1 Spelling Instruction in the Upper Grades: The Etymology/Morphology Connection

international comparison, U. S. children do not on average perform badly in the early years; if international comparisons are taken as our guide, the reading crisis is one of adolescent literacy, not one of first-to-fourth-grade literacy ” (xx). I believe the same might be said for spelling. Teachers are often ambivalent about spelling. On one hand they bemoan the poor spelling of many students, and on the other hand they ask if it is really important for children to learn to spell accurately. I often hear statements such as “Why bother teaching spelling? Students can use the spell checkers on their computers as they write. ” Yet, with over 10 million websites listed as dealing with spelling, and over one-third of those listed under spelling instruction, (www.Google.com, March, 2005) one assumes that spelling is important to many people. In this article, I concentrate on spelling instruction in the upper elementary and secondary grades. Experience over four decades, along with current research on spelling, provides evidence for the efficacy of teaching the structure of English orthography (the spelling system) as well as the etymology (the word origin and history) of many words (Hanna, Hodges, & Hanna, 1971; Henderson, 1990; Henry, 1987, 2003). Word structur