DS's teacher said that spelling is wasting time!!!

[jennynd]

I had teacher/parents conference. I notice that DS never bring home spelling list so I asked if she plan to do spelling. And her response is spelling is wasting time :001_unsure:

She said that the computer program all have spelling check and she rather use the time enhance the vocabulary. She said when she grade students writing. She will correct the spelling and ask kids put the corrected words in their own "dictionary"

I was like :chillpill:

But can't help worry it is certainly not "traditional"

What is your thought

[ChandlerMom]

What grade is ds? I hear it is common not to start formal spelling until 3rd or 4th grade.

[Guest]

:001_huh: Public schools are starting to get so ridiculous. Maybe you could get an easy spelling program like Spelling Workout to do at home. It does not take much time a day to do.

[MinivanMom]

. . . She said when she grade students writing. She will correct the spelling and ask kids put the corrected words in their own "dictionary" . . .

 

It sounds like she is just doing nontraditional spelling instruction. Instead of having a weekly list, the kids are learning and studying the words they actually misspell in their own writing. If it is done well, it can be a very effective technique. If, on the other hand, the students are merely adding the misspelled words to their personal dictionary without studying them, then it may not be effective for kids who are not natural spellers and need more actual instruction.

 

Would it be possible for your child to bring the dictionary home occasionally? Then you would know which words need to be worked on and can do that at home.

[Ellie]

And that's why such a huge percentage of children graduate from public schools functionally illiterate. In fact, if this teacher is young, she's probably doesn't know any better, because she was part of that substandard generation, bless her heart.

 

Of course spelling is important. Of course it is foolish to depend on spell-check.

 

Is there any way to get your child into a different class?

[Mama2Many4]

Common dumbing down of America. I pity these kids when they have to fill out a form and every word is misspelled because the schools didn't want to take the time to teach them. So glad I homeschool.

[Crimson Wife]

Well, I just was at our town's spelling bee over the weekend. It is open to all students- public, private, and HS. From watching last year's competition and this year's one, it is painfully obvious to me that all the PS except for the one "back-to-basics" magnet school need to put more emphasis on spelling instruction. The mistakes that most of the PS children made were not on tricky silent or doubled letters or unstressed vowels (like the notorious "schwa" sound) or choosing the wrong phoneme (e.g. /f/ instead of /ph/). Those kind of mistakes are understandable because there's nothing obvious about the words' pronunciations that hints at their spellings. What left me shaking my head was how many kids offered spellings that showed an ignorance of basic spelling rules and often did not make phonetic sense.

 

DD wasn't a finalist this year, but at least she got eliminated because of something that is a bit tricky (she forgot the 2nd n in "questionnaire").

[GingerPoppy]

My dd went to public school from K to most of grade 4. In those five years, they only did "spelling" one or two years (I believe grades 2 and 3), but it was not much of a program, just a list of words each week to memorize and a quiz on Fridays one year. The words weren't even challenging. Here, it is at a teacher's discretion. I think it's ridiculous.

 

In grade 4, the teacher had said he would do spelling with them, and sent home lists for the first two weeks, but then the whole thing just kind of disappeared. I don't know why, but I think it just fell by the wayside. Didn't really matter anyway, since the first two lists had words like "the" and "house". :confused: Grade 4!! Needless to say, I was already afterschooling her and doing appropriate spelling.

 

I think many good spelling programs are incorporating vocabulary at the same time. I know ours does. Anyway, simply reading a ton is one of the best ways to pick up vocab.

 

I work with kids (tutoring) that have come through the elementary years with little or no formal spelling, and I have to pick up the pieces. One effect is that it slows down the writing process for them greatly, and my poor spellers usually hate writing because it seems like such a slog spelling-wise.

