Early Spelling

In his latest book, Gunther Kress explores how children learn to spell in the context of current concerns about early literacy, examining the effects of technological and cultural changes in society.

Gives children a sound beginning in spelling everyday words. Each book reinforces key spelling patterns.

In his latest book, Gunther Kress explores how children learn to spell in the context of current concerns about early literacy. Using numerous examples of children's writing and drawing, Kress looks at children as 'makers of meaning' and explores their earliest ventures into writing. Kress covers problems such as dyslexia within today's educational system. Technological aids on spelling and writing such as spell-checkers and the effects of the increasing visualization of communication (computer, TV, film) are also discussed.

The Routledge International Handbook of Visual-motor skills, Handwriting, and Spelling explores the potentially controversial field of early literacy education. It aims to offer scholars and practitioners an analysis of how and why handwriting skills benefit early literacy learning, especially spelling acquisition, and how this can enrich experiences for children and educators. Offering global perspectives from the field, the volume integrates current theories with up-to-date research and practice, revealing how we can best support children’s early literacy learning with handwriting and visual-motor skills interventions. Key topics covered include: The fundamentals of handwriting skills and literacy acquisition; Global literacy and spelling; Dysgraphia, handwriting difficulties, and dyslexia; Spelling and writing in the digital age; Home learning environment and spelling; Instruction and interventions for spelling and writing. This comprehensive survey will be essential reading for scholars and students of developmental psychology, education, and literacy research.

How do children learn to spell and what kinds of teaching support them most effectively? Based on a three-year longitudinal study of children's spelling in different primary classrooms, Olivia O'Sullivan, Assistant Director of the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education and Anne Thomas, the former Inset Director of the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education, pose a number of important questions: what kinds of knowledge are involved in spelling? what are the links between learning to read and learning to spell? what kinds of systematic teaching and interventions make a difference to children's progress? Packed with case studies, photographs and examples of children’s work, this unique book sets out the most effective approaches to spelling and provides teachers with a broad set of principles on which to base their teaching. This is an invaluable resource for any teacher or trainee teacher wishing to raise standards in spelling in their classroom.

are the findings that Wade-Woolley and Siegel obtained when they studied children for whom English was a second language. Although the second language speakers performed more poorly than the native speakers on tests of syntactic knowledge, phoneme deletion, and pseudoword repetition, the second language speakers were not worse than the native speakers in spelling. These results suggest that, even if children have not fully mastered the sound system of their second language, they need not be disadvantaged in spelling it. The findings appear to pose a challenge to views of reading and spelling that place primary emphasis on phonology. The Muter and Snowling study, together with the Nunes, Bryant and Bindman study, broadens the focus by examining aspects of spelling beyond phonology. Muter and Snow ling, in their longitudinal study of British school children, examined the degree to which various linguistic skills measured between the ages of 4 and 6 predicted spelling ability at age 9. The results support the idea that phonological skill plays an important role in spelling development, and further suggest that awareness of phonemes is more strongly related to spelling ability than awareness of rimes. In addition, grammatical awareness appears to predict spelling skill. Children who are able to reflect on meaning relationships among words may be in a position to understand how this information is represented in English spelling.

Modern Hebrew is a highly synthetic Semitic language—its lexicon is rich in morphemes. This volume supplies the first in-depth psycholinguistic analysis of the interaction between morphological knowledge and spelling in Hebrew. It also examines how far this model can be applied to other languages. Anchored to a connectionist, cognitive, cross-linguistic and typological framework, the study accords with today’s perception of spelling as being much more than a mere technical skill. Contemporary psycholinguistic literature views spelling as a window on what people know about words and their structure. The strong correlation between orthographies and morphological units makes linking consistent grammatical and lexical representation and spelling units in speaker-writers a key research goal. Hebrew’s wealth of morphological structures, reflected in its written form, promotes morphological perception and strategies in those who speak and write it, adding vitality and relevance to this work.