Spellbound, a fascinating look into the psychotic/neurotic lives of eight middle schoolers who hope to win the National Spelling Bee, was the first documentary rented by Emily. We watched it with her, and we laughed a lot more than I expected. Wow.
I enjoyed Spellbound very much. It was a nice range of profiles: from families that combine opportunity with encouragement in a heartening way, to families that mix pressure and disapproval in a scary and mostly enraging way.
That mother that surrounded her daughter with "bee" puns was the scariest one of all. Does she really want her kid to remain clueless?
I only saw the first bit of the movie. I mut really finish it!
Spelling Bees fascinate me. We don't have them here at all. I mean WHY have spelling competitions? I understand general knowledge or problem solving or building things in competition, but spelling?
To see kids who seem to feel that their lives depend on it, and remember every little word they got wrong... it saddened me as well as confused me. Aren't there better things to work at so hard?
Yes, memorizing letters does not seem like the greatest use of time. Hopefully, the kids that are learning derivations and definitions are getting more out of it.
The best spellers don't rely on pure rote memorization. They learn the meanings of words and they learn the very informative patterns of borrowings and etymologies.
By knowing that 'cephalalgia' comes from the Greek and means 'headache' an informed kid can remember the root for 'head' and figure that the [s] is spelled with a 'c' and the [f] is spelled with a 'ph' and the schwa is probably spelled with an 'a'...
just hearing the word and not knowing it's history the kid couldn't solve the riddle. seffolalgea or sefellalgia or who knows how many spellings would be just as likely.
Knowing that antediluvian (winning word 1994) means before the flood not after the flood can help with the anti/ante ambiguity.
And so on...
It is a lot of memorization. It's a bit of guesswork. It's a lot of problem solving too.
And it's largely up to the parents to make it a good experience.
7 comments:
I enjoyed Spellbound very much. It was a nice range of profiles: from families that combine opportunity with encouragement in a heartening way, to families that mix pressure and disapproval in a scary and mostly enraging way.
That mother that surrounded her daughter with "bee" puns was the scariest one of all. Does she really want her kid to remain clueless?
That bee mother was outragious!
Come on now. Wouldn't you want your parents to bee that supportive of you?
I'd tell them to buzz off.
I only saw the first bit of the movie. I mut really finish it!
Spelling Bees fascinate me. We don't have them here at all. I mean WHY have spelling competitions? I understand general knowledge or problem solving or building things in competition, but spelling?
To see kids who seem to feel that their lives depend on it, and remember every little word they got wrong... it saddened me as well as confused me. Aren't there better things to work at so hard?
Wishydig, you crack me up. Buzz off!
Yes, memorizing letters does not seem like the greatest use of time. Hopefully, the kids that are learning derivations and definitions are getting more out of it.
The best spellers don't rely on pure rote memorization. They learn the meanings of words and they learn the very informative patterns of borrowings and etymologies.
By knowing that 'cephalalgia' comes from the Greek and means 'headache' an informed kid can remember the root for 'head' and figure that the [s] is spelled with a 'c' and the [f] is spelled with a 'ph' and the schwa is probably spelled with an 'a'...
just hearing the word and not knowing it's history the kid couldn't solve the riddle. seffolalgea or sefellalgia or who knows how many spellings would be just as likely.
Knowing that antediluvian (winning word 1994) means before the flood not after the flood can help with the anti/ante ambiguity.
And so on...
It is a lot of memorization. It's a bit of guesswork. It's a lot of problem solving too.
And it's largely up to the parents to make it a good experience.
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