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Just a note to let you know what’s up with spelling this year.
As you might have guessed, I’m not a big fan of spelling homework. I haven’t seen any studies that convince me that spelling homework actually increases word knowledge, called, in a fancy way, orthographic knowledge.
Instead, we’ll be studying words and how they are put together this year. On the agenda is a close look at syllable patterns. We’ve already begun these by looking at “open” and “closed” syllables. We’ll also explore root, or base-words, prefixes and suffixes, and word parts derived from other languages like phon–, dict–, –ology, and lots of others.
Our goal is to study some words each week. Sometimes we’ll spend two weeks on a concept, sometimes only one, but there won’t be a traditional spelling test like you are used seeing (unless you had me as a teacher last year.) Instead, we’ll be tracking progress by close observation of the work the kids are doing in class, and through their spelling as they are writing, which is where the spelling rubber really hits the road.
spelling is important, because we use it everyday. I appreciate your approach to spelling instead of just memorizing a list of words. Emmit has one of these picture memories – man, do I envy that some days!- and would look at the list and spell by the image of the word in his head. so, i am glad he will learn more about the parts of spelling than just being good at memorizing.
Thank you.