 

I disagree with the teacher. :D

Edited November 9, 2011 by GingerPoppy

[leeannpal]

It sounds like she is just doing nontraditional spelling instruction. Instead of having a weekly list, the kids are learning and studying the words they actually misspell in their own writing. If it is done well, it can be a very effective technique. If, on the other hand, the students are merely adding the misspelled words to their personal dictionary without studying them, then it may not be effective for kids who are not natural spellers and need more actual instruction.

 

Would it be possible for your child to bring the dictionary home occasionally? Then you would know which words need to be worked on and can do that at home.

 

I agree with this. Some kids do not learn to spell by rote memory. Oh sure, they may learn the list of the week and even get a 100 on the test but try asking them two days later how to spell the word and...

 

If your son does well with traditional spelling techniques, I would do a computer based program, such as Spelling City, at home.

[SilverMoon]

I had a ps teaching acquaintance tell me this once, also, though she said it was test driven. The students at her school were given points for using a wide vocabulary on standardized tests, but bad spelling didn't detract any points.

[boscopup]

Common dumbing down of America. I pity these kids when they have to fill out a form and every word is misspelled because the schools didn't want to take the time to teach them. So glad I homeschool.

 

Or when they have to hand write notes at work... I worked in software development pre-kids, and we had to write notes on printouts as part of code reviews. The author of the code needed to be able to read those notes. If words were misspelled, it'd be totally embarrassing! Even in high tech jobs, you still have to write by hand sometimes.

[Crimson Wife]

Why are they so short on time? I don't get it. What are they in fact teaching instead?

 

From what I can tell, the PS here really focus on having students produce large quantities of writing. The kids demonstrate atrocious grammar & spelling, but by gum, they're writing full sentences in K, paragraphs in 1st, and 5 paragraph essays in 3rd :rolleyes:

[jennynd]

It is a small private school

He is 2nd grade age wise but in a 4th grade classroom

 

The thing is, The teacher does have a good way to get the kids to read well. I will say all kids there reading above their grade level. And obviously, they are all about challenge the kids based on that they let DS to accelerate (Now I don't fully agree with how they did it. I don't think they have a transition plan, They practically just dump my son in that classroom .. swim or drown.. )

. So, I won't say that they are dumbing down. I just not sure about the approach

 

I know they do a lot reading, writing and math. They also do science and typical music.PE/art.

Now, I don't know how much time each day they spend on academic subject

[MeghanL]

ios oshio the coenpse owend nowe to sant owh ie do e st

 

See, the computer doesn't always know what you are wanting to say if you do not have spelling instruction. It cannot read minds. Spell-check only works if you are close enough that it can make an educated guess of words you might have meant. This won't work if spelling is abandoned all together.

 

It's similar to saying "We don't need to teach math anymore. The calculator will do it for us". Again, only it you know what formulas to use.

[Mama2Many4]

ios oshio the coenpse owend nowe to sant owh ie do e st

 

See, the computer doesn't always know what you are wanting to say if you do not have spelling instruction. It cannot read minds. Spell-check only works if you are close enough that it can make an educated guess of words you might have meant. This won't work if spelling is abandoned all together.

 

It's similar to saying "We don't need to teach math anymore. The calculator will do it for us". Again, only it you know what formulas to use.

 

:iagree:

[Roadrunner]

Strange. PS here has spelling lists every week and in upper elementary grades (3 through 5) those lists are rule based. Lower elementary lists appear to be more common words, so for advanced kids that know how to spell them teachers are letting kids create their own lists in addition to what's required (words they didn't now the meaning as an example).

Yes, they also write soooooo much. In first grade they are required to produce 5 sentence original writing. Insane.

[go_go_gadget]

It is a small private school

He is 2nd grade age wise but in a 4th grade classroom

 

The thing is, The teacher does have a good way to get the kids to read well. I will say all kids there reading above their grade level. And obviously, they are all about challenge the kids based on that they let DS to accelerate (Now I don't fully agree with how they did it. I don't think they have a transition plan, They practically just dump my son in that classroom .. swim or drown.. )

. So, I won't say that they are dumbing down. I just not sure about the approach

 

I know they do a lot reading, writing and math. They also do science and typical music.PE/art.

