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100 Words - A Spelling List
© Beverley Paine Thomas began learning to read and write at around age four, but took another eight or so years to really get started.... these were years in which I alternated between confident faith in his ability and sheer panic. Along the way I tried many techniques to improve his progress, and the most successful of these was teaching Thomas to recognise on sight some of the most commonly used words in our language. I added to these words he would come across fairly frequently, like our names and pet names, address and so on. The following words actually make up half of all reading and writing we do, and unlocking the power in sentences to make sense by giving Thomas the ability to decode these really seemed to spur his development along. Of course, the timing may have been just perfect for him. Because I only came across this list when he was around ten years of age I have no idea how effective it might have been when he was five or six! If you are interested in teaching your child to read by this method you could try the 'look, read, cover, write and check' method of learning these words from a list, starting with around five a day. Many of these words are not the best words to introduce phonetically and are generally learned much later, by sight. Often by the time a child has phonetic pronunciation and reading under way these words simply fall into place without any effort. Not so Thomas, who never got the hang of decoding words phonetically at all. He tended to use whatever methods came to hand at the time - usually asking for help. I was very careful to introduce as many of these words in a sentence format, even writing and illustrating simple books which he learned to read, and which included much repetition of a selection of the words I wanted him to remember. Reading the words in a meaningful context was important, and the illustration helped remind Thomas of the action in the sentence, reminding him which word was needed to make sense of the text. I used cards, postcards, posters and lists to reinforce the use of these words in sentences. Once Thomas mastered about 70% of this list reading began to fall into place fairly rapidly. He found that being able to recognise all the words between the nouns and verbs helped enormously.
... read more tips on learning how to read
After 20 years of being a contact and support person Beverley no longer takes phone call or email inquiries. Please join one of her yahoo groups if you want to know more about homeschooling or have a question.
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Pioneering members of the home education movement in Australia, Beverley and Robin Paine are passionate advocates of true educational choice for families. They began homeschooling their children in 1986 and three years later started the South Australian Home Based Learners network.Beverley wrote Getting Started with Homeschooling in 1995-97 and since then continues to write books and booklets on home education. She balances spending time helping home educators with working in her garden and renovating her home, as well as continuing to build her collection of writing on a variety of homeschooling subjects. Beverley maintains an extensive collection of websites as well as several Yahoo groups supporting families teaching their children at home. In 2007 Beverley joined the HEA and became a committee member in 2008: she also edits and produce the HEA Newsletter, HEA magazine, Stepping Stones for Home Educators, annual Resource Directory and other HEA publications. If you'd like to keep in touch with what Beverley is up to her in her life, sign up for the Homeschool Australia Newsletter or visit her Facebook page.