I originally put this information together for a fourth grade teacher that I was mentoring at the time.  I thought that if she understood these words beyond a dictionary definition, she could find ways to incorporate that understanding into her teaching.  I went beyond the basics with this information so the teacher could make a professional decision about what to include in her teaching.   Addition –  We have evidence of this word existing in English as far back as the late 14th century.  At this time it meant “action of adding numbers.”  Prior to that it was in ..read more

I have been following groups on Facebook as well as people on Twitter (X) for the last few years.  Specifically, I’ve been interested in spelling.  How do teachers teach spelling to students?  I’ve noticed several methods. -Have students announce syllables and then spell them -Have students announce morphemes and then spell them -Have students announce the graphemes in each base and then the affixes as more of a unit -Have them spell the word letter by letter -Have them recognize some morphemes in some words, but then spell the word by announcing its syllables. I’m wondering.&nb ..read more

  A couple of months ago I was invited to submit an article for Dystinct Magazine.  When I looked at the types of articles others had submitted, I knew that sharing an effective activity for teaching children to recognize morphemes in words would complement them nicely.  For those who haven’t heard of Dystinct Magazine before,  it is a digital magazine available on tablets and mobile devices with purchase of a subscription. “Dystinct was launched in 2021 as a resource for the families and educators of children and young people with learning difficulties….Dystinct aims to p ..read more

The above message has been posted at the Real Spelling Tool Box 2 site. The news of Michel Rameau’s death is being received with a great sadness by those who learned from him and knew him to be an extraordinary human being.  I can’t even fathom how many people have been transformed because of his work – because of him.   I was first introduced to Michel by Dan Allen, whose blog caught my attention.  I was especially intrigued by the matrices Dan had posted and the classroom discussions he described.  When I contacted Dan to find out where to learn more, he put me in c ..read more

Every time one group or another posts a list of tricky words, my interest is piqued.  What’s tricky about these words, I wonder?  But really?  I needn’t wonder.  Here’s a list of 21 (Tricky Words ) that I came across just the other day.  If you look at the words on this list, you’ll notice what I’ve noticed – these words are often misspelled because their spelling doesn’t match their pronunciation. And as usual, the word is getting the blame for that.  How many thousands of words have to end up on the ‘Tricky Words’ list before we start considering that there is m ..read more

Last week, my student brought a book with him.  He wanted to read a chapter aloud to me.  As he was reading, I noticed that he was hesitating at words like ‘started’ and ‘handed.’  When I had him cover up the <ed> suffix in those words, he quickly recognized the word and continued reading.  After the fourth or so time this happened, I said, “There sure are a lot of words with the <ed> suffix in this chapter!  Keep your eye out for them when you come to a word that doesn’t look familiar.” At the end of the chapter we went back to the beginning to skim throug ..read more

New opportunities have opened up for me! I am meeting with almost all of the 5th grade students at my elementary school (half the group on Tuesday, the remaining half on Thursday) for about 25 minutes each week. I am coming into their classroom and one of three grade level teachers is observing the lesson. I am also working with an 8 year old for 6 hours a week in my home! This week I talked about the spelling of ‘two’ with both groups.  Since I was meeting the 8 year old for the first time, I had him use manipulatives.  In this way, I could both check his math understanding an ..read more

Without getting deeply into the how and why of dreams, I’d like to share a classroom discussion that took place recently while I was asleep and in fact, dreaming.  Over the years, there have been many instances in which I have fallen asleep rehearsing how I wanted to introduce a word family or some specific characteristic of a word family to my students.  If I woke up in the night, I woke up to my brain having that discussion “live” with the students participating.  In the morning, I would realize that our brave discoveries–the ones I couldn’t wait to talk about now that I was a ..read more

Not long ago in a Science of Reading Facebook group, someone posted a short video created by Reading Horizons in 2016 in which the idea of a ‘scribal o’ was featured.  The video explained that when scribes encountered words in which a <u> was adjacent to <m>’s, <n>’s, <w>’s, <u>’s, <r>’s, or <v>’s, they changed that <u> to an <o> to make the word easier to read.  You see, the script that scribes used had a lot of broad downstrokes, so sometimes it was difficult to distinguish one letter from the next when similarly formed letters ..read more

Not long ago in a Science of Reading Facebook group, someone posted a short video created by Reading Horizons in 2016 in which the idea of a ‘scribal o’ was featured. The video explained that when scribes encountered words in which a <u> was adjacent to <m>’s, <n>’s, <w>’s, <u>’s, <r>’s, or <v>’s, they changed that <u> to an <o> to make the word easier to read.  You see, the script the scribes used had a lot of broad downstrokes, so sometimes it was difficult to distinguish one letter from the next when similarly formed letters were n ..read more