How Spelling Supports Reading Based on the article “Why Spelling Supports Reading And Why It Is More Regular and Predictable Than You May Think” By Louisa C. Moats

Spelling Instruction  Can be designed to help students  Key knowledge of spelling leads to better reading  Spelling and reading have same underlying knowledge  Strong relationship between reading and writing

What about Spell Check?  Is spelling necessary?  Does spell check catch all errors?  Is spelling important?

Rules of Spelling  Students can develop a deep understanding of English by 1.Studying the meaning of roots 2.Prefixes 3.Suffixes 4.Related words 5.History of words 6.Language origins

Spelling in Daily Life  Filing  Phone book  Dictionary  Thesaurus  Writing notes  Games  Job applications

I. Nature of English Language  Making Sense of the English Spelling System  Not as irregular as you think  50% are spelled as they sound  34% are predictable  4% are truly irregular

First Principle  Words’ language of origin and history of use can explain their spelling 1.Influenced by several core languages 2.Layers of English language

Principle #2 Words’ meaning and part of speech can determine their spelling clues to an unknown word’s meaning  Clues to unknown word’s meaning  Meaning trumps pronunciation in the spelling of hundreds of English words.

Principle #3 Speech Sounds are spelled with single letters and/or combinations of up to four letters  Phoneme  Grapheme  Rules

Principle # 4 The spelling of a given sound can vary according to its position within a word  Position of graphemes in words

Principle # 5 The spellings of some sounds are governed by established conventions of letter sequences and patterns  Dictionaries  Spelling conventions

Five Principles  Words’ language of origin and history of use can explain their spelling.  Words’ meaning and part of speech can determine their spelling.  Speech sounds are spelled with single letters and/or combinations of up to four letters.  The spelling of a given sound can vary according to its position within a word.  The spellings of some sounds are governed by established conventions of letters sequences and patterns.

Spelling Instruction  NRP  Better spellers = Better readers

Spelling  Exploration of language  Then applied to various writing exercises

Recommendations  Kindergarten: Phoneme awareness, letter names, and letter sounds  Grade 1: Anglo-Saxon regular consonant and vowel phoneme- grapheme correspondences  Grade 1-3: Irregular Anglo-Saxon words

Recommendations (cont)  Grade 2: More complex Anglo-Saxon spelling  Grade 3: Multisyllable words, compounds, schwa, and most common prefixes and suffixes  Grade 4: Latin-based prefixes, suffixes and roots

Recommendations (cont)  Grade 5-6: More complex Latin-based forms  Grades 6-7: Greek combining forms

Inventive spelling  Helps young children learn about phoneme-grapheme correspondences  Frees them to focus on ideas  Important to Remember  Students should correct errors

Spelling Instruction  Important  Spelling supports reading  Contributes to vocabulary growth  Contributes to reading comprehension