Spell to Write and Read

Spell to Write and Read: A Step by Step Guide to Foundational Language Arts

This book fasicinates me as a linguist. I have a background in teaching ESL (English as a Second Language) and this book is everything I wished I would have learned in my college courses. It gives details of all of our spelling rules in the English language that we take for granted, that we may not have even learned well ourselves. This book goes beyond the normal phonetics and actually teaches multiple sounds for each letter. Students learn that 'a' actually makes three sounds and 's' makes the 'z' sound in addition to the 's' sound. It also teaches when spelling rules are broken, that is, when foreign words are added to the English vocabulary, like tortilla or ski. The book encourages students to sound out words based on spelling rules and then to write them.  Reading comes naturally after knowing words through spelling and writing.

I have not started using this curriculum yet, but my sister-in-law Rebekah has used it with her children. She started her children with the 100 Easy Lessons to Teach your Child to Read, in order to build up decoding skills as well as general confidence in reading. Then, she has moved on to Spell to Write and Read to focus more on spelling and handwriting and to give her children a good foundation on all areas of reading skills.

Rebekah has developed a system of flashcards to incorporate the 200 most common words in the English language and grouped them by spelling rules. These flashcards are not directly related to the book, but this book inspired her development of the flashcard system.

This curriculum does encourage a lot of writing, and she has learned to not push too hard on writing too early and to also incorporate all the types of learning more in to her teaching of spelling (that is auditory – hear the word and the spelling, visual – seeing the word, hands on – actually writing the word).

So, I look to use this book after we complete our first reading curriculum. However, the curriculum can be started without already knowing decoding skills, but it is helpful for the child to have enough fine motor skills to be able to write without too much frustration.

I'm thankful to have a sister to give me ideas and pass on her curriculum to me and I can learn from what worked for her and what didn't work.  Thanks, Rebekah for the recommendation!