Oct.+17+++Louisa+Moats+article

GM Louisa Moats wrote an article on spelling and its importance in reading. This article has a lot of information of word formations and history as well as research and instruction for all grades. Check it out. Ironically, I found a word that was not spelled correctly and spell check missed it. Here is the web site - www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/issues/winter05-06/Moats.pdf

This was a good article full of information on why spelling is important. Louisa writes that the research shows the importance of spelling instruction in the primary grades but that, as we know, that research is scarce for the upper grades. She discussed the history of our language and how only about 4% of our words are truly irregular if we know the history of the word and the sound/letter correlation. Much of what she wrote about reminded me of our speaker at our presentation. She spend some time reviewing the history of our language starting with the AngloSaxon words. She wrote that some memorization of rules is OK, but that a better way is to practice writing or reading groups of words that use a specific pattern. She shared that one of the most important skills for us to teach is the location of a sound in a word. For example, /ou/, usually ou at the beginning of the word, ou in the middle of the word and ow at the end. Her main point was that students can learn how to spell if they are taught the origin of the word, the meaning and the sound structure. It is a lot of information but she says it should just be divided among the grade levels. I thought it was interesting that the NAAP did not include spelling as one of the Big 5 because they felt with good phonemic awareness and good phonics, students would pick up spelling along the way. Now however, they are rethinking that as they are seeing some student's reading comprehension increase but their spelling skills decline by fourth grade.

CJ