Recent efforts to motivate parents' involvement in their child's literacy development involve informing parents about how to incorporate literacy development into daily routines. Teacher leadership and communication are critical--the more teachers encourage and assist parents and caregivers in supporting their child's literacy development, the…

For two decades, "Speech to Print" has been a bestselling, widely adopted textbook on explicit, high-quality literacy instruction. Now the anticipated third edition is here, fully updated with ten years of new research, a complete package of supporting materials, and expanded guidance on the "how" of assessment and instruction…

This is a companion to the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) practice guide, "Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten through 3rd Grade" (ED566956). This guide is organized according to the four recommendations and how-to steps from the WWC practice guide. The activities follow the typical developmental…

The goal of the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) Practice Guide, "Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten through 3rd Grade," is to offer educators specific, evidence-based recommendations for teaching foundational reading skills to students in kindergarten through 3rd grade. The guide suggests…

Kids love jokes--and teachers and SLPs love fast and easy ways to improve students' phonological awareness. That's why every elementary and middle-school SLP and educator needs this playful, effective activity book, packed with jokes and riddles that increase students' awareness of the phonemes that make up words. The perfect way to avoid "drill…

This primer lists the 44 sounds in the English language and then gives steps for teaching those 44 sounds and their most common spelling patterns. In addition to learning sounds and spellings, each day the student must read lists of phonetically related words and spell these words from dictation. Phonics instruction must be reinforced by having…

Boom! Br-r-ring! Cluck! Moo!--exciting sounds are everywhere. Whether visiting online sites that play sounds or taking a "sound hike," ask your students to notice the sounds they hear, then write their own book, using sound words, based on Dr. Seuss's "Mr. Brown Can MOO! Can You?" During the three 45-minute sessions, grade K-2…

This article describes effective instructional strategies for teaching verbs with inflected endings. The ability to spell past and present progressive verbs provides an example of how children need to learn to integrate their developing understanding of letter-sound correspondences with knowledge of morphological and orthographic patterns in order…

Describes a technique to train students to associate correct pronunciation of German with the graphemes as soon as they see them. When a student misreads a word, he or she is asked to compare that word with very common words which are almost never mispronounced or misspelled, such as "ein,""die," and "deutsch." (SED)

This book remains a comprehensive, myth-debunking examination of how L1 features (orthographic system, phonology, morphology) can influence English L2 reading at the "bottom" of the reading process. It provides a thorough but very accessible linguistic/psycholinguistic examination of the lowest levels of the reading process. It is both theoretical…

Premised on the idea that spelling should be taught in the context of writing, this book is designed to enhance teachers' understanding of how their students learn to spell and to provide advice and practical activities for the day-to-day classroom program. The first part of the book provides specific information about management of the class…

Developed for use in small groups, this unit of study is aimed at helping children in England who have reached Level 3 in English at Key Stage 2 but who may be making errors in spelling, particularly in the area of vowel choices. In this unit, pupils read realistic texts and investigate the spellings of words they find there. While spelling is the…

Defining regularity in the English language is not a straightforward matter because of the complex relations between sound and spelling. Predictable patterns are those spellings that can be readily predicted from pronunciation. Rare and unpredictable spellings are found only in a small set of words--probably 10% or less of the vocabulary in…

In the context of whole language learning, the teaching of phonics can be approached in two different ways. In one situation, the teacher engages children in composing with a purpose and for an audience, during which time the children become aware of graphophonic relationships through their need to spell words. In the other situation, the teacher…

Noting that students write more freely if they feel confident about their spelling, this paper offers seven practical and effective ways that teachers can help their students become better spellers. The suggestions offered are as follows: (1) teach students that English spelling is systematic; (2) teach students which spellings are predictable;…