The Science of Spelling - Why the "Just Sound out the Word," Strategy Often Backfires

Have you ever heard a teacher say, “Just sound out the word,” 

to a struggling young speller?

Or maybe you’ve said those words to a student yourself?

This strategy frequently backfires...

Click on the picture above to learn more about The Science of Spelling and why "Sound it out," may not be the best strategy for students.

Thanks for sharing, Jennifer.

Writing Scoring Guides - Opinion, Informative/Explanatory, & Argumentative

During our first LNW of the year, we created the scoring guide for narrative writing pieces. In this post, you will find writing scoring guides for other types of writing, which have been adapted from Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium to reflect our 3-2-1 standards-based scoring system.   You can also find these scoring guides on your grade level pages.  

Please note:  when we created the narrative scoring guides, each grade tweaked the SBAC scoring guide to meet the needs of that specific grade.  If you choose to tweak the scoring guide for your specific grade level, please send it to us and we will share it on the website.

OPINION Scoring Guide for Grades 2-5

INFORMATIVE/EXPLANATORY Scoring Guide for Grades 2-6

ARGUMENTATIVE Scoring Guide for Grades 6-11

Star Summit Presentations

There were so many great workshops at the Star Summit that we could not get to all of them.  If you would like to share your amazing Star Summit presentation with other Nixa teachers, please send them to Angie or Debby, and we will get them uploaded on one of the blogs.

EAGER AUTHORS

Are you an enthusiastic writing teacher?

Do you want your students to love writing?

Do your students consider themselves writers?

Would you like for them to become a community of eager authors?

It's all possible, check it out:

Relyn's Star Summit Writer's Workshop Powerpoint 2014

ELA Fails

I popped into Camille Springer's 6th grade classroom one day and she was teaching a lesson about grammar to her students.  It wasn't your typical pick out the misspelled word, missing punctuation, or poor grammar in the sentence type of lesson.  She was using something near and dear to a pre-teen's heart.  Social media.  She was showing them examples of errors found on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter and reminding them that the posts they make go out to all of their friends, family, and followers.  Errors like these could potentially make them look....well, check out some real life ELA fails and decide for yourself.  

.  

Not sure I want this job!

 Beam Me UP, possibly?

But is spelling too easy for the news?

Now I have Divo's "Whip It Good" stuck in my head.  Thanks.

Also, if you could do that before you begin pumping your gas, it would be helpful.

 To eat, or not to eat?

Gross.

 I agree.  It does make them look a little stupid.

 I'm not sure why that keeps you two from enjoying a bowl of ice cream.

I wonder when pedestrian season opens?

I'll pass on that breakfast choice.