Ep. 191: Teaching Spelling is Teaching Reading with Pam Kastner
Apr 26, 2024
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Expert in literacy education, Pam Kastner, discusses the connection between teaching spelling and reading. She emphasizes that spelling is a higher linguistic skill that aids in understanding word structure and improves reading abilities. Effective spelling instruction integrates various linguistic components and should be aligned with research-based practices. Pam highlights the value of spelling inventories for assessment and using spelling errors as a learning tool.
Teaching spelling enhances reading by focusing on complete recall, memory, and word structure.
Accurate spelling showcases language competence, impacting intelligence perception and overall language proficiency.
Deep dives
Spelling plays a crucial role in reading: The reciprocal relationship
Spelling and reading are reciprocal processes. Teaching spelling can significantly enhance students' reading abilities. In a presentation, words were read accurately, but spelling them showed complete recall and memory, highlighting spelling as a higher linguistic skill. While being able to spell a word aids reading, being able to read it does not guarantee spelling accuracy, emphasizing the interconnectedness of these skills.
The impact of spelling on intelligence and judgment
Spelling proficiency is linked to intelligence judgments by others, such as in job applications. The ability to spell accurately showcases a person's language competency, impacting the perception of their intelligence. While reading offers decoding support, spelling requires from-scratch knowledge application, demonstrating a more complex linguistic skill that influences overall language proficiency.
Instructional strategies for effective spelling teaching
Traditional spelling practices, like weekly lists, lack effectiveness in fostering long-term retention. Effective spelling instruction involves choosing words systematically, focusing on phonics patterns, and teaching language systems explicitly. Instruction routines like phoning, graphing mapping, and multisensory techniques aid in bridging phonology and orthography, enhancing language skills.
Utilizing spelling inventories for targeted instruction
Conducting spelling inventories three times a year can reveal essential linguistic insights about students' knowledge and error patterns. Analysis of these inventories aids in curriculum assessment, informing instructional adjustments and identifying systematic gaps for effective intervention. Spelling inventories offer teachers a strategic tool for efficient, targeted spelling instruction aligned with students' needs and language development.
Pam Kastner discusses the connection between spelling and reading. She emphasizes that teaching spelling is teaching reading, as spelling is a higher linguistic skill that requires complete and accurate recall and memory for words. Spelling helps students understand the internal structure of words and improves their reading abilities. She suggests using instructional routines that integrate phonology, orthography, morphology, semantics, syntax, and pragmatics to teach spelling effectively.
Takeaways
Teaching spelling is teaching reading, as spelling is a higher linguistic skill that requires complete and accurate recall and memory for words.
Spelling helps students understand the internal structure of words and improves their reading abilities.
Effective spelling instruction should be explicit, systematic, and teach spelling patterns from least complex to most complex.
Instructional routines should integrate phonology, orthography, morphology, semantics, syntax, and pragmatics to teach spelling effectively. Direct and systematic spelling instruction is essential for students' language development.
Spelling inventories are valuable tools for assessing students' understanding of language and identifying areas for targeted instruction.
Spelling can be used as a teaching tool, allowing students to learn from their errors and improve their spelling skills.
Spelling instruction should be aligned with the research and evidence-based practices to ensure its effectiveness.