Reading these two articles, "Ten Important Words Plus: A Strategy for Building Word Knowledge," and "Making Words: Enhancing the invented spelling-decoding connection," made me think of how greatly this would of benefited me had I been immersed in these activities as a child. Growing up, I was not a fantastic speller, and it was always brought to my attention, especially in second grade how I needed to improve. I was trying my best to spell what sounded right to me. Had my teacher allowed us to create words using the a certain number of letters given to us, I would a. had fun, b. critically think about what words could be made out of specific letters, and c. remembered my mistakes. I think people learn how not make the same mistake twice through remembering what they did during a tangible and memorable activity.
Not only did I like manipulating cards to create different words, but I also like the idea of circling ten words that students found most valuable in the paragraph. I think it provides vocabulary awareness, past and present, and helps a child learn what context clues are. I thought it was a great idea to have different questions for different students after they read the passage to facilitate their critical thinking skills. These two articles made me reflect on what methods my teachers used to teach us words and their meanings. How did your teacher go about teaching you what words were and how they were important?
I think teachers telling their students to "improve" without offering more engaging ways of doing so is awful. So I am sorry you had to deal with that when you were young. But I agree, teachers have so many tools at their fingertips to make vocabulary, spelling, and comprehension something fun and attainable for all of their students.
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