I know my opinions make an impression—among people inclined to agree with me, anyway. My confidence in influencing those with divergent views, however, is so low that I generally avoid addressing controversial issues with them at all. I wouldn’t talk guns or race with a Republican, for example. I’ve read one too many reports on partisan polarization to go there. To be fair, I’ve offered similar silence to some on my side of the aisle, too, especially the “colorblind” and others who may be well-intentioned but willfully ignorant. My pragmatism, I’ve long told myself, won’t allow wasting breath in futile debate.
But for the new year I’m open to engaging in the kind of fraught conversation I’ve typically shunned. I turn 40 this year and feel like it’s time to drive change instead of staying cloistered in a comfortable place. Dramatic shifts in public opinion on same-sex marriage, gender-neutral pronouns, and more give me hope that minds can be changed about the value of racial equality, immigration, and climate action, too. This year, I aim to learn the tools of persuasion that work and use them to do my part to fuel equity and social progress.
Though I’m still likely to avoid the aggravation of live debate, I’ve resolved to share my views more widely via regular opinion pieces and essays. Putting arguments out there, listening to the responses, and genuinely seeking common ground to pursue is perhaps the best any of us can do. What looks like sweeping change is usually hard won step by step.
To gear up to this challenge, I read Writing to Persuade by Trish Hall, a former editor of The New York Times Op-Ed Page. The book promises “techniques for bringing people over to your side not only in written arguments, but in life.” Here are a few takeaways from her distillation of scientific research on persuasion and her years of opinion editing.
Argue from the perspective and values of those you seek to persuade, not your own. “Despite our culture of selfies, persuasion is not about you; it’s about them,” Hall writes. That means you have to listen to, and understand your audience in order to influence them. Facts alone, however eloquently presented, do not move people to embrace new views. Any arguments made without listening first are likely to be dismissed or ignored. One classic op-ed approach is to start by establishing common concerns or shared values and then to bridge into areas of contradiction or disagreement. Building rapport aids readers’ receptiveness to challenging ideas. “You’re more likely to get the argument moving if you’ve agreed on some baseline issues and only then try to move it in another direction,” she writes.
Write clearly, directly, and vividly. Terrible writing of all kinds flooded Hall’s inbox during her time leading the Opinion section at The New York Times. “Manicured products of Ivy League schools offered tangled sentences and mundane musings,” she wrote. “People whose novel ideas deserved a hearing could not escape their jargon long enough to reach an audience.” To avoid these pitfalls, she advises a straightforward approach—making just one to two points and presenting them logically and intelligibly. The book offers before and after examples to illustrate the depth of pruning that’s sometimes required to achieve this.
Speak from experience. To persuade, you must bring authority. It helps to write on topics where you have deep involvement or understanding. Then you can use your singular perspective, sensibility, and knowledge to present the stories, concrete details, and vivid imagery needed to make your best case. “No matter how you get there, you have to write from your deep self,” Hall urges. “If you stay at the level of your office brain or your academic self and use the jargon of your profession, you will kill your work. You might not even know what story you want to tell until you think about what you, and only you, can offer.” Often revealing intimate, personal details makes the writers more human and the pieces more memorable and powerful.
I’ve presented a few highlights of Hall’s book, but recommend reading Writing to Persuade for the full complement of this top editor’s stories and insights. Her matter-of-fact style and rich examples cut to the heart of key topics for budding essayists: where to find great ideas and how to pursue, pitch, and develop them to persuasive effect.
She also offers helpful reminders of why we should venture opinions at all. “Engaging with the world, whether through writing or in person, is what the world is, what life is,” she writes. “We are all in this together, and our words connect us in the most primal and profound way.”
How open are you to discussing controversial issues with people who may strongly disagree with you? Why is it important to pursue common ground? Has an op-ed or personal debate ever led you to change your mind on an important matter?
I read Destination Simple: Everyday Rituals for a Slower Life by Brooke McAlaray for a new year’s reset. The tiny book can be read in one sitting, but it’s also great to dip in and out of as you let the ideas marinate.
Unlike more rigorous guides, such as David Allen’s Getting Things Done (which I also love), Destination Simple is one to reach for when you’re feeling overwhelmed—when you want to sink into your day versus power through it.