Now, I don't know how much time each day they spend on academic subject

 

So is it working? With a group of well above average students, I might also try something like that. There's no point in having the whole class study the same words if they don't all need to work on the same ones. If it's not working feel free to complain and/or supplement, but without any data on its efficacy, I can't comment on the method.

[AdamsFamily]

There is a 4th grade class in MI that got rid of spelling because spelling lessons do not meet any of the state's standards. I don't know if it was just the one class, or the whole school. My mom relayed the conversation to me from one of the parents of a student in the class.

[wy_kid_wrangler04]

I would highly recommend you do a good spelling program at home! Something like Spelling Power is only about 15 minutes a day. You can add in about 10 more minutes buy buying the task cards. I would be VERY worried they do not use a spelling program!

[Iucounu]

It sounds like she is just doing nontraditional spelling instruction. Instead of having a weekly list, the kids are learning and studying the words they actually misspell in their own writing. If it is done well, it can be a very effective technique. If, on the other hand, the students are merely adding the misspelled words to their personal dictionary without studying them, then it may not be effective for kids who are not natural spellers and need more actual instruction.

I agree. This method could work excellently for natural spellers. In fact, I think it's an excellent differentiation strategy for high-performing natural spellers.

 

I would worry that even if the non-natural spellers are studying the words added to their dictionaries, though, they might get subpar spelling instruction in the end. I noticed a tendency in DS6 at one point to avoid writing words he wasn't sure he knew how to spell correctly (he's highly perfectionistic, and this resulted in my afterschooling him on spelling to increase his writing fluency and quality, which worked). Take a non-natural speller, add a dash of performance anxiety / perfectionism, and you'd be likely to get a lot of "The cat sat on the mat" sorts of compositions.

 

Pluses of the technique obviously include avoiding boredom and focusing learning time on shoring up weaknesses, reducing waste. Minuses include lack of direction resulting in possibly incomplete coverage of encoding rules.

Edited November 9, 2011 by Iucounu

[MrsMe]

Spell chick is knot you're fiend.

 

Sheesh....And I see it on the news tickers, in the newspaper, on tv, in closed captioning. I hate this train of thought. It's the complete dumbing down of America. We look like idiots. Hopefully she's using some sort of dictation.

[wy_kid_wrangler04]

Spell chick is knot you're fiend.

 

 

:lol:

[Mommy22alyns]

My opinion is that she's nuts and I would run far, far away from her and any of her "teaching." If you can't spell, you look like an idiot, plain and simple. You can't rely on spell check to get you through life. Just, UGH! :confused:

[MrsMe]

Send your ds's teacher this thread. :toetap05:

[TracyR]

I agree, run very far away from this teacher. Spell check is only as good as the words it guesses you are using. If you can't spell , you can't write, if you can't write you are a poor communicator. Plain and simple.

If you can't run away from this teacher, then I suggest you get a spelling program and do it at home together.

Yet, another example of dumbing down our children.

[LizzyBee]

Spelling is important.

 

The way most schools "teach" spelling (memorizing lists of words that bear no resemblance to one another and have no rules in common) is useless and a waste of time. Having the kids keep their own dictionaries of misspelled words is probably more effective.

 

I agree with the suggestion to teach spelling at home.

[KrissiK]

Since we've started Spelling Workout, I can see a difference in DS1's spelling. (DS2 has always been a good speller). He does work on the words he has trouble with and he remembers those words when he's doing other writing. I think a formal spelling program is very important.

