Getting creative juices flowing

Christine Carrillo

The words that have often tripped up spelling bee competitors over

the years have been those pesky non-phonetic words. The words that no

matter how hard you try you just can’t sound out. The words that when

you read them on a page you can’t help but ask yourself questions

like, “Why is there a ‘g’ in through?” or “Why does canoe have an ‘e’

in it?”

While non-phonetic words have, for years, posed problems for many

aspiring and reluctant writers, that is until spell-check came along,

they must be learned.

And learning how to spell 155 of the most common ones has been the

primary focus of Lynda Zussman’s Instructional Support Program class

at Adam’s Elementary School in Costa Mesa for the past few months.

Zussman’s class, one of the many she teaches, combined fourth and

fifth-grade students with learning disabilities, primarily visual

motor impairment and auditory processing disabilities.

“We try to focus on their abilities instead of their

disabilities,” Zussman said. “Everybody can learn, but they learn

differently.”

After all of her students successfully learned their word lists,

their lesson moved from spelling to writing.

She gave each of her students a little, stuffed bear, or pet, as

the class referred to them, for accomplishing their spelling feat and

asked that each student give their pet a name, a personality and a

story.

“They need to see and feel and touch,” Zussman said. “It’s very

multi-sensory ... it’s a great motivational activity to get them

writing.”

From creating the pet’s adventures to it’s magic powers the

students had to dig into their imagination and verbally convey a

story to their teacher and fellow classmates.

“I think that it’s fun,” said 10-year-old Laura Verrette, who

named her pet Heart. “I get to discover and make up stuff about my

bear.”

Once they tell their stories to the class, the students then tell

their stories on paper.

“[The best thing] is the writing because you’re making it’s own

personality,” said 10-year-old Christian Maldonado, who also enjoyed

the creativity of the project.

Milking their creativity and sparking an interest in writing, each

student also learned a bit more about writing -- not to mention about

spelling those pesky words.

“It’s fun and helps us write paragraphs,” said 10-year-old Ivan Garcia, who added that having their pets in front of them helped his

creative juices flow. “We have a picture so we know how to describe

them.”