Spelling Intro - for our new Competency Semester 2

​Well, you might be surprised to find out that spelling and grammar mistakes can

cost big bucks!

​Only teachers care about these things, right??

​​PHISHING for SPAM?

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​A Grammarly study showed that professionals who did not get promoted at the same rate as their peers had made 2.5 times the grammar and spelling mistakes as their peers who were promoted.

Fewer errors correlated to more promotions! This means higher salary and status.

​​Career Advancement

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​In 2005, the Roswell Honda car dealership mailed 30,000 scratch-off tickets to potential customers as a promotion to get people through their doors. The grand prize was supposed to be one ticket worth $1,000. Unfortunately, someone misread the rules, and nobody caught the mistake during proofreading . As a result, 30,000 shoppers received their tickets—all of them grand-prize winners. That would have meant a $30 million payout! Instead, Roswell Honda offered everyone with a "winning ticket, a $5 Walmart gift card.​​

​​$1k or $30 million?

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How the letter 'S' cost $17 million​

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​In 2015, a British government agency reported that Taylor & Sons, a family engineering business established in 1875, was going bankrupt. The problem: it wasn’t. In fact, it was a completely different company named Taylor and Son (singular; no ’s’ at the end) had gone belly-up. No one caught the difference. Even though the typo was corrected within three days, the damage to Taylor & Sons’ credibility could not be repaired. They lost customers. They lost employees. Two months later they actually did go out of business. The government agency who made the error had to pay roughly $17 million to make up for the mistake.

​Website landing pages with sloppy spelling or grammar have a ‘bounce rate’ that is 85 percent more than pages with correct spelling and grammar. The ‘bounce rate" is how many visitors leave a website after only looking at a single page. So they not only lose the customers who bounce, but high bounce rates signal to Google that a site is not trustworthy so they lower its position in the search engine results - losing even more customers.

These days, technology is definitely on your side.

But, you still need to know how to spell and you definitely need to know how to proofread!

The answer is:

You use TOOLS.

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On a piece of loose leaf paper, write the words that I say. We will stop by to "grade" it. It won't tell us if you're a good person or bad person. It just tells us if you know the correct spelling of these particular words. Then please turn it in because we will refer to it later.

*It won't go into Aspen.​

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​We will discuss how it relates to improving spelling skills.

The #1 way to improve your spelling is to become AWARE of the many ways that make something spelled correctly.

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That's what we will do this semester: become aware of correct spelling and become aware of tools.​

​I'm glad you asked because there is much more to be AWARE of in spelling!

"But, ​I already focus on letters and sounds. That should be enough! What else could there possibly be to know?"

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Let's call it

metacognitive study.

Looking at the model above, we are starting at the top - assess the task.

Next, we evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of our current spelling situation.

Now, we are beginning to plan the approach.​

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​English is only one language, right?

Spoiler Alert: The following video will show you how many languages, centuries, and wars it actually took

to get to English.

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​This is all in a worksheet later. You don't any notes yet.

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1. How many syllables?

2. How many letters?

3. ​Does it (or part of it) remind you of a word you can already spell?

​4. Check Google - is there a common mnemonic that already exists for the word?​

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Click that link above to see a definition of

mnemonic and a whole menu of "tricks." We will do a whole lesson another day on improving memory.

The following 3 slides link to 3 websites.

You don't need to take notes yet. These are linked in a worksheet later.

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1. What is a synonym for this word?

2. What is an antonym for this word?

3. What part of speech is this word? ​

#1: ​wordsmyth.net can help you answer these questions:

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1. What is the root/base word?

2. A​ny prefixes? Meaning?

3. Any suffixes?​ Meaning?

4. What language(s) does this word originate from?

5. Is this word related in a meaningful way to another word so that it makes sense now?

#2: ​etymonline.com can help you answer these questions:

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1. What are all the words in this word family? (Learn one word and spell many!)

​#3: neilramsden.co.uk/spelling/searcher/

can help you answer this question:

​We already started the process, but work with an Elbow Partner for 10 minutes to complete it.

​For a memory BOOST, after you complete the worksheet, be sure to choose any of the famous mnemonic devices linked on the last line of the worksheet.

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We will give you another sheet of loose leaf paper for a post-test of the spelling words from before.​

Which word was easiest to remember how to spell?

Why do you think that is?

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The first way is how we've already been addressing it:

Grades based on your online editing.

This won't change. You will still get these grades as part of your overall grade in writing.​

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And, the third way is you will write Judge Your Spelling and Grammar* paragraphs. For these paragraphs, you will see photographs of real signs with spelling and grammar mistakes. You will have to analyze them and then write about the mistake and how to correct it. When I assign it, I'll give you a Google Form with directions and a rubric at that time.

*You will work on spelling and writing at the same time. It's going to be awesome!