Building spelling skills can have a huge impact on overall language processing and vocabulary growth, which falls perfectly in line with your expertise.
Vocabulary is one of the biggest predictors of success or failure in school because of it’s impact on overall comprehension and language processing (Nagy & Scott, 2000; Nippold, 2017).
But most people aren’t sure how to address spelling issues in therapy because most of the spelling practices done in schools today are confusing our students even more!
Like writing lists of words over and over again to “practice” spelling.
Or randomly shortened spelling lists and memorizing sight words.
You’ve probably already realized these rote drills don’t work for your students.
But there’s good news.
You can make a massive impact on your students’ spelling, reading, and overall comprehension skills when you focus on the underlying language skills causing the problem in the first place.
And one of the most effective ways to build vocabulary that impacts SPELLING and READING at the same time is to study MORPHOLOGY and ORTHOGRAPHY.
In this video, I share how I’m using tools like the Word Study Toolkit to work on spelling with my own middle schooler.
Why is study morphology and orthography so effective?
Because we’re actually explaining WHY words are spelled the way they are by drawing attention to word parts and what they mean.
We’re helping our students pay attention to word parts like affixes, roots, and bases and drawing connections between how words are spelled and what they mean.
Instead of teaching rote memorization that won’t last, we’re teach students the basic rules of how words are put together!
So if you have student who aren’t responding to traditional phonics and phonological awareness instruction, there’s a strong change that this is the missing piece.
And what’s even better is that your students are ready for this work even sooner than you may realize.
Students are able to use morphological knowledge to infer meanings of unfamiliar words as early as first grade (Apel & Henbest, 2016).
This means that if you have students ranging from early elementary all the way up through late secondary school who struggle with spelling, this kind of work can have a massive impact!
But I know you don’t have time to go digging for lists of prefixes, suffixes, roots/bases, and multiple meaning words.
That’s why I’ve done the grunt-work for you and put them in to The Word Study Toolkit.
This toolkit comes with:
- OVER 200 FLASHCARDS with prefixes, root/base words, suffixes, and multiple meaning words to build strong reading and spelling skills.
- WORD LISTS with key orthographic concepts, so you have a quick guide to important word parts needed for strong vocabulary skills.
- DESCRIPTIONS OF 17 KEY CONCEPTS to simply the process of building morphology/orthography skills.
You can get access to the toolkit here.
References:
Apel, K. & Henbest, V. S. (2016). Affix meaning knowledge in first through third grade students. Language Speech and Hearing Services in Schools, 47, 148-156. doi:10.1044/2016_LSHSS-15-0050
Nagy, W.E., & Scott, J. (2000). Vocabulary processes. In M. Kamil, P. Mosenthal, P.D. Pearson, & R. Barr (Eds.), Handbook of reading research Volume III (pp. 269-284) Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.
Nippold, M. A. (2017). Reading comprehension issues in adolescents: Addressing underlying language abilities. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 48, 125-131. doi:10.1044/2016_LSHSS-16-0048
