Spelling

It's a Friday. What more can I say? 

I'm working on getting my ESOL endorsement - and the class I'm taking is called "Linguistics." Oh My Goodness! I mean, when I started teaching phonics - well, that's when I really learned and understood phonics. And now - wowsie! There's this whole chapter on English Phonology - which can just weigh a person down as they wade through it - where the tongue goes to make all these different sounds, and all this new vocabulary that I'm never going to use, and me trying to say all these words to see if what I'm reading is really true - LOL.

But this quote caught my eye: "Knowing where sounds are produced can be helpful in understanding students' spelling." 

Which made me think about this:

The zoo came to our school to visit us and so we wrote thank you notes today. This is actually from one of my higher kids {I'm disappointed in the amount he wrote - does anybody else have those high kids that do the least they can??} But the zoo gal's name is Misty. But what he heard is Mis D. OK, the quote might not be perfect - but what I got to thinking was that so often, what the kids are hearing isn't really what's being said. I see this a lot with the word "saw." Many of my kids say "sall" instead, and that's the way they spell it too. Don't know what to do about this - but just interesting to me.

And I just have to add this {with this background: Thursday was our state's birthday and I asked the kids to write about something they liked in Kansas.}

 Yes, Yes, what's more special than Wal-Mart? {And yes, I do shop there, but I'm just saying....} And what else says Kansas like Wal-Mart? Really, I don't even want to think about that!

Happy Friday to you! Have a great weekend!!