READING PUBLIC SCHOOLS
Debra C. Kwiatek, M.Ed.
Office of Elementary/Middle School
Instructional Specialist
October 27, 2010
Dear Parents, Guardians:
This year as part of the English Language Arts initiative, we are introducing a new spelling book to students in grades four and five. The name of the book is How to Spell 3 for grade four and How to Spell 4 for grade five. The books were selected since they support the concepts presented in the Fundations program K-3.
The spelling book is unlike the conventional type book with which most of us are acquainted. These books are sounds, concepts and rules driven, based on the Orton-Gillingham approach which is explicit, sequential and multisensory in instruction. The teachers have been given a set of lessons to support the texts, a copy of the book How to Teach Spelling (a teacher resource book), and Wilson Sound Cards to support instruction.
The focus of each lesson will be to learn sounds, concepts and rules resulting in students being able to apply the new learning to any word that follows the rule. Emphasis is on teaching the students the spelling generalizations, rules and various sounds for the phonemes/graphemes in order to use the new learning in the application mode.
There is an old Chinese proverb that describes our goal for teaching spelling:
“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.
Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”
If we teach our students the “how” of spelling rather that just memorizing a list of words we will better equip them for the riggers of writing correctly.
Sincerely yours,
Debra C. Kwiatek, M.Ed.
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