[NIFL-ASSESSMENT:887] RE: spelling - I'm shocked!

From: AWilder106@aol.com
Date: Fri Jan 21 2005 - 10:08:03 EST


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Subject: [NIFL-ASSESSMENT:887] RE: spelling - I'm shocked!
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Yo, friends!

1)  Invented spelling (Chomsky) is a way for  students to make sense of the heard word.  Will tell the teacher  where there are problems. First the students have to write, on their own, something by themselves, their own expression or recounting.

2) Spelling can be used as a diagnostic for learning disabilities, dyslexia (Feifer and De Fina)

3) Spelling can be used as a way into comprehension.  I took a course at the Kennedy School of Govt (Heifetz) Harvard, where the teacher focused on....spelling!  We had a lot of small group work, presentation of public sector problems, office politics problems, etc.We are talking here  CIA people, military people, bureaucrats, then....me.  A weekly assignment:  pick three words from the presentation, look them up (The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language) and tell how they related both to group process and the subject  at hand.  of course they were partly used as  a projection screen--which words did YOU think were most important.  We were graded on those exercises.  The American Heritage Dictionary lists roots, back to Sanskrit, whatever, and cognates--other  words which derived, and are related, cousins, if you will.  

Look up "science:"  to cut, to know, to defecate, shit, schism, schizoid, sheath, stick, snowshoe, splinter, shiver, and probably "shiv" a knife.  

When I taught elementary school  I taught word derivations as luggage brought along  on a trip, and we traced roots back to where they came from via travel, conquest, immigration.

Try it, you'll like it.

Andrea



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