Broken into three parts, it first presents useful rituals like single-tasking, unplugging, emptying your mind, prioritizing just three things, and gratitude. Next it offers morning and evening rhythms. And finally come parting words on tilting (the opposite of seeking balance), noticing, and enjoying life. Above all, it advocates for a relaxed state of mind and ritual-guided versus schedule-dictated days.
There are no shocking revelations in the rituals section. Anyone who reads personal productivity books or blogs is well-versed in the ideas offered here. We’ve been warned of the dangers of multitasking, digital distraction, and endless to-do lists for years now (though our behavior suggests that we can still use reminders). We’ve heard all about the power of gratitude lists, mindfulness, and brain dumps.
McAlaray’s fresh idea is that adopting the seven specific rituals she highlights—plus morning and evening routines and a generous dose of flexibility—is “the easiest, most successful way to create a simpler, slower life.” It’s the combination, not the techniques alone, that make the difference.
In Part Two, McAlary makes a helpful distinction between rhythms and routines. “Routine is rigid and inflexible and makes you feel that a set sequence of events needs to happen precisely or the exercise is a failure,” she writes. “Rhythm, however, is a much friendlier notion. It speaks of order and understanding and flexibility and movement and fluidity.”
She offers examples of morning and evening flows to illustrate how you can create calm and satisfaction by thinking about what works for you, allowing sufficient time for your chosen rituals, considering others’ needs, and staying flexible. Establishing the rhythm can take a few weeks of trial and error, tweaking and changing, but the investment pays off in time-awareness.
“The beauty of this rhythm is that if certain things don’t happen (I don’t get the laundry on, for example) things don’t fall apart: I’ll just do it later,” she writes. “Similarly, if I don’t get time in my office, I know I’ve either chosen more sleep (a valid choice some mornings!) or the kids have needed me and I’ll have the same time available to me tomorrow. It’s about being organized enough—but also knowing when to let go.”
The call to fluidity made the biggest impression on me. “Tilting,” she calls it, citing a 2009 Marcus Buckingham study. Forget balance, she urges, which is “impossible to achieve, stressful to attempt and boring to live.” Instead, learn to tilt, which is to say intentionally and decisively lean into some things and lean away from others in the moment, as needed.
“We can’t be everything to everyone in every moment, and tilting makes it clear that by saying yes to one thing, we’re saying no to another in that moment,” she writes. “And what’s more, it’s OK to do so.”
Cheers to that.
Do you have any go-to books that help you rethink or reset how you organize your life and its endless stream of inputs and information? Are your days more ritual-guided or schedule dictated? How okay are you with imbalance in your life?
Filling your home with books, whether bought or borrowed, is a great way to show kids that you value family reading. And while the stories and illustrations between the covers matter most, attractively displaying the books can build excitement. I recreated the DIY Honey Bear Bookends from Pretty Providence and think they’re the perfect eye candy to bring kids’ attention to the sweet titles on your shelves.
Materials
- Two Honey Bears
- Gold Spray Paint
- Sand or pebbles to fill empty honey bears (optional)
Yes, that is really all you need! This DIY craft is as easy as 1-2-3.
Step One
Find the right spot to spray paint. I started this project in my studio with the windows open. I didn’t think I would be using a lot of spray paint and that with the open windows it would be fine to spray the bears inside. Wrong! The smell of spray paint takes over your home so quickly. So set up outside or in a garage with the door open. You don’t need a very large space to spray paint, but you will want to lay out a piece of paper or something to protect your work area. I used a scrap sheet of paper and cardboard for my overspray.
Step Two
Spray the bears evenly until they are coated with gold paint. Less is more here! It is better to do a few coats to achieve fully opaque coverage than to try to cover them in one pass, which may lead to clumping and drip marks on your final product. I found it worked best to hold the spray paint about 10-12 inches away from the bears. For the first pass, I laid the bears down (as shown in photo). Once they were dry to the touch after about 30 minutes, I carefully stood them straight up and sprayed the back side of the bears. I waited another 30 minutes and then touched up a few spots that needed a little more coverage.
Step Three
Patiently wait for the bears to dry fully. This is probably the hardest step! Spray paint can be dry to the touch in just 10-30 minutes, but it will be really, really dry in about 8 hours. So just wait! These cute bears will get very cozy with the books on your shelves, and you don’t want them to smudge their neighbors.
Step Four
Have fun styling your shelves! There is no right or wrong way to display your favorite reads, especially when bookended with something this adorable. Try taking everything off your shelf and rearranging the elements so that each one is in a different spot than before.
