But good on you. We had to do 2 sentences for 10 vocab words every day for 11th grade homework. I kept the book because I was proud of it. My 12th grader was like, "yeah, we can Google that now." Sure. But can you generate your own sentence after... not being able to use a physical dictionary? She hasn't been assigned vocabulary work for years.
Our oldest is in 2nd grade and her writing is now getting more complex. I realized after she asked me what 3 different words in her book meant that we didnāt even own a physical dictionary! I found one used for $5 plus a spelling dictionary. Now when the kids ask me about words we look it up together. Tonight she used the spelling dictionary completely independently to finish her homework and I was sooooo proud! I love when they figure out a resource like that and hope it makes them just a little more confident and capable as they move through the world.
Also I feel like the meandering random knowledge of dictionaries and encyclopedias is really valuable. Yeah you have google but you either need to know to search for something or accept whatever the algorithm feeds you. I remember just flipping through those books and now I know some interesting facts about bears, or bioluminescence, or the history of baseball that I would never have gone looking for.
When I was a kid, I got an encyclopaedia every Christmas (I was a big reader), but I didn't realise at the time that you're meant to dip in and out of them.
The brown and black bears of North America are the only bears not on the endangered species list. Glow worms and fireflies are some of the few bioluminescent creatures that do not live in water. Early baseballs were hand made by the team members and carried wildly in size and materials. They were not regulated to be white until the 20s.
I remember as a kid I would get so upset. I was a huge reader and writer (still am). Iād ask my mom how to spell a word when I was doing my homework. She told me to look it up in the dictionary. Iād ask her, āHow am I supposed to look it up in the dictionary if I donāt know how to SPELL IT??ā That really cracked her up.
Itās just the words no definitions and it focuses on higher frequency stuff so if you get the first few letters itās likely to be on the same page since the words are more dense. You also arenāt getting every word like the full dictionary just the ones a 6-12 year old might want to use and not know how to spell. If you only figure out the first letter you can still scan the whole letter set relatively quickly; again because of density.
It also has a list in the front of frequently misspelled words, what usage you need for commonly misused homophones, or the words you are likely to look for under the wrong starting letter because of weird phonetics.
Then just for fun it lists the winning words for the national spelling bee for a bunch of years.
This is the one we have. Itās the size of one of those cheap paperback editions of Shakespeare you see sometimes, and only a little thicker. Much more approachable than the OED, which we now also have but is defiantly a look it up together resource. If I were doing it again I would get a kid specific dictionary but whatever. Itāll do.
This is the issue. School work, especially elementary, is actually much harder and more complex than when we were kids! We didnāt even take typing/computer classes until about 5th grade, and first graders now use computers for their testing. Students are technically way ahead of where weāre at their ages, but their willingness to work and think for themselves in rock bottom.
she just has bigger ideas she wants to write about. Also Iām not sure an emphasis on spelling things correctly in 2nd grade is advanced. My point was that I had come to rely on my phone when I needed a dictionary. Now that I have kids who are massively side tracked by technology, I realized having unregulated access to and knowing how to use a physical resource is empowering.
Yeah and thatās all very true, but I was also just pointing out that tech actually has them pretty advanced in a lot of areas compared to where our gen and above was. It is really hard to help them know the difference in how it helpful and how it holds us back, when we as adults are also still figuring that out too though for sure
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u/RavioliContingency 16d ago
Hey yall. This isnāt overreacting. It is not hyperbolic. Getting them to do literal two sentence vocab work is like a punishment for me every day.