Aside #1: Two (possibly large) factors: 1) it was publik skool, and 2) it was in Alabama.
The words on our spelling tests were certainly similar in difficulty to the books we were reading. And I'm pretty sure that 2nd grade was a little harder than 1st.
Things are different now. Here is a table of actual spelling words from my youth and from this week's 2nd grade spelling list:
It goes on, but I think you get the idea. Things are different now.1970 2005
---- ----
cat rafflesia
dog ecosystem
run biodiversity
see endangered
ball extinct
red genus
Aside #2: Actual is too strong of a word. I'm invoking artistic license and making up the 1970 list, and it is more likely to be early 1st grade level. But I'd be shocked if anyone could produce a 1970 Alabama reading text that included words like my kid is reading, and spelling, now in the 2nd grade.
4 comments:
Jumentous!
Is the anonymous poster suggesting that my posting is a (wet) shaggy dog story? :-)
To be fair, the words above are from a "challenge" list that is given to kids who correctly spell all of the words on the weekly pre-test. And they are taken from the standard 5th grade spelling list.
So no, they don't expect all 2nd graders to spell "rafflesia". But I was shocked (and sent running for the dictionary) when I saw that word on my kid's spelling list (he usually does well enough to get the challenge list).
However, all of the kids are studying the environment and habitats and such. It's part of what they call an "integrated" curriculum, where all of the subjects, from reading to science to math, are tied together in the hopes that it helps the kids to learn. So they are all hearing about biodiversity and such, even if not all of them are expected to be able to read or spell such words.
somehow, I find the posting to be not only ostentatious, but superfluously bubblicious.
Then again, my RSS Reader seems to think the last 8 of your 13 postings are new, and I know that snot [sic] the case.
Trish-Bob,
I, too, lived in Huntsville, Ala. Of course, when someone in Texas says they did 9 years in Hunstville it has a completely different meaning. :-) (For those outside of Tejas, Huntsville is a prison town. When the signs on the highway warn against picking up hitchhikers there's a good reason.)
Went to Whitesburg Elementary and Middle School, and Grissom High School.
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