Kelsey Nickerson creates abstract paintings with rich color, texture, and movement, and enjoys a good book craft. She oversees web production and styling for MayaSmart.com.
Which of Kelsey’s shelfies are your favorite? Comment below and let us know!
Can you spell sesquipedalian? Well, the children featured in anthropologist Shalini Shankar’s Beeline: What Spelling Bees Reveal About Generation Z’s New Path to Success can. The elite competitors in the Scripps National Spelling Bee are largely of South Asian descent and, though born after 1996, exhibit intensity, skill, and poise rare in people twice their age. On stage, they spell obscure words with ease, backed by supportive parents and thousands of hours of practice.
And these feats aren’t fringe academic stunts, but bellwethers of broader Gen Z trends, Shankar argues. Namely, the escalation of digital media, academic-centered parenting styles, and unprecedented venues for public competition. When the three elements converge, kids’ journeys from students to experts go into hyperdrive—in spelling and beyond. Gen Z kids compete on television, give interviews, design apps, start up businesses, and deliver speeches like pros—far younger than their predecessors.
Shankar’s choice to focus on a slice of the South Asian American community that takes part in spelling bees is apt and revelatory. She rejects the white middle class lens typically put on generational theories and instead explores how immigration, access, and public representation shape Gen Z aspiration, motivation, and educational achievement. The Immigration Act of 1990, in particular, changed the game for U.S. parenting styles and childhood, she contends.
Like Amy Chua’s exacting “tiger moms” (without the claws and teeth), Shankar’s “bee parents” value education above all. That’s no surprise. “No other immigrant population in the history of the United States has been so carefully curated according to educational qualifications as Asian Americans,” Shankar writes. India, specifically, has supplied the majority of all skilled labor arriving in the U.S. since 1990. It follows that they would raise their kids with the same commitment to rigor and achievement that brought them to the U.S.
Then there’s the National Spelling Bee itself. It’s one of an increasing number of televised competitions—from Top Chef Junior to Shark Tank: Kid-Preneurs Edition—that put young talents on display. Its signature combination of intense cognitive demands, public speaking, and long odds of winning breeds ambition, grit, pragmatism, and appreciation for process over results. With 476,000 words up for spelling, the contest rewards intense work ethic and multiyear effort. Competitors spend thousands of hours preparing, despite knowing they are but one in 11 million annual participants.
The elite spellers Shankar examines go to extremes to improve their chances of success. They learn to read pronunciation guides, study word roots and patterns, and comb the dictionary for sport—for years. Notably, they lack a sense of entitlement that their many hours will be rewarded with championships. They value the knowledge, habits, and skills they build—whether they win or not. They appreciate who they become in the pursuit.
They may train in obscurity, but that all changes when the National Spelling Bee airs live on ESPN. The network produces snazzy features that depict the spellers, their families, practice rituals, and personal quirks. The platform makes them public figures with a personas to project and audiences to woo to advance their careers. Just ask the spellers Shankar describes who have parlayed spelling bee success into profitable apps, coaching practices, and careers.
Shankar also does a great job of illuminating the ways the spelling bee publicity enthralls new cohorts of spellers. South Asian Americans have dominated the National Spelling Bee since 2008. What’s more, nearly every family that Shankar interviewed cited Nupur Lala’s 1999 National Spelling Bee win, memorialized in the documentary Spellbound, as their inspiration for competing. When the families saw someone who shares their heritage hoisting the winning trophy on stage, it expanded their sense of possibility and ambition.
Lala in turn speaks eloquently about the numerous Indian American finalists in the 1998 bee (the year before her win) who inspired her. “There were no barriers to my success,” she recalls thinking, after seeing them. “It was profound. This was the first activity that I had participated in where my ethnicity, my gender—none of this was holding me back. I saw it as a wide-open arena.”
The elite spelling bee competitors might be kids, but they sure aren’t playing around.
Next up: Three lessons I learned from bee parents.
Do you think that childhood today is more competitive than when you were a kid? What are the pros and cons of early achievement? Aside from spelling bees, what examples have you seen of heightened childhood competition and skill-building?
Sources and Further Reading
Shankar, Shalini, “Beeline: What Spelling Bees Reveal About Generation Z’s New Path to Success,” (New York: Basic Books, 2019).
