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Out of the Mouths of Students
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I really enjoy walking the halls of any of our schools. You never know what will be on a bulletin board or wall. Roosevelt had this sign on the wall recently.
I, too, like spell check. My point, though, was that these kids are thinking and that's more important to me than spelling.
Anonymous said…
AAACK. This is high school. Poor spelling is poor spelling. There just isn't any excuse for not picking up a dictionary or using the phone in your pocket. The mentality of spelling not being important may be fine for emerging writers, but at a certain point you lose credibility when you can't spell common words properly. Spell check doesn't work when you're putting pen to paper. My child's LA teacher has the same attitude and has a poor mastery of standard English conventions, on top of having spelling errors in many of his handouts. The LA teacher! It's awful. How confident would you be in the teacher's ability to advance student skills?
-rant over
Anonymous said…
Source of the copied MLK Jr. quote, for those interested:
"Love in Action" http://okra.stanford.edu/transcription/document_images/Vol06Scans/July1962-March1963DraftofChapterIV,LoveinAction.pdf
While I appreciate the sentiment, I have to agree that spelling matters. The message, while very important, loses much of its power because of the misspelling. I spent over 20 years in the "real world" before I became a teacher and one of the first lessons I learned is that the details matter. I think this is a message that does not get emphasized enough to our students. I will say that the IB program takes the details seriously and that can be an eye-opening experience to many of our students.
When kids read, they learn whether a word looks right or not, and they learn enough to know if they should look up a word to check the spelling.
Has nothing to do with being Sped or ELL, if you want your message not to be diluted, you consider the presentation.
By mentioning spellcheck, I was trying to humorously draw attention to the fact that years of emphasizing technology in the classroom, has apparently impeded student ability to produce without it.
Anonymous said…
Jet City mom, (I assume) you know nothing about this student and you are commenting on a public forum about their spelling. I might have done this 10 years ago too. But now that I have a dyslexic child, I can tell you that many very bright children have to work incredibly hard to learn to spell well. It can take into their 20's. Because 15% of children are dyslexic (and please understand that dyslexia occurs across the intelligence spectrum) it is very possible that this kid has put in hundreds of hours to get where they are. Judging a kid's spelling is a crummy thing to do- especially when it's a single letter of a pretty commonly misspelled word. Please consider learning more about dyslexia if you are concerned about good spelling and apt to comment about it for all to see and hear.
Teach Everyone
Anonymous said…
I was walking thru the hall the other day and the darn mushroom drawing had some grass growing next to the mushroom. It was a stinkhorn mushroom and drawn well but the grass was not realistic enough, didn't really look like grass. But their just kids and not spelling a word these days is not a big deal. The kids have a much,, much bigger vocabulary in this age of online dictionaries and pronunciation; spelling is done by computers now.
It's 2016.
It's about ideas, content, action - getting stuff done.
red pepper
Anonymous said…
Thanks for your comment raising awareness about dyslexia, Teach Everyone. I also have a child who is dyslexic and with that has come more sensitivity and understanding regarding misspellings. Kids in SPS who are dyslexic work extremely hard on their reading and spelling with very little support from the district, which has only a handful of teachers who have received training in a reading/spelling program designed for dyslexic learners (e.g. an Orton-Gillingham or linguistics-based program, such as Wired for Reading).
The speaker list is up for the Board meeting tomorrow; not as packed as I thought with just four people on the waitlist. The majority of the speakers are speaking on high school boundaries (with several wanting to talk about Ballard High). There are only three of us speaking about the Green Dot resolution asking the City to not grant the zoning departures that Green Dot has requested. It's me, long-time watchdog, Chris Jackins, and the head of the Washington State Charter Schools Association, Patrick D'Amelio. (I knew Mr. D'Amelio when he headed the Alliance for Education and Big Brothers and Big Sisters; he's a stand-up guy.)
Why You Should Care Mr. Crabill has found quite the acolyte in Director Chandra Hampson. In the course of discussions over SOFG, she says his name over and over, "A.J .says we...." Now that's not too surprising given the direction the district is heading and that it is Mr. Crabill's work with the Council of Great City Schools is how we got here. But it appears that Mr. Crabill is working very closely with Hampson and we know she wields some amount of power over the majority of the Board. Mr. Crabill is going to continue to work with the Board as SOFG is instituted in SPS. In fact, his role may become more public as it did at one SPS Board meeting in the spring where he was on the phone during the meeting and suggested the Board stop the meeting to "self-reflect." I also noticed that in a district in South Carolina, when things weren't going to plan, he blamed the Board for not following SOFG to the letter. Look for that to happen here if Board members w
This may only be a partial list of reasons; please, add anything else in the comments. The deadline to file to run for the Board is May 19th. Entire Board Majority NOT vetting the Superintendent in any way, shape or form. Even the Seattle Times thought that was wrong. It was just absolute hubris and it was wrong. For the second time in just over a year , board members voted to negotiate a superintendent contract during a special meeting with no opportunity for public comment. This time, they showed an even deeper disregard for their responsibilities as public servants: Aborting a national search for a new superintendent and denying Interim Superintendent Brent Jones a chance to show students, parents and taxpayers that, indeed, he is the best person for the job. Government bodies can’t fast-forward through transparent processes just because they think they know the right answer. One other odd thing about the hiring of Brent Jones - most permanent SPS superintendent contracts ar
Comments
-rant over
"Love in Action"
http://okra.stanford.edu/transcription/document_images/Vol06Scans/July1962-March1963DraftofChapterIV,LoveinAction.pdf
It's worth a read.
-rant over
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/education/school-social-media-director-fired-after-correcting-student-misspelled-tweet/OwJNIAOukidyaXHoZqnkpO/
School social media director fired after correcting student's misspelled tweet
-McClureWatcher
C'mon, people.
french fry
When kids read, they learn whether a word looks right or not, and they learn enough to know if they should look up a word to check the spelling.
Has nothing to do with being Sped or ELL, if you want your message not to be diluted, you consider the presentation.
By mentioning spellcheck, I was trying to humorously draw attention to the fact that years of emphasizing technology in the classroom, has apparently impeded student ability to produce without it.
(I assume) you know nothing about this student and you are commenting on a public forum about their spelling. I might have done this 10 years ago too. But now that I have a dyslexic child, I can tell you that many very bright children have to work incredibly hard to learn to spell well. It can take into their 20's. Because 15% of children are dyslexic (and please understand that dyslexia occurs across the intelligence spectrum) it is very possible that this kid has put in hundreds of hours to get where they are. Judging a kid's spelling is a crummy thing to do- especially when it's a single letter of a pretty commonly misspelled word. Please consider learning more about dyslexia if you are concerned about good spelling and apt to comment about it for all to see and hear.
Teach Everyone
It's 2016.
It's about ideas, content, action - getting stuff done.
red pepper
http://wiredforreading.com/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/DyslexiaSupportWashingtonState/
- Sea Mom