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 |  | More people seem to consider themselves poor spellers than good spellers, despite the fact that most of us spell correctly the vast majority of the words we write. With spelling, we seem to expect that all of us should spell one hundred percent correctly, even on first drafts, and even as young children. Perhaps it is this unrealistic expectation that leads some parents and others to object when teachers use methods of helping children learn to spell such as “invented spelling” in their early attempts to write. Critics mistakenly assume that children who initially use invented spelling will never become good spellers, or that if the time-honored method of memorizing spelling lists were used instead, every child would become a perfect speller. Neither observed experience nor research supports these assumptions. From the Slate Starter Sheet: On the Teaching of Spelling
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teaching strategies
Dr. Seuss's Sound Words: Playing with Phonics and Spelling
| Everywhere kids turn, they are surrounded by sounds. Starting by asking kids to listen for some of these sounds, and then by focusing closely, this lesson helps students develop spelling strategies that move them from phonemes—the sounds they hear—to graphemes, the written representations of those sounds.
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Spelling Today
|  The authors provide answers to common spelling questions, share successful teaching strategies, give tips for communicating with parents, and offer a grading rubric for spelling in this January 2004 issue of School Talk, a rich resource for K-8 teachers and administrators.
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Launching Family Message Journals
| Journals are offered as a tool to encourage family involvement and to support writing to learn. This primary teacher introduces journals by demonstrating writing a letter. Children then compose through guided writing and finally independent writing of messages that they will bring home for families to read and write replies.
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Grocery Lists, Shopping, and a Child's Writing and Spelling Development
|  Njima is one of many students coming to school needing additional support. Through attendance at an after school program and involvement of her mother, she gained a repertoire of learning strategies any teacher might adapt. From Talking Points, April/May 2001.
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Collaborative Stories 2: Revising
| This K-2 lesson engages students in a group-revising activity as students demonstrate reading comprehension skills by suggesting revisions to a collaborative story draft. (See Collaborative Stories 1: Prewriting and Drafting.) The teacher leads this shared-revising activity. Students participate in the marking of text and revising.
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professional readings
Supporting Challenged Spellers
|  Rebecca Sipe and colleagues worked to understand the dilemmas of their "spelling challenged" middle school students. By analyzing students' error patterns and literacy histories they developed strategies that supported these learners. From March 2002 Voices from the Middle.
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Spell-Check This! The Limitations and Potential of Technology for Spelling
|  Spell check can save us from spelling weakness, yet we shouldn’t let students use the tool without educating them about its limitations. Educators also wrestle with intentional misspellings common in e-mail and text messaging. From March 2004 Voices in the Middle.
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Squaring Up to Spelling: A Teacher-Research Group Surveys Parents
|  Kelly Chandler and colleagues surveyed parents to discover their perceptions of spelling and found parents see spelling as critically important, want time devoted to spelling instruction, want to see a grade in spelling on report cards, and see reading and writing as the primary ways children learn to spell. From Language Arts, January 2000.
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What I Wish I'd Known about Teaching Spelling
|  The author learned about teaching spelling to secondary students through a collaborative research project with elementary teachers. She analyzes classroom-based data and argues well-targeted instruction helps high school students become accurate and independent spellers. From July 2000 English Journal.
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Spellbound: Commitment to Correctness
| Middle school appeared to be the right time to create a list of "spelling unforgivables," in response to students' question: "Does spelling count?" Gail Thibodeau shares lists of "unforgivables" in place alongside writing workshop in this March 2002 Voices from the Middle article.
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related resources
Speller’s Bill of Rights
| Spelling researcher and NCTE spokesperson, Sandra Wilde, offers a set of ten principles that address the commonly held goal that children leave school able to express themselves strongly and effectively in writing. Included is the right to do a lot of reading, likely the greatest single factor in spelling acquisition. From Primary Voices K-6, November 1996.
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Test Your Spelling Prowess!
| Take your own spelling test from 50 commonly misspelled words. Is it alright or all right, harrass or harass, pursue or persue?
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Invented Spelling in the News
| Chicago Tribune columnist, Eric Zorn, posted his comments on invented spelling in 1987, and then apologized for his position fifteen years later when his five-year old son began to write. Read both columns, as well as reader commentary.
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Spelling Fact Sheet
|  Spelling strategies and research findings compiled by Constance Weaver for the Michigan English Language Arts Framework, and presented here by SLATE (Support for the Learning and Teaching of English), NCTE’s intellectual freedom network.
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Questions and Answers About Spelling
| Does invented spelling create bad habits? Shouldn’t kids be studying spelling lists every week? What about kids who struggle as spellers? Answers to these questions and more from CELT, the Center for the Expansion of Language and Thinking.
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Dmoz
| This web page provides user-nominated links to a wealth of online resources geared towards helping children and teenagers improve spelling.
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Spelling in Use
|  Authors Laminack and Wood Ray describe the foundation and practical details of working with spelling as one component of language learning. Student writing is analyzed in detail, making this text exceptionally valuable for workshops on spelling and writing instruction.
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