Spelling

Freshmen have trouble spelling.

They reinforce bad spelling when they 'text message' and 'IM' each other.
They reinforce bad spelling when they email each other and post their online journals.
They reinforce bad spelling when they handwrite notes to each other.
They reinforce bad spelling when they use 'spell check' to correct their work.

The phrase, "I don't know" deteriorated to "I dunno" and now kids write "Iuno."
Say those three phrases out loud and think about how they sound.


Adults usually can tell by looking at a word whether or not it is spelled correctly.
Generally, Freshmen do not read enough to have seen the words before.

A second problem occurs when students don't know how to pronounce the words correctly. They can't 'sound out' the word.

For a while, students were writing "probly" instead of "probably." That made sense because that's how they said the word, but now students write "prolly," and I don't understand that at all.

Ours is an English class, so I will always circle misspelled words and take off two points each time (to a maximum of fifty points). Some students have been identified as being dyslexic and that is taken into consideration.


That's it for today. We read and discussed "The Interlopers" and answered questions from a worksheet.

Vocabulary Unit 1 is due on Friday.
This Thursday (tomorrow) is open house.
Next Thursday is a short story test.
Next Friday is the Vocabulary Unit 1 quiz.