Demon words. Oddballs. Rule breakers. The terms used to describe words—like indict and villain—whose spellings don’t match their pronunciations tend to veer negative. It’s as if the words broke with some established order and wreaked havoc on the language, fueled by their own rudeness or irreverence.
In fact, words are just words. Language itself is messy, though, full of complexity wrought by natural evolution and intentional intervention over time, place, and population. No authority makes English orderly or sets its spellings and pronunciations in stone, though many have tried.
English is as dynamic as the 1.5 billion-and-counting people who speak it. The language is inflected with the diverse accents, history, and vocabulary of those people, teachers, communities, and cultures. Old English was forged through conflict. The germanic tribes who invaded early Britain would recognize a number of words and word roots in today’s English. But the English of native speakers today, from Australia to Zimbabwe, would dazzle them with its breadth and variety.
So what’s the use in villainizing words as many parents, teachers, authors, and spelling programs do? Why characterize letters as misbehaving adversaries? Instead, why not treat them as intriguing—as tantalizing windows into a storied past?
And, on the flip side, what if we expected unexpected spellings? What if approaching spellings as rich, complex expressions of words’ pronunciations, meanings, and history was our default?
I think our teaching would improve with our appreciation for spelling’s nuances. If we stopped labeling spellings strange or evil, we might approach them with curiosity and eagerness to learn, versus disrespect or dismissal. We might bring our knowledge of word origin, history, meaning, and structure to spelling. We might access our familiarity with letter patterns and frequencies. We might bring a repertoire of skills and perspectives to the rich, deep subject. And our children, rather than inferring that these words are something to resent or even fear as too difficult, might absorb our positivity.
As parents our job is to teach the language, not judge it. So, I say, skip the negative labels. Focus on giving your child reliable strategies for learning the spellings they’ve struggled with.
Personally, I’ve shifted to calling hard-to-spell words quirky, instead of tricky. Quirky feels a little more positive. Like unusual, but in a good, endearing way. Still, my perspective and teaching might be even better served if I went all the way and thought of, and taught, unexpected spellings as gifts—special and distinctive.
What have you called or heard others call words that are difficult to spell? Do you think it matters? Are some terms better or worse to use when introducing the words to children? What would you call them?
In Beeline: What Spelling Bees Reveal About Generation Z’s New Path to Success, anthropologist Shalini Shankar offers readers a nuanced and scholarly account of a subset of immigrant parents today. Like Amy Chua’s tiger moms, the South Asian Americans Shankar examines—parents of kids who participate in the National Spelling Bee—value education above all. These so-called “bee parents” are just more likely to spend time supporting and advocating for their kids than doling out harsh criticism.
Their measured approach makes perfect sense in the context of the Scripps National Spelling Bee. The competition pits 11 million children a year against the 476,000 words in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary Unabridged. Only one kid (or eight in the case of an unprecedented multi-student tie in 2019) will hoist the trophy overhead each spring.
Beeline aims to examine and explain Generation Z’s unique drive and professionalism, not offer parenting advice. But I gleaned a few lessons from Shankar’s fascinating case study nonetheless. Here are some things bee parents can teach us all.
- Act on your priorities. Many parents say they value academics, but an honest look at how they spend their time and money may reveal otherwise. Bee parents invest consistently and wholeheartedly in their children’s spelling pursuits over many years—often sacrificing their own leisure time and career advancement.
Moms and dads featured in Beeline spend hours preparing word lists and study materials for their kids. One went so far as to design software that allowed her son review 1,000 words an hour and served up the words he struggled with more frequently until he mastered them. Bee parents also spend money on dictionaries, word lists, coaching, and travel. Their schedules and budgets demonstrate their commitment. - Learn alongside your child. Beeline depicts children’s development from spelling novices to experts. But parents’ growth is on display, too. The book shows moms and dads building the research, teaching, and coaching skills they need to support their kids’ development. Bee parents are willing to learn, make mistakes, and grow with their kids. They model focus, dedication, and consistency over long periods of time.
