Spell to Write and Read: Primary Log Extras

Near the end of the advanced seminar taught by Wanda Sanseri that I attended recently, I showed Mrs. Sanseri how I had added reference pages to the Primary Log. She said she really liked them and wished she could take pictures of them. However, our time was too short. I offered that I was planning to put them on my blog and perhaps I would post them sooner rather than later. Mrs. Sanseri nodded a hearty agreement.

Our first year with Spell to Write and Read had me a bit flustered with extra pages here and there for quizzes, tests, enrichments, and extra reference pages not included in the Primary Log. So, I streamlined everything the second year. Adding these additional reference pages to the Log was one result.

These photos are from Monkey's second grade log, into which she entered spelling sections J-1 through N-1. I looked at the samples of the log pages in Spell to Write and Read's Appendix C, then used a ruler and black ink pen to trace over the blue lines in the Primary Log. In some places I used white-out to make blue lines disappear (e.g. in the headings of the ED page, but I told her to ignore the blue line within her /ed/ column). I used a colored pen to draw columns within the columns on the homophones page. Finally, I wrote the page headings.

Regarding the page numbers, this Monkey of ours came to understand negative numbers virtually on her own ("Mommy, what's on the other side of zero?"). Since the extra reference pages must be added before the ones printed in the log, it seemed only natural to number them this way. I might be a nerd.

Panda has been slightly reluctant at times with this program. Sometimes I wonder if I need to place her in a more challenging section. Yesterday I added the contractions and homophones page to her primary log. She studied J-2, then J-1 trying so hard to find as many homophones as she could. Throughout the rest of the day, she and Butterfly would announce pairs of "homophones" they had discovered. Usually they were rhyming words, but they began to catch on. I was up feeding Koala at 1:something this morning when Panda stirred in her bed nearby. "Mommy, I found some homophones. 'Hut' like a little house and 'hunt,' but you would have to take out the /n/." She may not yet get homophones, but now she's excited about adding words to her log so she can look for more! So excited, she's thinking about it in her sleep!