Teaching Kids to Spell

Teaching Kids to Spellfills the need for a book to help teachers working in an integrated language arts program provide systematic, personalized spelling instruction. The authors provide a much-needed bridge between traditional spelling instruction and whole language approaches, showing teachers (and parents, too) how spelling ability begins to emerge in young children's invented spellings, how it grows as children pass through predictable stages of spelling strategies, and how eventually every student can reach a standard of correct "expert" spelling. The text includes wordlists, tips for teaching predictable patterns, and a variety of individual activities that prepare children to meet the phonetic, semantic, historical, and visual demands of spelling, plus strategies for implementing a spelling workshop in the elementary classroom. Teachers, school administrators, and parents who want to understand the complex process of spelling will find this book a valuable resource.

JEAN WALLACE GILLET has been a classroom teacher of English, language arts and reading, an elementary reading specialist, and a teacher educator at the university level. She is the author of two widely used college textbooks on teaching language arts and reading, and numerous journal articles. She is presently an elementary reading teacher in Charlottesville, Virginia.Nationally and internationally respected for his work in spelling education, J. RICHARD GENTRY brings the same talent for research synthesis, balance, and classroom-based common sense to clarify best practice for balanced reading. His one-day balanced reading workshop brings to bear a twenty-five year career in reading education. A former elementary school reading teacher, clinician for children with reading disabilities, and director of university reading centers, Richard has guided hundreds of children to read successfully and hundreds of teachers to adopt balanced reading instructional practice. Richard is well known for his successful work in teacher staff development. Among Richard's numerous articles and books, Spel...is a Four Letter Word, Teaching Kids to Spell, and My Kid Can't Spell!, are available from Heinemann, these provide accessible and practical guidance for teachers and parents.