My 2nd grader told me she has a spelling quiz this week.

Anonymous wrote:At our back to school night we were told in 2nd grade curriculum 2.0 there were no more spelling tests. I am pro this. Spelling tests only teach kids how to memorize, not actually how to spell.

Wow ... is this true? I don't care for the whole "creative" spelling that they seem to be OK with today. Kids should be able to spell. Just like kids should be able to write .... but they seem to think handwriting isn't important anymore either. UGH!

At our back to school night we were told in 2nd grade curriculum 2.0 there were no more spelling tests. I am pro this. Spelling tests only teach kids how to memorize, not actually how to spell.

Anonymous wrote:My kid was in the MCPS highly gifted elementary center program. The best part of the program was the Wordly Wise vocabulary books. Teaches spelling by Latin and Greek root words.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wordly_Wise
http://www.learningthings.com/index.asp?FSCat=77

we were at a private school that used Wordly Wise, but not until middle school. It is a good book and my kids still remember their wordly wise words. Spelling was straight spelling in 2nd and 3rd grade. One of my kids got it immediately and the other spent all week working on the words. For the kid who got it immediately we spent the extra time on reading. I don't think extra spelling work would have been particularly useful.

At our school there's a list that kids have to master for each grade. Kids can test out of any of these words and are given additional, more challenging words to replace them. Some kids get more words each week than others. Very few kids seem to have the same lists, though they may have the same sound and letter patterns so these can be taught to the whole class.

thanks for these great resources

MCPS has a list of words that ES students should know how to spell.

http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/info/baldrige/staff/addresources.shtm#elementary

My kid was in the MCPS highly gifted elementary center program. The best part of the program was the Wordly Wise vocabulary books. Teaches spelling by Latin and Greek root words.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wordly_Wise
http://www.learningthings.com/index.asp?FSCat=77

Anonymous wrote:Our school does a pretest and the words the kids spell correctly are removed from their list of words.

Ditto.

I suggest you begin with the SAT word of the day as a proctive measure.

Some schools give lists that seem really random and some seem more coordinated. Our lists seem to focus on a certain area. Agree w/others that the spelling needs to be tied to using the words. Am seeing that happen this year in 1st grader's school. 3rd grader's not even bringing words home; they do all the work w/them in class, but from what he has told me, the words work well together (the ee/ea words this week, for instance)

We switched MCPS schools this year, and last yr, the lists were really random -- heirloom and beautiful on the same list, for instance. And, no joke, one week, he'd get words like those and the next week he'd get 4-letter words like jump and junk.

Our school does a pretest and the words the kids spell correctly are removed from their list of words.

No, there is no uniform word list that goes out week by week across the county, though by the end of the year, I think they all learn the same words. Also, some teachers test every week and others, like your child's, test every other week.

I have to say that I don't think your teacher did a good job explaining the language curriculum to you. Spelling is more than just learning a list of words. It involves learning patterns and other things that I am too tired this morning to remember. But, the teachers at our school provided us with an explanation about how a kid can get 100% on every spelling test but not get an A in spelling because all they've learned is to memorize words and that's not the entirety of the program.

Also, I don't see spelling being done in isolation of vocabulary. From first grade on, my kids always had to write sentences, which they can't do if they don't know what they mean. In later elementary classes, they had to look the words up in the dictionary and write the definition.

One of my kids is also a freakishly good speller and, honestly, I thank my lucky stars that we got kind of a break in this area. He's never once studied the words and gotten 100% his entire way through elementary school. On the other hand, I have one where we have to write the words three times over and over again during the week so he can pass the test.

Perhaps you could create your own "work" part so it would be more writing than spelling. Try to use as many of the words as you can in a paragraph..a poem...sentences.. You didn't say what grade so I don't know if that would be appropriate or not..but a thought.

Is there a spelling or vocabulary curriculum standard across MCPS elementary schools or does each school and/or teacher do his/her own thing?

I fight with my DC each week to do his spelling work, which just amounts to busy work because he knows how to spell the words on the day the list is handed out (he has always been a freakishly good speller - doesn't get it from mom!). Currently they are tested every two weeks. I contacted the teacher to see if there was any way to get a list that my DC would HAVE TO WORK to learn the words or alternately to test him weekly until the standard lists get more difficult. The teacher suggested that I send in a list of my own for my child. Are you kidding?!? I can just make up any old list??? This just doesn't seem right.

Also, I am bothered that spelling seems to be done in isolation of vocabulary. The kids need to know how to spell these words but they don't need to know what they mean.