What evil troll came up with WORD STUDY as a way to learn spelling words?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:English major and mother of three FCPS ES students. I abhor Word Study. I consider it a waste of time and truly ineffective.

I have three terrible spellers who resist my attempts to simply study their spelling words the way I did; memorize, continue to read widely and learn the definitions.
.

Um...that's because memorizing random spelling words doesn't work. That's why we don't do it anymore, or at least shouldn't be doing it anymore.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I find out at back to school night or ask my child what is the penalty for not turning in homework. Except for one teacher, there was no penalty except some type of "needs improvement" homework grade on the report card. I have my son take a pretest and if he gets 100% I don't make him do any of the spelling homework. Whatever he misses then he only studies those one or two words. Over summer break I have him do a spelling program called All About Spelling, which actually breaks down words and teaches rules about spelling instead of getting random spelling words. He learned before first grade that words in English (except for rare exceptions) don't end in i,j, u or v. He mentioned it to his first grade teacher who was amazed. She commented after school to me one day that my son had said that and she hadn't ever thought of it. The problem is that many teachers never learned how to systematically spell words and don't know spelling rules.

What you are doing is similar to Word Study, when done correctly. As you noted, teachers are ignorant even of their own field.

[Anonymous]

Our school used words their way and the word groupings were fine. Some of the activities were totally stupid, but I blame the teacher, not the idea behind word study. The stupid ones included writing each word backwards and writing the words on someone's back. We only did those once in the beginning of the year and then focused on the better ones the rest. These included categorizing the words, writing the vowels in blue and consonants in red, writing 10 words in a sentence, making a poem using 10 words, writing a story using 10 words, alphabetizing the words. These were all fine and helpful both for spelling and writing.

I've never heard anyone complain about wordly wise. It's a vocabulary/comprehension/grammar program, not a word study program. Why do people not like it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:At our children's school word study is the actual study of the way word sounds are made and put together. They would take a bunch of words with the same letter groupings and sort them by the different sounds. Or vice versa (like the long "a" sound week, they might study words that have "eigh" "ay" and "a-e"). There were no games without purpose. I'm sorry they have your child doing all that!

That is how my kid's word study works but they still have the inane activities.

OMG. Reading log too this year. Way to kill any interest in reading.

[Anonymous]

When I taught, I would send the spelling words home the week before. Pretest on Monday. If you didn't miss any words, you did not have to do spelling work that week. Prestest included using words in a sentence. Amazing how many kids managed to learn to spell the words before Monday. Motivation is the key.

[Anonymous]

Our school uses Word Their Way. I don't see anything wrong with it. It is very systematic and not at all random words on a spelling list.

The teacher makes the kid write them in pyramids, in colors and then write it after covering the words. Luckily my first grader is a fast writer and seem to learn how to spell a big page of words this way easily. I personally would have been more bored with it as a child than he seems to be.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At our children's school word study is the actual study of the way word sounds are made and put together. They would take a bunch of words with the same letter groupings and sort them by the different sounds. Or vice versa (like the long "a" sound week, they might study words that have "eigh" "ay" and "a-e"). There were no games without purpose. I'm sorry they have your child doing all that!

That is how my kid's word study works but they still have the inane activities.

OMG. Reading log too this year. Way to kill any interest in reading.

That's my objection to book reviews in the younger grades, too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At our children's school word study is the actual study of the way word sounds are made and put together. They would take a bunch of words with the same letter groupings and sort them by the different sounds. Or vice versa (like the long "a" sound week, they might study words that have "eigh" "ay" and "a-e"). There were no games without purpose. I'm sorry they have your child doing all that!

That is how my kid's word study works but they still have the inane activities.

OMG. Reading log too this year. Way to kill any interest in reading.

That's my objection to book reviews in the younger grades, too.

Book reviews have nothing to do with word study. They deal with comprehension and writing. Yes they can be challenging, but in younger grades, I'm assuming that teachers know a child won't write a perfect book review. I'd rather see a book review given as an assignment than a challenge to read so many pages. Kids end up reading so much but most of it is read too quickly for them to really understand what they're reading. It's a waste.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At our children's school word study is the actual study of the way word sounds are made and put together. They would take a bunch of words with the same letter groupings and sort them by the different sounds. Or vice versa (like the long "a" sound week, they might study words that have "eigh" "ay" and "a-e"). There were no games without purpose. I'm sorry they have your child doing all that!

That is how my kid's word study works but they still have the inane activities.

OMG. Reading log too this year. Way to kill any interest in reading.

That's my objection to book reviews in the younger grades, too.

Book reviews have nothing to do with word study. They deal with comprehension and writing. Yes they can be challenging, but in younger grades, I'm assuming that teachers know a child won't write a perfect book review. I'd rather see a book review given as an assignment than a challenge to read so many pages. Kids end up reading so much but most of it is read too quickly for them to really understand what they're reading. It's a waste.

