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An End to Homework! Alec I., 9th grade, Stamford, CT

July 16, 2012 by

Is it right for teachers to assign students homework?

If you ask me, homework takes too much away from a student’s life outside of school. For this reason, schools shouldn’t require homework. It should become optional, and if it’s completed the student would earn extra credit. Often a student will completely understand a concept but won’t do the homework because of how repetitive the work has become. The only thing this does for a student is lower a grade that deserves to be much higher. If students who did homework received extra credit, however, grades would ultimately go up. Students who know the material would either do the extra credit or keep their grades constant. Students who didn’t know the material would do the extra credit, thus improving their grades and understanding of the concepts.

A college looks for teacher recommendations, a good GPA and extra activities that students have done in school. If a high school student is given between two and three hours of homework everyday, where is the student’s free time? And what if the student plays sports and has to practice everyday for a couple of hours?

Now, what about the weekend? What about holiday breaks? What about summer vacation? Aren’t those good enough times to relax? Not anymore. Most schools nowadays give weekend homework, break homework and summer homework. That’s like a place of work giving a woman on maternity leave work that she must complete at home, rather than spend time with her new baby. Everybody needs a break once in awhile, but with schools assigning all this homework, they are robbing students of their childhoods.

For these reasons, the amount of homework needs to be decreased, or it shouldn’t exist at all.

 

 

Filed Under: Sound Off: Cool Essays from Cool Kids

The Winning Word…

July 15, 2012 by

Spelling Bee, Lori Anne Madison spelled dirigible correctlyDid you see Lori Anne Madison at this year’s Spelling Bee?

At age 6, she’s the youngest competitor in the history of the competition.

The first word she was asked to spell was “dirigible.”

The audience watched anxiously, but Lori Anne stepped right up to the microphone and spelled the word correctly.

But let’s take the word a step beyond spelling. Do you know the meaning of dirigiblecapable of being steered?

Well, you could say, for example, that you plan to travel in a dirigible vehicle. Can you think of another sentence using the word dirigible?

 

As for Lori Anne…she didn’t make it to the finals, but she sure made an impressive showing for someone who is just 6.

Who was the winner?

It was a relative old-timer–a 14-year-old named Snigdha Nandipati, who lives in San Diego.

She won the championship by correctly spelling the word guetapenstrap or ambush.

So give it your best shot and tell us how you would use the word guetapens in a sentence.

You never know when you might need to use this winning word!

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Do You Like This Puppy?

June 26, 2012 by


Vote for the word you think best describes this puppy. Click on ‘View Results’ to see what other people think.

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How Do You Like Your Sundae?

June 23, 2012 by

Vote for the word you think best describes this sundae. Click on View Results to see what others think.

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On the Road with Willow

June 16, 2012 by

Willow, the peripatetic catThis story is hard to believe, but it’s true. A calico cat named Willow somehow made it all the way from Boulder, Colorado, to the streets of New York City.

How did she do it? Well, the cat had gone missing from her Colorado family five years earlier, so some people imagined that she took a peripateticDefinition: Traveling from place to place journey on foot, wandering from town to town for days, months and even years until she reached her destination nearly 2,000 miles away!

The story that’s more likely, however, is that the sweet kitty was found by someone who took her by car or plane to New York City.

What Do You Think?

Do you know anyone who is peripateticDefinition: Traveling from place to place?

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It Means WHAT?!

June 11, 2012 by

Don’t ever feel less-than-brilliant if you need to look up a word or two in the dictionary from time to time.

Get this: Even our country’s Supreme Court Justices, those augustDefintion: respected, inspiring awe guys and gals in the flowing black robes, crack open the Oxford English dictionary and others when they’re not sure what a word means.

You might think they’d be looking up multi-syllabic mouthfuls. But, no, our preeminent legal authorities are parsing the meanings of ostensibly tricky words like “now,” “if” and “of.”

It’s true that one dictionary’s definition is not exactly the same as the next one’s. But we’re wagering that the meanings didn’t vary that much.

So tell us, esteemed cool-word watcher, what’s the last word you looked up?

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How Would You Describe Lady Gaga?

June 5, 2012 by

Keep checking back to see if your word choice was the most popular. The winning word will be announced on this website and considered for the CWC’s “Cool Word Hall of Fame.”

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10,000 and Counting

May 30, 2012 by

If you had to guess how many words you know, what number would it be?

Definitely more than hundreds.

It’s thousands, for sure.

But how many thousands?

4,000? 5,000?

Well, if you were an average teenager in the 1950s, you’d know a whopping 25,000 words, according to research. Those were the days when black and white TVs had just been introduced in the US, and “Leave It to Beaver” was a hit TV show.

Nowadays, the average teenager knows less than half that number–about 10,000. While that might still sound like a lot of words–and it is–it makes you wonder why there’s been such a huge drop in the number of words now being used.

Some words get used a lot these days–for example, “duh,” “like,” “no way,” etc. But that can’t be the only reason.

What’s your theory of why teenagers now know so many fewer words than in the past? Is everyone becoming a bit too laconicDefinition: Terse, using just a few words?

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Can’t Stand It!

May 25, 2012 by

OK, so we’ve all got a lot of favorite words.

Sometimes, it’s a word that just makes us smile when we say it—We’ve got to skedaddleDefinition: Flee, run away if we’re going to catch the 8:15 bus.

Or a word that just sounds cool when it rolls off the tongue—I almost stepped in a loblollyDefinition: Mudhole on the way home today.

But what about those words we don’t like?

Are there any words that you consider absolutely loathsome?

It could be a word that just gives you a queasy feeling when it’s said—Last night’s dinner made me want to regurgitateDefinition: to throw or surge back (as in undigested food).

Or a word that makes you want to hold your nose–That smell is really noxiousDefinition: Disgusting, unpleasant, harmful.

So tell us, esteemed cool-word watcher, what word do you most dislike?

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