Details
Author: Olivia O'Sullivan and Anne Thomas
ISBN: 1 87226722 X
This new publication of Understanding Spelling from Routledge provides both theoretical and practical explanations of how children learn to spell and the kinds of teaching which support them most effectively.
Understanding Spelling is based on a three-year longitudinal study of children's spelling in different primary classrooms. The book poses a number of questions. What different 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
The book contains clear guidelines on teaching spelling throughout the primary school.
Research background: CLPE/Mercers Spelling Research
“The Centre for Language in Primary Education is known for the excellence of its publications. They are readable and informative, and Understanding Spelling is no exception.
This book is the outcome of a three-year study of children's spelling in three London primary schools, which h focused on how children learn to spell and the ways teachers can support their progress. Seven carefully planned chapters guide the reader through the spelling process, the stages of spelling development and the effective teaching and monitoring of spelling. The results of the case studies are perceptively discussed, which will enable teachers to consider positively the spelling problems of children in their classes.
It is not surprising that, in the final chapter, the authors find success in spelling to be a strange phenomenon and that theories about how to teach it still abound. I was particularly interested in their ideas concerning the problem of good readers who were poor spellers. While there are obvious links between spelling and reading, there are also significant differences. The authors are right to point out that reading is not a process that demands attention to every letter or word to gain meaning, whereas spelling does demand attention to each letter as well as sequences of letters in words.
This book should be essential reading for all NQTs, literacy co-ordinators and teachers who are concerned about the spelling attainment of children in their classrooms."
Charles Cripps, Times Educational Supplement
“This is the result of a recent longitudinal research project carried out in London. Key question about children's spelling are identified followed by a short history of the teaching and learning of spelling, covering roughly the last century. Several pupil case-studies are detailed, demonstrating the current philosophy on how children learn to spell, followed by the most useful sections: a list of effective approaches to the teaching of spelling. This covers the whole of Key Stages 1 and 2 and includes resources, environment and activities. Though the project was completed before the introduction of the NLS this is still highly relevant, and confirms much that is in the NLS teaching objectives.
I have not seen many books like this, where practical advice is directly linked to actual research projects - not outside the academic journals anyway. And unlike many journal articles, this book as a whole is very teacher-friendly, in large, landscape paper-back format, with plenty of pictures to break up the rather small print. All primary class teachers will get something out of this, but I suspect that it will be most useful to English co-ordinators, particularly when formulating school policy.
Natalie Ford
NATE website
“Understanding Spelling is the culmination of three years longitudinal study of children's spelling in London schools by the authors. On the basis of their findings they raise questions (and have suggestions) concerning many issues. They particularly target out understanding of spelling and whether there are stages of development of rather the result of “multiple sources of knowledge”.
Case studies are referred to throughout, and guidance is given as to the effective teaching of spelling and how to monitor spelling in the classroom.
Again it is wordy but packed full of fascinating insights and reflections on spellers, and its relevance to the teaching of spelling. An excellent book that deserves to be read from cover to cover. It is worth (somehow!) finding the time it deserves."
East Sussex Learning Support Service
The many ‘how to spell’ books and ‘spelling’ dictionaries now available, and press coverage of teenagers’ txting, implies that debate about teaching spelling is alive and kicking. That the word ‘spelling’ is so commonly collocated with ‘problem’, ‘error’ or ‘incorrect’ indicates how difficult spelling still appears to be seen. Olivia O’Sullivan and Anne Thomas’s book Understanding Spelling offers no quick fixes for spelling problems or for teaching spelling. Instead it gives longer term insight into the complexities of learning spelling through a series of individual children’s learning journeys as they develop as writers and spellers. This refreshingly practical approach shows links between children’s own vocabulary, composition, spelling knowledge and strategies in fine detail. Their book reveals cognitive aspects of learning spelling from children’s first writing experiences through to the end of Key Stage 2. In doing so their research addresses spelling as both a fact about language and as a writing procedure. Early on they provide a review of influential twentieth century thinking on learning and teaching spelling. Their review surveys spelling as a discrete visual perceptual process, as the transcription of spoken language, as a form of hypothesising about words in use and as a series of developmental stages closely liked to children’s cognition. This helpful outline of diverse understandings underpins the book’s acknowledgement of there being no ‘quick fixes’ to spelling accuracy; they provide more valuable learning strategies for teaching to pursue. It also points to how deeply classroom spelling strategies are embedded in the practice of children’s development as writers. By addressing spelling as a facet of writing and literacy development, Understanding Spelling separates understanding how to spell words sharply from knowledge of how words are spelt. This distinction means that anyone looking for detailed descriptions of the chaotic features of the English so-called spelling ‘system’ needs to look elsewhere. ‘Understanding Spelling’ does offer some instances of common confusions but its main focus is to follow the evidence of child case studies through the three years of research into their spelling development. Fundamental to Olivia O’Sullivan and Anne Thomas’s book is their analysis of how individuals’ spelling develops. Furthermore their method of inquiry is founded on the intention to compare the learning of children who develop as accurate, standardised spellers without undue challenge with the learning of children whose spelling develops with some difficulty. Observing what goes right is a refreshing approach. It offers a framework for all children’s learning rather than a model for special intervention alone. Student teachers of all age-ranges, school and LA literacy coordinators should find this lucid presentation of spelling case studies and their application of established models of learning to their findings enlightening and motivating. Their intention is to promote understanding of how a child’s spelling errors form the data of her or his own tentative experiments with words. This is most valuable. That they nest such insights within a well drawn model of more general language development is even more helpful. Their measured scholarly approach offers rich dynamic examples of spelling growth in action. As such this book provides rich and complex understandings of spelling to help all those involved in children’s language development deepen their practice to good purpose.