If you can get books from interlibrary loan or your professional library, the first thing I'd do is read all of what Regie Routman writes about spelling in her books such as Conversations and Writing Essentials. The reason I'd say to use the library is that there are just parts of several books that would help. I'd basically do the same thing with Lucy Calkins' books. There are so many word study and writing books that have parts of their books that address spelling.
I read all of Richard Gentry's stuff years ago and he did a good job of saying what doesn't work and why as well as his ideas of what does work. Just on a person basis, I regretfully don't consider some of his work as strongly as others because I wish he had a little more direct experience from which to draw conclusions. I am a big fan of Rebecca Sitton and if you had a chance to read the teachers' guide for her programs, you would get a huge boost in understanding why students need to spell correctly and how to teach them both to learn to spell and to want to spell correctly. At one time she called her program a spelling/proofreading program and I like that. I can't tell you how many graduation thank you notes I've received that just make me cringe. We must teach children to value correct spelling and proofreading is involved in that as well as being able to spell. Her later materials provide teachers with little experience or academic background support to teach effectively. She especially seconds Jennifer's motion that a child must be taught what he/she needs to know--who'd a thunk it? (great spelling, huh?) If I were to recommend something to buy, I might suggest the later books by Sandra Wilde (published by Heinemann) and the Word Study materials by Fountas and Pinnell. However, I'm not nearly as up to date in this area as Jennifer and she may have much better recommendations. The simple truth is--any program that doesn't transfer squanders kids' time. And if a program doesn't address what a particular child needs, his/her time is squandered. Sometimes I believe I have an "unperceived inconsistency" because I believe strongly in using phonetic spelling and have done all of the things that Renee has described successfully BUT I also believe most of us have been guilty of having too low expectations for a child to move toward progressively standard spelling. And I guess that's what I truly believe. We as teachers have better techniques, which Jennifer can speak to much better than I, but unless we teach children WHY they need to spell correctly and entice each of them to become fascinated by patterns and "stuff" to learn how to spell, they don't become self-extending in their quest to be an effective writer. We can't keep teaching them discrete things, never asking them to extend that learning, never caring about learning or learning about becoming "a speller," and expect them to develop necessary knowledge, skills, and attitudes. Later spelling instruction has to contain word origins, structural analysis, and many things that flip between decoding and encoding all the time. I guess what I'm saying is that we as a profession do know more pedagogy than we did, that I believe spelling is a vital part of word study, that children *have* to become interested in words and how they work, and that none of that will occur without professional reading and professional development for their teachers. The last thing I'll say is that the time to do what I discuss above has to come from somewhere and where better than from the time we spend using one list a week for all children, testing on Friday, and immediately dismissing from use. I hope Jennifer gets a little time to bring up some more in-depth, up-to-date sources than I did. I think I truly would start with Regie Routman though. You can also get podcasts from a lot of these folk online and Rebecca Sitton has a nice video online that is about as convincing as it needs to be for me to really look into it. Sometimes we forget the most obvious places for professional development--our teacher's guides! Speaking as someone who taught spellers for42 years and taught spelling for 2 (basal spelling pretest, study, posttest, forgetting), I'd take teaching spellers everytime. Hoping Jennifer responds more completely, but thought her summary points were powerful. On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 7:36 PM, norma baker <hutch1...@juno.com> wrote: > Thanks for your insight! What books would you recommend on the topic ? > > _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list Mosaic@literacyworkshop.org To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive
