’t stand outside due to class layout, so no clue.

[sean wife]

I also realize that reading and even knowing phonics do not really equate to no problem with spelling. There are so many exceptions to the common phonics rules that a lot of memory work is still needed. But I find that it is a waste of time to just learn spelling for the sake of learning spelling…after a while they will just forget. At this point of time, somehow I am more concerned about getting the sentence structure, vocabulary etc right rather than focusing too much time to learn spelling words just for the sake of spelling tests.

[hquek]

True and understand. I just get distressed when I see he spell common words wrongly, can tell he never sound what he write. Just my pet peeve

[sean wife]

I can understand and have the same frustration too…my kids can get simple words spelt wrongly too…and for longer words, they will look at me waiting for help, until I break it up into their syllabus and then they realize they can spell it out. Luckily (or unluckily), at K2 now, they do not have much spelling to learn for official spelling tests yet….what can make me more mad is that they can even copy words from comprehension passages wrongly (lazy to turn the page to check so they try to spell it out but often with mistakes…)

[hquek]

well, now that we are sharing our pet peeves. I am very amazed when DS1 can bring down the wrong figure when doing maths problems. eg problem says 123 and he can bring down 126 to add/subtract. that one really mind boggling.


Anyway, I just have to keep reminding him to check his stuff, and yes, a few wrongly spelled words won't kill. So chill....

[sean wife]

:offtopic: Ha, mine can copy wrong numbers too, especially for numbers with repeated digits like 226, end up become 266 etc. another mind boggling one...write + but end up doing - and vice versa. To me it all boils down to being 'Bo chap'. Just hoping that such occurrences will get lesser when they are more mature...hopefully... :xedfingers:

[hquek]

Hee, always good to know we are not alone. Anyway, kids being kids, I can leave with such mistakes. Usually I will class mistakes into 'don't know' and 'careless'. 'Don't know' mistakes are ok, at most I will nag to ask them if they now know. 'careless' mistakes will invoke recriminations of the highest order.


but still work in progress.

back to TAS. I try to motivate ds1 to study for his spelling by asking him if he want to write 1 time (ie get it right) or write 10x (ie correction). still....