I do agree with Val about the importance of words in context. It was usually the beginning of the year when the lists of commonly misspelled words appeared. Later, there would be words from the books they were reading or the units they were learning.

But we didn't mind the words for memorization. They were not quite as "abstruse" as the words listed above, and DS had fun coming up with goofy sentences. (I also agree that no 2nd-grade kid will know, or care, what an affidavit is, if that really was one of the words!)