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6. The right to know about and have available a lot of ways to come up with spellings (including just knowing how to spell the word)
Gertrude Hildreth, back in 1948, pointed out that by the end of third grade, children will have picked up the spellings of most of the common words they use in their writing and that their continuing task will be to figure out how to spell the rest of the words they want to use. This list will vary widely, since children and their interests are so different. Surely one of the most useful skills we can teach children is how to find the spelling of any word they may wish to use. Can they find a word in the dictionary quickly and efficiently? (Lots of room for minilessons here!) Do they have ideas about how to find a spelling if it's not in the dictionary? Do they know how to use a spellchecker?
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