[MerryAtHope]

Sadly more schools are going this way. And with texting, spelling skills are really going to go downhill if kids don't learn it somewhere. It's scary to think what this will look like in a generation or so! Spelling is very important, and while some kids can pick it up naturally, most need direct instruction, and some will need quite a bit of help. For kids who struggle with spelling, writing becomes an incredibly frustrating task, even if there isn't an emphasis placed on spelling--because the brain has to wrestle with how to write down what the student is thinking. I think it does an incredible disservice to students to ignore spelling instruction. I can see why some teachers drop it though--some of the methods out there are so confusing that they could never produce results with a good third to half of the kids they teach. It's understandable that some teachers would give up in frustration and think it's not worth it. But it's too bad, imnsho!

[MerryAtHope]

Spell chick is knot you're fiend.

 

:lol::lol::lol: I love it!

[mom2scouts]

Please tell your son's teacher that years ago when I got my first job in my professional field, it was because I was the ONLY applicant who didn't have a spelling error on my resume or cover letter. It turns out that the employer had several suitable applicants, but couldn't stand how ignorant people looked when they couldn't spell correctly. She hired me and threw out the other resumes.

[jennynd]

Send your ds's teacher this thread. :toetap05:

 

I was thinking about it. Lots of good comments

[jennynd]

Please tell your son's teacher that years ago when I got my first job in my professional field, it was because I was the ONLY applicant who didn't have a spelling error on my resume or cover letter. It turns out that the employer had several suitable applicants, but couldn't stand how ignorant people looked when they couldn't spell correctly. She hired me and threw out the other resumes.

 

My Hubby has a inetern in previous job. Brilliant girl but can't spell. Hubby has to review every single report she wrote because the spelling checker can't pick up..

 

Sign.. AAS is SOOOO expensive and we really don't have a lot time after school between math/science/reading/homework...

[jennynd]

I would highly recommend you do a good spelling program at home! Something like Spelling Power is only about 15 minutes a day. You can add in about 10 more minutes buy buying the task cards. I would be VERY worried they do not use a spelling program!

 

Thanks for suggestion. this price looks far more reasonable

[jennynd]

So is it working?

 

I am not so sure.. It is 2 months into the school year. I did see she correct his misspelling in his writing but I don't know how much register with him. And I didn't see his dictionary..just yet

[johnandtinagilbert]

Ladies,

You said it all for me!

And that's why such a huge percentage of children graduate from public schools functionally illiterate. In fact, if this teacher is young, she's probably doesn't know any better, because she was part of that substandard generation, bless her heart.

 

Of course spelling is important. Of course it is foolish to depend on spell-check.

 

Is there any way to get your child into a different class?

 

Common dumbing down of America. I pity these kids when they have to fill out a form and every word is misspelled because the schools didn't want to take the time to teach them. So glad I homeschool.

 

Well, I just was at our town's spelling bee over the weekend. It is open to all students- public, private, and HS. From watching last year's competition and this year's one, it is painfully obvious to me that all the PS except for the one "back-to-basics" magnet school need to put more emphasis on spelling instruction. The mistakes that most of the PS children made were not on tricky silent or doubled letters or unstressed vowels (like the notorious "schwa" sound) or choosing the wrong phoneme (e.g. /f/ instead of /ph/). Those kind of mistakes are understandable because there's nothing obvious about the words' pronunciations that hints at their spellings. What left me shaking my head was how many kids offered spellings that showed an ignorance of basic spelling rules and often did not make phonetic sense.

 

DD wasn't a finalist this year, but at least she got eliminated because of something that is a bit tricky (she forgot the 2nd n in "questionnaire").

Great job at the BEE! That's a tough one!

 

I had a ps teaching acquaintance tell me this once, also, though she said it was test driven. The students at her school were given points for using a wide vocabulary on standardized tests, but bad spelling didn't detract any points.

Sad.

From what I can tell, the PS here really focus on having students produce large quantities of writing. The kids demonstrate atrocious grammar & spelling, but by gum, they're writing full sentences in K, paragraphs in 1st, and 5 paragraph essays in 3rd :rolleyes:

This KILLS me. Honestly, the work I saw from a local 3rd grader shouldn't even be called "writing;" yet she received high marks. Cruddy handwriting, cruddy spelling, cruddy sentence structure, cruddy paragraphs....but HEY! She's writing --- NOT.

