by Princess 54 Replies latest jw friends
My son is in a school for smart kids. They call it "Challenge". He is in 2nd grade, just turned 8 last month. Here is the spelling test he brought home yesterday.
1. Improvise
2. Iodine
3. Meteorite
4. navigator
5. average
6. Ignition
7. Judcial
8. mechanic
9. Companion
10. abilities
How would you score this test?
9 out of ten, unless they nailed him for capitalizing common nouns...
CZAR
I'd spell #'7 as Judicial
"Government" is one that people often misspell.
"Ridiculous" is one that is often misspelt on this site
It's judicial.
Hard test for that age group. Definitely a test for kids with a high IQ.
He got 4/10.
Numbers 4, 5, 8 and 10 were correct. She marked the words that were capitalized wrong. It seems nitpicky to me. The words ARE spelled correctly and it is a spelling test. He only spelled judicial wrong.
This spelling test was relatively easy compared to some they've had. Spelling is never a problem for Rhys, judicial is the first word he's missed this year.
*shakes head sadly*
...if you hadn't left the truth, your kid would surely know how to spell "judicial"... that's all I'm sayin'
She marked him down for capitalizing words?
That's just plain wrong!
Since it's in the style of a list, i would think that capitalised is ok. But then, one could wonder why they weren't all capitalised. Doesn't seem that important to me, though.
S
If the teacher made the expectation known at the beginning of the year that she considers it "incorrect" to capitalize common nouns, then it isn't being nitpicky. If it was an oversight in her teaching, then she ought to let this incident pass, inform the students of the "rules", and from that point forward the children would be expected to follow that rule.
Maybe you can find out if that expectation was made clear to the children. Technically, it is an error to spell common nouns with a capital letter at the beginning. For some reason, my kids have always been taught and have understood that standard, and they aren't in a special school for smart kids.
The other thing you can do is let Rhys know about this "rule" yourself, and have him consider it a learning experience. I wouldn't think it would be worth the trouble to make an issue of it with the teacher, regardless of whether I thought the teacher was being nitpicky or not.
As well, I'm sure Rhys has a spelling text book that the teacher uses to give the assignment, or if she prepares the spelling words herself, have a look at the page where the spelling is modelled for the children. All of the spelling words, when tested, should be spelled by the students exactly the same as what is modelled on the sample pages. If the samples and models are capitalized, how can the teacher expect any different? Just remind Rhys to print the words exactly as they appear in the spelling list.
Love, Scully
You're not being unreasonable at all. This was a spelling test, not a capitalization test!
