I have just finished reading an interesting and informative book by David Crystal titled ‘Spell It Out: The Singular Story of English Spelling’. David devotes a chapter to arguing that the teaching of spelling rules fails to work because of … Continued
Handwriting lessons in which children were taught how to hold a pencil and how to form the letters of the alphabet used to be an integral part of the school day. Now, for many children, their first exposure to writing … Continued
If you are not a particularly good speller, the more spelling rules you know and understand, the better your spelling becomes because it gives you a framework to determine the most likely spelling of a word and this is supported … Continued
Every subject has vocabulary that students need to understand in order to make sense of the content being taught. The current research suggests (see for example Rastle, 2018) that skilled adult readers routinely use morphological knowledge in addition to knowledge … Continued
Sometimes a good way to ‘kill’ a child’s interest in reading is to ask questions about the book. As soon as you are asking questions, you are testing and for many children (especially poor readers) testing can be stressful.[divider]Instead of … Continued