Listening to Your Child Read

posted in: Reading | 0

Often as parents it is difficult to find the balance between scaffolding our children’s attempts at reading versus figuratively ‘standing back’ and letting our children take the lead in solving the difficulties they encounter. When it comes to reading, we … Continued

Spelling Apps

posted in: Spelling | 2

Many spelling apps are just an electronic version of Look-Cover-Write-Check.  This short video provides a strategy for modifying spelling apps to help students learn the spelling code rather than just relying on their visual memory of the word. Any purchase … Continued

Graffiti Word Wall

posted in: Spelling | 0

Vocabulary development is a key factor in reading achievement and overall academic success.  One way of increasing students’ vocabulary is encouraging them to read a wide variety of texts which contain vocabulary at an appropriately challenging level.  Research shows that … Continued

Pretty

posted in: Spelling | 0

Pretty is a very interesting word beginning with how it is pronounced. Why is the ‘e’ pronounced as /i/ like in insect and not /e/ like in egg? It is actually not uncommon for the ‘e’ to represent the /i/ … Continued

‘i’ before ‘e’

posted in: Spelling | 1

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