Lunch Post #5
10.30.09
![The Space Gorilla was looking for A OLIV TEDE BEAR [an alive teddy bear]](http://www.robkimmeldesign.com/wandermonster/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Picture-211-585x362.png "Picture 21")
The Space Gorilla was looking for A OLIV TEDE BEAR [an alive teddy bear]. And the gorilla says “HA I FAWND ONE”[Ha I found one]
The drawing’s kinda complicated, but there are two other space gorillas, one with a laser gun, in the distance to the right of the original gorilla. Both the live teddy bear and the gorilla are thinking about…someone.
At this point in first grade at PS 154, they’re working on standardizing the kids’ spelling, but in kindergarten they strongly encouraged idosyncratic spelling. The strategy is to get the kids comfortable with writing by removing the stress of spelling correctly. Because of that (I think) Ben uses a lot of writing in his drawings, making comic books and posters for imaginary movies.
Idiosyncratic spelling? That’s a funny way of putting it. And a really odd teaching strategy. They STRONGLY encourage kids to write incorrectly? That seems completely backwards to me. I guess that’s not very progressive of me, but jeez.
Cat, we’re talking very small kids. The point is to encourage them to write, and not get stressed about spelling prematurely. So, in kindergarten, they explored the phonetic underpinnings of how words are made. Now, a few months into 1st grade, they are starting to build on that base. They are learning how words are *really* spelled, focusing on 6 or so a week. Ben eats it up. He will ask how to spell things now, and can anticipate how words are spelled. I doubt he’d use so much written language on his own if he’d been introduced to writing with an emphasis on spelling correctly.
We’re never having kids.