To critic or not to critic, that is the question.
Let’s talk about spelling and Hebrew for a moment.
Hebrew has a number of letters that make similar sounds and therefore spelling mistakes can be easily made unless you memorise the word.
Such letters are:
Aleph (A) - Hay (H) and A’ayin (A’a) these can all make the Ah sound.
Kaf (C) and Koof (K) - Kaf makes two sounds one of them is like the K sound.
Tet (T) and Taf (T) - are you confused now? Yes, we have two letters that makes the T sound but the first is mostly used when spelling foreign words that have been Hebrewtiezed, and the latter is used more often.
The above mentioned spelling confusions are often seen in my 7 year old son notebooks.
My son is finishing first grade. He is already fed up with school. Who can blame him.
Recently he started seeing an occupational therapist again, because he needs extra help with his handwriting.
The occupational therapist has asked us to make him write every day a whole page in a note book.
First he needs to look at a story in the book. He needs to look at 3 words, memorize them. Then we hide them and he writes them down. After that we are asked to correct him where there are errors.
This is meant to help him learn concentration, and perhaps memorize the words.
The problem: it really destroys his self esteem and he has been showing signs of a defeated personality already before school.
The other day I had corrected him and he got very upset and blamed him self claiming it’s his entire fault that he has mistakes. I tried to console him by telling him about my spelling when I was older, but I don’t really think that helps any.
This morning, I was chatting with a mother of a boy he goes to school with. This boy repeated the first grade and according to his mother also makes similar spelling mistakes. His mother spoke with the teacher about this and apparently the teacher said it is very common for children of this age to make such spelling mistakes and its best not to say anything.
I know that we are meant to leave the teaching to the teachers. I also know from things my son has repeated at home that the teacher does correct them because she calls these mistakes “excellent mistakes”.
To be honest, after hearing this from the other mother, I feel that I should stand up to the occupational therapist and tell her, that I do not want to criticize my sons efforts when he completes the tasks she gives because I don’t think it will encourage to keep up the hard work.
Something that I am learning very slowly, since becoming a mother and this is a hard lesson to learn, at least for me. Criticism of any kind, doesn’t really contribute.