Contronyms (or contranyms) are words that have two contradictory meanings. They are also know as auto-antonyms which comes from the Greek roots ‘auto’ (self), ‘anti’ (against) and ‘onym’ (name) – literally meaning a word that is the opposite of itself. … Continued
Several studies, including this one by Desimoni et al. (2012), have shown that good readers tend to be good spellers, and poor readers tend to be poor spellers. In particular, a study by Conrad (2008) found that children were better … Continued
Even the best speller will occasionally spell words incorrectly. The way you respond to mistakes and help children spell a word correctly can be very effective teaching moments. Teaching Steps Ask the child to accurately decode the word they have … Continued
A ‘palindrome’ is a word, number, phrase or other sequence of characters which reads the same backward as forward, such as madam, eye, kayak, refer, civic, level or Hannah. The word was apparently coined in 1638 by Henry Peacham using … Continued
When you hear /l/ at the end of a word with more than one syllable, it is often difficult for children to know whether to write ‘l’, ‘ll’, ‘le’, ‘el’ or ‘al’. However, with some orthographic knowledge it is possible … Continued