Monday, April 27, 2009

post-modern spelling?

I taught year 3 today. We started the day with spelling. I expected kids to misspell 'until'. Many did. We talked together about how it has only one 'l'. Good. When I was recording their results, one (unlikely) child told me he had all the words correct. I asked him to bring his book to me. As I suspected, his 'until' had two l's. He had given it a tick. When I pointed this out, he said, "Oh no, that's okay because, like, everyone in my whole entire family spells it that way." He spoke so confidently that my first thought was that he must have some special allowance to operate under an alternate spelling regime since his family has declared independance from the rest of the English speaking world...

Five seconds later (after a long pause!) I got a grip!

"Well. Everyone in your whole entire family is wrong." And I gave him a cross, corrected it, and changed his result.

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