A jumble of letters
Here, read this list of words:
- saw
- song
- talk
- dog
- call
- frog
- off
- ball
- draw
- all
- lost
- small
- walk
- long
This is what was sent home with my child as “spelling homework”. Except that there’s no spelling guideline to link this group of words. It’s all rhyme, and no reason.
If you were going to try and make some sense out of the group, for actual spelling purposes, you might try it this way:
call, off, ball, all small
English words don’t generally end in a single “L”, or a single “F”. Nor a single “S”, when not speaking of an item in plural. It’s what’s called the “FLoSS” rule – you don’t double F, L, or S.
song, long
Both end in the “ong” combination.
saw, draw
The ending is “aw”.
dog, frog, and lost
All three spell like they sound (we have to assume a basic knowledge of letter sounds, at least. I hope.)
walk, talk
Okay, I don’t even know. I haven’t learned a rule for those yet. But that’s five different lessons to apply to the aforementioned list. And do I need to point out that the assigned packet didn’t mention a single spelling rule? No, here’s the instructions:
All of the spelling words have the vowel sound in saw. Think about how the vowel sound in sawis spelled.
- Write two spelling words that have aw.
- Write the six words that have a.
- Write the six spelling words that have o.
This isn’t spelling. It’s not even badly organized vocabulary.
I was fortunate enough to have some kind of innate spelling ability. Maybe it’s because I read voraciously as a child – (to the point of picking up stuff that was way beyond my comprehension just so I could see the words they were using.) But I lucked out – my guesses were generally right.
My best friend in middle school, however – she couldn’t spell her way out of a paper bag, bless her. She always said that spell check was the single greatest computing invention of her life.
So as I consider this spelling packet, I wonder where traditional teaching has gone. Over the years, the basics are gradually being discarded in favor of flavor-of-the-month educational pap. Apparently you don’t need to know when to use a soft “c” instead of a hard one, but by gosh you’re gonna trade at least four instructional periods for presentations on homelessness, the dangers of taking drugs, general self-esteem, and Why Bullying Is Bad.
