Homeschool World Forum

If it's done with a notebook, it'll never get done. Too much effort, it takes away all the fun of reading and it's less effort to read less than to look up the words later. My advice is to either have her read next to you and ask you the words as she goes along (assuming you have a good vocabulary), or have some sort of electronic dictionary she can key a few letters into right there and have the word pop up immediately. I'm sure there's a cell phone app or iPad app or computer software or web site that would do fine for this.

Book reports are an equally bad idea, incidently, since reading is the best way to learn vocabulary, spelling, grammar, punctuation, etc. and anything that motivates you to read less is going to hamper learning more than it helps. Writing assignments should be based on current events, history, research of assorted topics, etc.

Just my two cents as someone who loves to read (lots of nonfiction things as well) but hates to have to interrupt that every minute or two to write something down. Doesn't matter so much if I wasn't enjoying the material already.

Thanks for the input! Yes, I definitely don't want to make word study a "drag" on reading! My daughter currently reads 1200+ pages per month independently (and never asks me about an unfamiliar word or looks one up BTW).

I think what will work is to make the word cards only for new words we come across when I'm reading aloud to her. Right now I'm reading a book which she finds fascinating, but it's too advanced for her to read independently. She doesn't mind when I give her a quick definition of an unfamiliar word as I read to her, but she does mind if I stop reading to jot the word down! So I'm going to read with pencil in hand and just put a check-mark in the margin next to new words. Then later, during lesson time, we'll make word study cards for these words. And then we'll use them to review the new words periodically so that when she encounters these words in independent reading, she'll know them already. Along with new words from books I read to her, prefixes, suffixes, and roots will go on word cards.

She lights up when she's able to understand a word by "dissecting" it, or relating it to a word she already knows, so I think she'll actually enjoy making word study cards with my help and playing little quiz games with them.

I agree book reports are awful! Thank heavens, none of my elementary school teachers assigned book reports, and I had to write only a couple in high school, about books I chose myself. But I remember how loudly kids in other classes complained about having to write book reports!