Spellcheck is a useful tool, but as Heubeck (2025) references in her article, spelling is integral to the reading and writing process. Student’s spelling provides a ‘window’ into their understanding of language. The ability to spelling accurately drives reading automaticity, … Continued
The ‘wh’ letter combination can be pronounced /w/ with the ‘h’ not pronounced (e.g., white). It can be pronounced /h/ with the ‘w’ not pronounced (e.g., who) and in some dialects of English it is pronounced /hw/. The placement of … Continued
The suffixes ‘-ant’ and ‘-ent’ are added to words to form a noun to indicate a ‘person who’ or ‘thing that’ (e.g., an ‘assistant’ is a person who assists, a ‘president’ is a person who presides). They are also added … Continued
Today, ‘gh’ is pronounced as /f/ as in ‘laugh’, /g/ as in ‘ghost’ or is not pronounced at all as in ‘daughter’ or ‘night’. It is interesting to look at the history surrounding this combination of letters as in fact … Continued
If you are not a good speller, the explicit teaching of words in terms of identifying the phonemes (sounds), the letters and letter combinations representing those phonemes (graphemes), the morphemes (prefixes, suffixes and stems) and understanding any relevant rules are … Continued