A Lesson in Spelling and Collaborating
Saturday, October 10, 2009 at 9:47AM [Marcy Webb] Share Article Email Article Permalink in Lessons and Activities 2 Comments What we know about individuals, no matter how rich the details, will never give us the ability to predict how they will behave as a system. Once individuals link together they become something different ... Relationships change us, reveal us, evoke more from us. Only when we join with others do our gifts become visible, even to ourselves. Unknown
I debated using "Typewriter" with my Twosies. However, I relented, and decided to let them have a go at it.
This wonderful website explains "Typewriter", as well as many other activities for practicing vocabulary. I resisted using "Typewriter", because it is tagged as an intermediate-level activity. Additionally, instead of having two or three different Spanish alphabet letter cards each, my students had up to ten different Spanish alphabet letter cards each. Last, the students were required to spell out the words, in Spanish.
Following a rather tentative beginning, and a review of the pronunciation of the Spanish alphabet, the students were very successful. Given the philosophy of my place of employ, the students are reasonably adept at collaboration. However, the most important collaboration skill the students were required to use was listening: listening to the word to be spelled, especially for tildes and accent marks, and, listening to group members.
Did I mention how proud I am of my students?
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Reader Comments (2)
When I studied Spanish in school, I always thought spelling tests were a bit silly -- exercises that involved other skills and also made you spell were fine, but we had times when the teacher would just recite words, we'd have to write them down, and we'd be graded on that alone.
Because, as you know, Spanish is probably the easiest language in the world to spell. There are, to be sure, a few possibilities for misspellings, such as:
- ce/ci vs se/si (one could spell "cinco" as "sinco", or "cena" as "sena"),
- accents, as you mention, and tests to make sure we know "si" from "sí", "tu" from "tú", and "como" from "cómo" are useful,
- the silent "h": I've seen native speakers write "habierto" on the signs in their shop windows.
But as someone who's always been excellent at spelling in English, I thought that Spanish was just about foolproof!
Now, French n'est *pas* la même chose, pas du tout!
I hear you re: graded spelling tests, despite the fact that many of us of a certain generation have grown up with them, and from a very early age.
As you indicate, Barry, there are a number of exceptions in Spanish with respect to spelling, pronunciation and grammar, and, I think when students realize this, they actually have to work at it in order to be proficient.