A Word study approach to co-teaching of spelling

Spelling instruction is often marginalized in today’s crowded curriculum (Schlagal, 2007). This represents a challenge for the effective teaching of a very important skill. Spelling needs explicit instruction because it is not an innate ability. Children with reading difficulties have particular and noticeable difficulties with spelling because of their weak phonemic skills and their weak visual memory (Berninger & Fayol, 2008). There is increasing evidence that spelling is a linguistic skill and should be taught in the context of the English language and spelling system (Henry, 2003; Nunes & Bryant, 2006; Pinnell & Fountas, 1998). Learning to spell is also about the process of understanding the conventions that govern the structure of words and how word structure can signal the sound and the meaning of words (Berninger, 1995; Nunes & Bryant, 2006). This understanding is the result of research acknowledging that the skills of writing and reading draw on an underlying foundation of word knowledge (Perfetti, 1992; Templeton, 1992). In other words, the more children understand about the structure of words, the more fluent and efficient their spelling will be (Wolf, 2008)