Spelling

Students tend to make the same mistakes over and over again. As I often say, practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent. If you practice something wrong, you will learn it wrong. Learn it right instead! I'll keep adding things as I run into them in your work.Here are the correct spellings of common problem words in science class:

Article (notice it is "le" at the end). Get this right because you will be writing article summaries all year.

Atom (it isn't spelled the way it sounds because it comes from a Greek word, atomos. There is no "d" in "atom." "Adam" is the first human being in some religions, and he was much bigger than an atom.) The smallest possible bit of matter is the atom.

Because (as in "why did the chicken cross the road? Because it wanted to get to the other side"). This word has only one "a" in it, and no insects (that means you won't find any "bee" in it).

Breathe (with an "e") When you're out of breath you can't breathe. There's an "e" at the end which changes the sound of the word.

Disease (dis-ease; it's made up of "dis" which means "the opposite of" and "ease" which means "comfort"; in other words, disease means you're not feeling good.)

Exciting (the "c" is important because "exiting" means going away, which you do when you're bored, not excited.)

Exercise (Ex-er-cise. You'll use it a lot because it's good for you to exercise your vocabulary.)

Height (It's pronounced as if you were saying "hite" but it's one of those weird words where the "gh" is silent. Memorize this one.) The height of a room is the distance from the floor to the ceilins.

Length (This is a tongue-twister because it puts two complicated sounds together without anything in between, "ng" and "th".) The length of the longest anaconda ever measured was 37 and a half feet.

Nervous (there's no "e" at the end). Mr. Duffany's tests make 5th grade students nervous.

Organism (it only has one "i" and no "z") Any single living thing is an organism.

Particle (notice it is "le" at the end). The smallest possible particle of matter is the atom.

Probably (I guess most people pronounce it "probly" because they leave out the "bab" sound). Only one "l" but two "b"s. You probably don't need to say "probably" in your homework anyway. Try leaving it out.

Problem (only one "p" and only one "m"). A question to be answered, something to be solved. Many people have a problem with spelling.

Research ("re" means again, and "search" means to look, so research is looking again)

Release (there's only one "a" in the word) Mushrooms release spores for the fungus.

Science ("sci" means to know, so "sci-ence" is knowing something). (It comes from Latin originally.)

Similar (meaning "alike"). "Which" and "witch" sound similar, but they're different. One "a," two "i"s.

Temperature ("temper" like being angry, and "a" followed by "ture"--temper-a-ture). Don't abbreviate it as "temp." to avoid spelling it, I'll mark it wrong.

There/Their/They're (Their sound is the same, but they're not the same definition. So there.). "There" when it means "yonder" has a "here" in it. "Their" which means "belonging to them," has an "heir" in it (someone who gets all of someone's belongings when they die) and "They're" means "they are" and that's why it has an apostrophe; if you can say "they are" then it's "they're."

Our (As in "Human beings are adapted to many environments because our brains are large). "Our" means "belonging to us." NOT "are." "Are" is a verb. "Hour" is a unit of time. Neither one of them means "belonging to us."

Which (As in "Which type of tree has cones, a gymnosperm or an angiosperm?"). This word has two h's. The "wh" means that you are supposed to pronounce it with a little bit of a breeze (the same as in the word "whee!"). It does NOT have any t's in it. "Witch" is a word you won't run into in science, because it means someone who plays with magic. Magic doesn't belong in science.