Spelling acivities 12 – Let them cheat

Cheating is bad. At least that’s one thing we can all agree on.

Cheating is good

Sorry to be difficult, but I’m not so sure. Cheating in a spelling test is an excellent learning activity and something that should be encouraged. Think about it this way. The lowdown scumbag is actually looking to see how the word is spelled. I like students who look to see how words are spelt.

How it works – it’s quite clever, if amazingly simple

Step number one should be obvious – you need to have a spelling test. If there’s no test, they won’t cheat because they don’t care about the result. They certainly won’t go looking for themselves to see how words are spelled.

Step number two is less obvious. We need to facilitate the cheating process. They might be shortsighted, they might not have planned ahead and brought their crib sheet, or it may even be a snap test. Most likely of all, of course, is that they haven’t bothered to write the words down in the first place. Something needs to be done to help them.

This is the clever bit, so I am going to use a new paragraph for it. What we do is go back about 50 years. You remember those old-fashioned chalkboards: the individual ones each student got and if little Johnny mispelt a word, he got walloped over the wrist. That’s the situation we need to recreate (perhaps minus the walloping). We laminate some card and give each student a card and a board pen to write the words. No matter what you do, they will be able to copy from someone.

Need any more reasons

Students love this whole process. I now have to fight them to stop spelling and start some real English learning. Try it for yourself.