Whereas a book review is an incentive to the child to not finish the book, because when they finish the book, they have to do a book review.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At our children's school word study is the actual study of the way word sounds are made and put together. They would take a bunch of words with the same letter groupings and sort them by the different sounds. Or vice versa (like the long "a" sound week, they might study words that have "eigh" "ay" and "a-e"). There were no games without purpose. I'm sorry they have your child doing all that!

That is how my kid's word study works but they still have the inane activities.

OMG. Reading log too this year. Way to kill any interest in reading.

That's my objection to book reviews in the younger grades, too.

Book reviews have nothing to do with word study. They deal with comprehension and writing. Yes they can be challenging, but in younger grades, I'm assuming that teachers know a child won't write a perfect book review. I'd rather see a book review given as an assignment than a challenge to read so many pages. Kids end up reading so much but most of it is read too quickly for them to really understand what they're reading. It's a waste.

Whereas a book review is an incentive to the child to not finish the book, because when they finish the book, they have to do a book review.

Simple solution. A teacher can assign one or two book reviews a month in younger grades. The kid can finish the book and write the review and then read as much or as little as they want after that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

That's my objection to book reviews in the younger grades, too.

Book reviews have nothing to do with word study. They deal with comprehension and writing. Yes they can be challenging, but in younger grades, I'm assuming that teachers know a child won't write a perfect book review. I'd rather see a book review given as an assignment than a challenge to read so many pages. Kids end up reading so much but most of it is read too quickly for them to really understand what they're reading. It's a waste.

Whereas a book review is an incentive to the child to not finish the book, because when they finish the book, they have to do a book review.

Simple solution. A teacher can assign one or two book reviews a month in younger grades. The kid can finish the book and write the review and then read as much or as little as they want after that.

Problem: Book reviews discourage children from reading.
Solution: Assign fewer book reviews, so as to discourage children less from reading.

No, I don't think that is a solution.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

That's my objection to book reviews in the younger grades, too.

Book reviews have nothing to do with word study. They deal with comprehension and writing. Yes they can be challenging, but in younger grades, I'm assuming that teachers know a child won't write a perfect book review. I'd rather see a book review given as an assignment than a challenge to read so many pages. Kids end up reading so much but most of it is read too quickly for them to really understand what they're reading. It's a waste.

Whereas a book review is an incentive to the child to not finish the book, because when they finish the book, they have to do a book review.

Simple solution. A teacher can assign one or two book reviews a month in younger grades. The kid can finish the book and write the review and then read as much or as little as they want after that.

Problem: Book reviews discourage children from reading.
Solution: Assign fewer book reviews, so as to discourage children less from reading.

No, I don't think that is a solution.[/quote

Book reviews do not discourage children from reading except in your own world especially in the 2nd and 3rd grade. Book reviews help children with comprehension on a regular basis so they don't have comprehension problems later and end up hating school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Book reviews do not discourage children from reading except in your own world especially in the 2nd and 3rd grade. Book reviews help children with comprehension on a regular basis so they don't have comprehension problems later and end up hating school.

I've heard many, many children say that they do not want to read books if they have to do book reviews for those books. I will tell them that you said that they're wrong about their own feelings.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:English major and mother of three FCPS ES students. I abhor Word Study. I consider it a waste of time and truly ineffective.

I have three terrible spellers who resist my attempts to simply study their spelling words the way I did; memorize, continue to read widely and learn the definitions.

It seems that teachers today are bogged down with teaching methodologies and are moving too far away from the mechanics of literacy.

I am grateful for my own elementary school education in a depressed rural area. My school had no extra resources but was equipped with engaging, semi-strict teachers who made us memorize spelling lists and be able to use each word in a sentence of our creation. Same school insisted in cursive writing and lessons in spelling would integrate writing spelling words in cursive. Win-win.

I thank God that I went to school when and where I did. We actually had textbooks and (gasp!) teachers actually taught - reading, writing, spelling, math, geography, history, science, etc. Schools need to get back to basics.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:English major and mother of three FCPS ES students. I abhor Word Study. I consider it a waste of time and truly ineffective.

I have three terrible spellers who resist my attempts to simply study their spelling words the way I did; memorize, continue to read widely and learn the definitions.

It seems that teachers today are bogged down with teaching methodologies and are moving too far away from the mechanics of literacy.

I am grateful for my own elementary school education in a depressed rural area. My school had no extra resources but was equipped with engaging, semi-strict teachers who made us memorize spelling lists and be able to use each word in a sentence of our creation. Same school insisted in cursive writing and lessons in spelling would integrate writing spelling words in cursive. Win-win.

I thank God that I went to school when and where I did. We actually had textbooks and (gasp!) teachers actually taught - reading, writing, spelling, math, geography, history, science, etc. Schools need to get back to basics.

I bet they required book reports or reviews as well. I don't blame teachers. Kids say they don't like something, parents complain, and then teachers have an out not to teach it anymore because it isn't "fun".