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Market Day. It’s the day after the Science Fair. I know you want to string us up, but it’s the favorite event of many students during their stay in Fourth Grade. So, here are the details.

The fourth grade website is NOT operable. I had to change hosting sites recently and it does not work. So here’s the fix:

–Download the “Week 16 for Parents” .zip file here from YouSendIt. It contains the:

• Open Court vocabulary words (the story is not available online)
• Mr. T’s spelling list
• DOL (daily oral language) answer key (sorry, a practice sheet is not available)
• Shurley Grammar study guide for my class (we are starting “Pattern 2″ sentences this week)
• Science Fair Information Packet
• Student Science Fair Notebook

–Download a .zip file unpacker here (most computers will open this file automatically when you click on it. If not, you can find one here)

Science Fair. Science fair materials can be viewed and downloaded here (look in the lower right hand corner under “Science Fair”). These are the remaining assignments:

Math 5. Problem sets 54 – 57 will be due as homework this week. They should have plenty of time in class to complete homework. They will test this Friday.

Daily Oral Language (DOL). Students edit two or three sentences daily in class and will test on some of the same sentences this Friday. Additionally, students will edit two similar sentences weekly for a quiz grade (to see if they can apply their newfound editing knowledge).

Spelling. Every student has a spelling list at their individual spelling level as determined by their Morrison-McCall test results (several kids spell well beyond the fourth grade age level). A copy of their list is sent home in their Monday Folder and a duplicate list kept at school.

Vocabulary. All students take a five word vocabulary test each Friday.

Shurley Grammar. Students will test this week in addition to classifying “Pattern 2″ sentences and working with vocabulary.

Commonly confused and just plain wrong

Today:

All right or alright?

Is it all right to write ‘alright’? Disagreement reigns among grammarians. To be on the safe side, use ‘all right’ in formal writing. ‘Alright’ is perfectly OK in informal writing, unless you’re emailing a mate with grammar-related blood pressure issues.

Not story, but storey.

I don’t know about you, but I used to be a lot more careful of and aware of my spelling than I am now.    I’ve been thinking about this on-and-off the last little while.  It’s been a gentle irritation in the past few years.  I have come to the conclusion that my backslide has much to do with my conistent use of the keyboard and of spell-check.

For me, words have a visual…flavour.  A flavour that is connected to — I don’t know how to describe this so that you understand — connected to the movement of hand holding pen, to muscles controlling movement.  When I need to remember how to spell a word, I cannot do so by dredging up the correct letters, one at a time from my memory as if in a spelling contest (Bouyant.  B-O-U-Y-A-N-T.  Bouyant.), as if being typed on a keyboard.  Instead, I see the word.   When the word is a difficult one, visualising it as if it is being written allows me to remember the correct spelling.  In other words, I remember how words are spelled because I’ve internalised how the words are spelled.  (This is different from memorising, which is a good thing for me, because — as my family and friends will tell you — my memory *ahem* isn’t the greatest.)

All-in-all, I have come to the conclusion that whipping off emails, using my keyboard, right-clicking on the mispelled word and choosing the correct spelling from a list! instead of getting up off my backside to look the word up is definitely going to put a dent in the amount of smug I’m allowed to feel.

(Of course, living in a country where car tire = car tyre, and street curb = street kerb, and where the ending -ize just does not happen! doesn’t make it any easier.)

Reverend Bob Levy Spelling Game. Bob Levy can’t spell. Game is simple. A caller guesses if Bob can spell the word or if Bob can’t spell the world. The only problem, Sal “The Stockbroker” Governale is in charge of the game and words. However, Sal gets the spelling of the words from Google. Then Sal starts to argue with BabaBooey. Hilarious radio! Order Sirius-XM and get the Howard Stern Show!

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Welcome to ‘Commonly confused and just plain wrong’ – a brand new feature on Wordwatch. Look out for regular posts on this topic.

Today:  

Affect or effect?

This is an old chestnut. I’m afraid you’ll just have to study the examples and get it into your brain.

To affect means:

1. To influence or change, for example: Her hard work affected the outcome of the project or The disease affected his appetite.
2. To make someone feel an emotion, for example: Her speech affected him deeply or The speech was very affecting.
3. To pretend, for example: He affected to love her.
4. To imitate or act in a pretentious way, for example: He affected a posh accent.

 To effect means:

1. To get something done or to achieve something, for example: He effected a change for the better.
2. The outcome or result, for example: The effect of the speech was to change all our minds.
3. To start to work or produce results, for example: The medicine began to take effect.
4. A figure of speech to mean ‘in fact’ or ‘practically speaking’, for example: The decision will, in effect, be of little consequence.

Aoccdrnig to rseerach at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn\’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh?

PS: Hwo\’d yuo lkie to run tihs by yuor sepll ckehcer?

Spotted on the front page of the online Telegraph newspaper today:

“Mass cover-up of sexual abuse by Catholic preists”

Preists? That should, of course, be ‘priests’. This glaring error opens a very tricky can of spelling worms. The old rule, ‘i before e except after c’, does, of course, apply in the case of ‘priests’. But what about words like ‘weird’ (appropriately enough), which drive a coach and horses through the rule, as do these:

Neighbour

Weigh

Sleigh

Leisure

Height

Neither

Seize

Protein

Caffeine

AskOxford, the Oxford Dictionaries site, says it is usually safe to follow the ‘i before e’ rule, but also explains the exceptions:

http://www.askoxford.com/betterwriting/classicerrors/spellingtips/ibeforee?view=uk

Unfortunately, some spellings evade the rules and just have to be memorised.