Scrabble

How many parents can honestly say that they loathe at summer vacation homework?

Why, I wonder, should we ask students to bring home a stack of homework at the end of school year? To my relief, my daughter doesn't have to. The important thing in summer is not so much to pack students with mountains of homework, as to discover new ways of learning.

As kids, they want and need us to bring them new ideas. My daughter spent the whole night playing Scrabble with me yesterday. Yes, that's real fun.

First things first: we don't have ironclad Scrabble rules. I won't object to using the name of Moana movie characters. Does tallying the scores teach numeracy? You bet they do. Children learn to maximize scores using the triple word or triple letter points. The most effective way of teaching by Scrabble I've ever seen is adding a D in front of ANGER so that the word spells DANGER. Alas, that's a good lesson to remember anger is just one letter short of danger.