Weekly writing challenge:A Lost Art

Tell us about a lost art: one that you know ,one that you miss, or one that should be lost for good.

In my first year of teaching I found among other books in language arts, they also  had a   speller. It had around thirty lessons, in each lesson there were twenty  words the kids had to learn how to spell , every Friday they were given a spelling test, most kids spelled all of them correctly, there were a few who did not.

Besides the spelling words there were words that sounded the same but the meaning was different e.g there,their, they’re; to,too,two, by,buy,bye and many others. There were sentences with fill in the blanks for kids, they had the similar sounding words, they were asked to fill in the right word.

There were words where the root words were given the children were required to add ed or ing to the root word.

The kids were encouraged to write stories or poems using the words they learned that week.

The book had everything which helped the kids to learn about capital letters ,periods,and so on.

I felt it was a wonderful way of encouraging the kids to write.

These spellers were used for kids from grades one to eight, they were numbered from book one to eight. The parents complained their child was having trouble learning to spell twenty words each week.

I thought learning  to spell twenty words in one week was not that much of a challenge, yet there were parents who constantly complained.

The Department of Education suddenly decided to take away the spellers from the course, this hasty decision back fired because the kids coming up the grades could not spell even the simple words.

I felt it was a wrong decision made by the school board and the department of education.

Permalink: https://sabethville.wordpress.com/2014/06/05/weekly-writing…engea-lost-art/

DP Daily Prompt: The Kindness of Strangers

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When was the last time a stranger did something particularly kind ,generous,or selfless for you? Tell us what happened!

It was a  cold Friday afternoon school was over, I was walking home, The snow on the ground and on the pavement made me nervous, I thought I have to walk carefully to avoid falling, which is what I was doing, suddenly a fierce cold wind gust, blew the papers I was carrying all over the place. I was stunned, these were the spelling test papers of my kids, there were thirty altogether. I watched the papers flying further down as I was trying to pick them up. Bewildered I knew it was a futile effort on my part to gather those, I thought I’d let them go.

When I turned around to hurry home,I noticed a black car stop near the papers, a man stepped out and started picking up the papers, I was too embarrassed to walk away, so I joined in and reluctantly picked up the remaining pieces. The stranger handed me the papers he was able to collect, I was so overwhelmed by such a noble act,I forgot to thank him.

Next day my husband came home and said, “Hey Ranu did you find all your Papers?”

“How did you know about them I asked?”

“Oh, he said Mr. Jenkins asked me to ask you.”

“Really I said ,he didn’t tell me who he was !”

I thanked the Lord, if I hadn’t waited to get those papers, I would be in trouble, Mr. Jenkins’ daughter was one of my students who wrote the spelling test, imagine!

k: https://sabethville.wordpress.com/2014/05/11/dp-daily-prompt-4