How To Resopond

[Joyofsixreboot]

I hs my 9 and 7 yo. My 12 yo 6th grader has opted for PS. Her homework today was not to study her spelling words but to explain to me how to study them per teacher instruction. Write them, wait 5 min, spell them. I'm supposed to give feedback on this. Really???? I want to tell her it's ridiculous and since my dd can already spell these 5 words perhaps I'll send her 1st grade sister in to take the test. OK, can't say that. What can I say that is true without being offensive. Something like "I didn't feel this assignment met my students need." Ideas anyone. I'm floored this is an assignment and dd reports kids don't 'get it'.

[fairytalemama]

I agree with the previous poster about the teacher possibly trying to teach study skills. We have to remember that the teacher has to teach to the weakest student's level in PS. If the other kids in your child's class are bombing their spelling tests because they're not studying the words well enough, then the teacher has to find a way to get them all up to a base level.

 

Are parent/teacher conferences coming up soon or do you have an opportunity to talk to the teacher? Maybe you can ask for some additional spelling words for your child to work on or, like the previous poster suggested, just not worry about it and focus on other areas that you dd needs to work on.

[talexand]

My kids always have a spelling pretest first so they do not need to learn words that they already know. Their school takes a whole word approach to spelling. Its just a massive list of words for each grade. They actually pretest on about 100 words over a series of days at the beginning of the year and the results create their spelling lists for the year. Each child has a different spelling list and a parent volunteer pulls them out one at a time to give their spelling test each week. If they run out of words they move on to the next 100 words, skipping to the next grade level when ready. After the use up all the 6th grade words they no longer have spelling but they pick up a more advanced vocabulary word list instead.

 

A simple pretest at the beginning of the week would at least keep them from doing work that they don't need to do. I don't know if all teachers would be willing to substitute more advanced words but it really does seem like a reasonable request.

[Jen+4dc]

It sounds like they are learning study skills so you could respond with "that is a great way to work on memorizing information". Consider it an easy subject that she won't have to think about this year. There will be plenty of other things for her to think about in 6th grade.:grouphug:

:iagree: