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No more Friday spelling tests!
October 13, 2008
I think I'll open a can of worms this week and declare that teachers should abandon the age-old practice of Friday spelling tests. You know the routine (because you went to elementary school, and it hasn't changed): students get new words on Monday, "practice" them during the week using various drills; they take a test on Friday, and then on Monday, misspell the words and all the other words that share that spelling feature.
I'm not the only one who advocates abandoning the practice; in fact this blog's title came from a similarly titled 2005 Council for Exceptional Children article. Loeffler, the author, describes how this approach of teaching spelling fails kids who struggle, particularly kids with LD who have poor memory skills. She recommends using a spelling rubric (found within the article) based on student writing as an alternative to Friday tests. I have a few issues with the approach she suggests, but I do think it's a step in the right direction.
Teaching spelling well is a huge topic, one that can't be covered here in a blog post. But it's clear that we need to teach kids to spell in a way that makes sense. We know that spelling supports reading and that accurate spelling of words supports fluent writing. We also know that methods like this just fail our kids.
Let's start a conversation about what we can do to teach spelling well. Is your child a good speller? Do you see the "Friday test, Monday miss" phenomena in your house? How can we make sure each child's spelling words are at the right level of challenge? How can we teach sounds, syllables, morphemes, and something about word origin?
Note: Comments are owned by the poster. We are not responsible for their content.
I agree! I have nothing to say from a teacher's perspective, (except that my mother is a first grade teacher and agrees that the tests make no difference)but as a parent I hate these! I have to spend the precious little time we have on practicing spelling, since their is a test, when I feel like other things I could be doing would be more productive for my child. He has never gotten 100%, despite our efforts, and it is going to start bothering him! :(
I agree also, I have triplets and one of the three struggles w/ spelling and reading. This brings tears at our house constantly. It is hard to have her sister who "just gets it" and herself who struggles and basically memorizes each word and hope and pray that she remembers correctly for Friday spelling tests. And by Saturday has completely forgotten the correct spelling of the words. I had spoke to the teacher to reduce her spelling words and the teacher did not agree with my suggestion as she thought she was doing fine on her tests (averaging an 80-95%) on each test, but little does she know the stress that builds up each week and the dreadful tears on Thursday evenings. So I do agree also.
Sounds like the stress that builds up each week comes from home where the sister does well, and mom is not doing anything to say that 80-95% on a test is ok. The pressure comes from mom who is trying to get the sibling up to the first sister's performance level instead of making the sister who doesn't do so well feel ok with her performance. As a teacher 80-95% is good! Every student is different, and while we want all to meet the same standards, I encourage my students to do the best they can do. If they tried their hardest, and got an 80%, then we are proud of that accomplishment. Soon, without the added stress of trying to compete with all the others who earn 100% every time, the student with the 80% sometimes begins to perform better, and try even harder on their own without additional pressure.
My 2nd grade son gets a spelling test every Friday. Personally, I think it should be monday because he spend all week studying for it (I keep an Index card around for him to study alittle bit here and there in the car) but forgotten how to spell them by Monday. I think if he got his mind off of school and study it over the weekend after studying them during the week, he might just remember them for good, but I don't know.
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I always loved spelling tests, but I can understand the reasoning behind seeking a better approach. For some kids, the whole ordeal can be very distressing:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/gloucestershire/7648274.stm