This review highlights some areas of current interest in teaching students to spell and how spelling skills develop. The topics covered in the paper include: theories of spelling acquisition, theories guiding effective teaching, the importance of word study approaches across the age range, the influence of technology on learning to spell, spelling…

The teaching approach described in this article was originally designed for kindergarten students who are at risk for reading disorders. In a 30-minute session, students practiced attending to and identifying the spelling patterns, pronunciations, and meanings of common morphological suffixes through listening activities, interactive book reading,…

Making spelling instruction effective, fun, practical, and meaningful is a challenge faced by many teachers. Spelling is traditionally taught with prepackaged word lists using a test-practice-test method, which results in little transfer to independent word use. Because spelling is an important component and gauge of literacy skills, students need…

This paper presents a professional development model to support the implementation of word study in the middle school grades. The first section provides a rationale and considerations for the model. The following section discusses the theory and instructional methods of word study focusing on word sorting and word hunts. To confirm the…

The purpose of this research was to evaluate the impact of a word study literacy approach on the spelling ability and self-efficacy of adults in a county jail. Forty-four inmates participated in the word study intervention that provided them with hands-on learning. The word study intervention was conducted in four separate sessions (September,…

The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of four presentation-practice combinations of manuscript and cursive writing on the spelling achievement of fourth-grade subjects. Factors included in the investigation were initial spelling accuracy, visual memory and sex. The experimental subjects in the investigation were 120 fourth-grade…

Children with spelling difficulties are limited in their participation in all written school activities. We aimed to investigate the influence of word-prediction as a tool on spelling accuracy and typing speed. To this end, we selected 80 Grade 4-6 children with spelling difficulties in a school for special needs to participate in a research…

This project investigated six 2nd-grade students' use of word study instruction to mediate spelling while writing in their journals. In particular, the researchers examined the students' use of the orthographic principles, sample words, and spelling strategies that had been taught during developmental word study lessons. Results of the project…

Literacy is an increasingly important factor as schools focus on improving student achievement. Literacy skills in reading and writing are critical components needed for both access to the general curriculum and for successful academic achievement. A key component of reading and writing is word identification, a skill deficit for many adolescent…

Intended to help students improve their vocabulary and spelling skills, this booklet offers activities on synonyms, antonyms, homonyms (including homophones and homographs), and acronyms. It is suggested that the teacher present these types of words as members of the "Nym Family." Ideas for posters and books to be used as instructional…

Describes exercises designed to teach students the differences between one-word and two-word forms. (HOD)

A review of the Cohen study (1969) of the structural analysis methods used in spelling book exercises, and an update on the exercises contained in current texts. (DD)

An action research project was conducted to measure any difference in spelling achievement after Word Study activities were used during spelling instruction. Word Study approaches to spelling instruction offer hands-on experiences with the manipulation of letters to form words. It was hypothesized that students taught spelling skills with a Word…

A significant amount of research has revealed that many students memorize words for a test, then later forget the correct spellings. A study examined the effectiveness of two approaches to teaching spelling: the "traditional" method based on grade level speller and deductive thinking; and word study based on recent research on developmental…

A component tryout of first-grade spelling was conducted using students who received concurrent reading instruction based on Southwest Regional Laboratory (SWRL) materials. Pretest and posttest measures obtained from four comparable first-grade classes were used as baseline data against which to judge program effectiveness. This report describes…