 

ios oshio the coenpse owend nowe to sant owh ie do e st

 

See, the computer doesn't always know what you are wanting to say if you do not have spelling instruction. It cannot read minds. Spell-check only works if you are close enough that it can make an educated guess of words you might have meant. This won't work if spelling is abandoned all together.

 

It's similar to saying "We don't need to teach math anymore. The calculator will do it for us". Again, only it you know what formulas to use.

:iagree:

Spelling is important.

 

The way most schools "teach" spelling (memorizing lists of words that bear no resemblance to one another and have no rules in common) is useless and a waste of time. Having the kids keep their own dictionaries of misspelled words is probably more effective.

 

I agree with the suggestion to teach spelling at home.

:iagree:

[ChrissySC]

Well, I disagree. This reformist approach is not something that I can support. While there are times when you don't want to edit work for the purpose of encouraging creativity, I cannot see just cause for eliminating any formal instruction. I do not support that this is something that is naturally acquired, developed, or learned through reading.

 

Spelling was a help to learn to read. Consider that most of the student population does not read at grade level, or the reading level of the average high school student. It can be depressing when viewing the statistics. Spelling is an approach to teach letters and sounds. This subject content enables students to develop vocabulary while learning to decode a word. Much as we extend the subject content to cover Latin and Greek roots, prefixes, and suffixes, it is an extension. I do not feel that any list of random words without purpose will serve any reward. There must be a purpose and point to the list as the subject was intended - assist reading and vocabulary development by providing tools.

 

While you scoff at the idea of teaching spelling, consider the issue of cursive writing too. Both are benefactors of cognitive development. While the process is intricate, both are crossover into other subject matter and content, as well as developing key learning processes.

[Kalmia]

No, spell check is not the friend of the high school essayist:

 

"Phoenix Inn Suits concentrated on providing the best customer service in town, but they lacked respect for employees who made that possible. The "bottom" employees who cleaned rooms and did all of the physical work were treated as literary slaves."

[angela in ohio]

And that's why such a huge percentage of children graduate from public schools functionally illiterate. In fact, if this teacher is young, she's probably doesn't know any better, because she was part of that substandard generation, bless her heart.

 

Of course spelling is important. Of course it is foolish to depend on spell-check.

 

Is there any way to get your child into a different class?

 

:iagree:

 

Well, I just was at our town's spelling bee over the weekend. It is open to all students- public, private, and HS. From watching last year's competition and this year's one, it is painfully obvious to me that all the PS except for the one "back-to-basics" magnet school need to put more emphasis on spelling instruction. The mistakes that most of the PS children made were not on tricky silent or doubled letters or unstressed vowels (like the notorious "schwa" sound) or choosing the wrong phoneme (e.g. /f/ instead of /ph/). Those kind of mistakes are understandable because there's nothing obvious about the words' pronunciations that hints at their spellings. What left me shaking my head was how many kids offered spellings that showed an ignorance of basic spelling rules and often did not make phonetic sense.

 

Unfortunately, we saw the same thing at the homeschool spelling bee we participated in for a few years. Some kiddos obviously had phonics instruction, and you could see them sounding out the words phonetically. But the majority either knew the word from memorizing it and spouted it off very quickly or had not a single skill to break it down if they didn't know it. They wouldn't even get close.

 

Why are they so short on time? I don't get it. What are they in fact teaching instead?

 

Non-academic feel-good garbage half the time. :D If they really were "teaching to the test" we'd see some spelling instruction going on, because that IS on the test (here at least.) Unfortunately, even with the testing, you still can't get them to teach the 3Rs instead of the silly "new flavor of the month" things the teacher colleges deem inportant.