Pronunciation is a perennial challenge among bee parents. Numerous elite spellers that Shankar interviewed described misspelling words that they knew in bees, because they didn’t recognize the official pronunciation. Their parents had pronounced the words differently during practice (e.g. pronouncing righteous as ri-tee-us). The kids didn’t blame the parents for their errors, but together devised strategies to get better. Parents put in time to learn how to read pronunciation marks and produce the right accents, tones, and stresses. - Get out of the way. Bee parents can’t learn the words for their kids. The spellers have to own the work, putting in hours and hours of study alone. Elite spellers put in two to four hours of spelling study a day during the week and up to eight hours on holidays and weekends. As they age from elementary to middle schoolers, they take increasing ownership of the process, devising their own study methods, practice routines, and even software to meet their needs.
Bee parents support without coddling and their kids learn to persevere with poise and positivity.
Sources and Further Resources
Shankar, Shalini, “Beeline: What Spelling Bees Reveal About Generation Z’s New Path to Success,” (New York: Basic Books, 2019).
Every week, my daughter brings home a list of spelling words, along with a note on the spelling pattern the words exemplify. For example, a recent word list focused on examples of the short o sound spelled with an a following w or qu, e.g. squad, wash, and want. I appreciate that the words are organized around a single, specific spelling concept, so that any time spent on them reinforces a lesson she’s received. (Unlike thematic lists organized by holidays, seasons, or other topics that give little insight into spelling.)
I’ll quiz her on these words, but don’t spend time drilling them. I prefer to chat with her about the underlying concept instead. During the week described above, I asked her for more examples of words that fit the pattern and for examples of words that contradicted it. I asked her if want really has a short o sound. Depending on your accent or dialect, it may sound very different. I give her time to think and respond—because learning, thinking, connecting happens in those pauses.
I respect the teacher and comply with the homework she outsources to parents, but, more importantly, I have my own spelling agenda, too. I value thinking about and engaging with words much more than scores on weekly quizzes. I treat any word lists that come home as just points of departure to bridge back to the spelling ideas, concepts, and patterns that I’m focused on teaching.
As soon as kids can read, parents can start teaching them spelling, via a logical, sequential pattern program, like All About Spelling or Words Their Way for Parents, Tutors, and School Volunteers. Just ten minutes a day can make a world of difference for both your knowledge and your child’s spelling. I’ve found that the hard part isn’t the spelling content. It’s building the habit of teaching it every day. (Stay tuned for future posts on that topic.)
And don’t worry about undercutting or muddling the in-class instruction your children receive. Most kids aren’t getting significant spelling instruction in class, so you may be all they’ve got. (See my list of nine questions to ask teachers about spelling to get a sense of what is or isn’t happening in your child’s classroom.)
If your child is lucky enough to be taught spelling in school, your proactive work at home still adds value. Working one-on-one, you can move at your child’s pace and take time to go deeper in areas of greatest enjoyment or struggle. You can provide meaningful opportunities for word learning and spelling practice.
A good teacher can tell you which spelling patterns they’re teaching and when, so you can support those lessons at home if you choose. You can choose to rearrange lessons covering similar content from your home curriculum to reinforce schoolwork—or you can keep going in your own way, acknowledging but not emphasizing the homework. Your choice.
Most important is keeping your eye on the end goal, strong spelling to support fluent reading and writing—for life, not quizzes.
Does your child receive weekly spelling words? If so, do they seem to have a rhyme or reason?
Sources and Further Reading
Syringe. Fluorescent. Privilege. Spellings for words like these don’t exactly roll off the tongue. Their silent, ambiguous, and unusual letters create mismatches between print and pronunciation that often lead to misspellings. So what’s a speller to do?
I say, focus on every letter, identify the unexpected bits, and create a special pronunciation of your own that makes the letters easier to remember. Don’t use the alternative pronunciation in conversation, but lean on it all you want when writing. It’s just another bit of adhesive to stick the word in memory.
As an elementary school student, I often overpronounced words with tough-to-recall spellings when writing. For example, Wednesday always sounded more like windsday to me, putting me at risk of misspelling it. I knew this and would exaggerate the pronunciation to wed-nes-day (in my head) to help me spell it correctly. (I may or may not still do this today.)
Turns out. “Spelling pronunciations” are a thing. Many people slightly alter words’ pronunciations to better reflect their spellings when writing. And you would be smart to do so—and teach your kids to do so—because it works.
Researchers have studied the so-called spelling pronunciations and found that they are effective mnemonic devices (memory aids). The strategy helps kids (and adults) to learn commonly misspelled words. And the method is particularly powerful for poorer spellers.
The speller holds two pronunciations in mind—the conventional one used in speech and a second one that’s a crutch for spelling. The latter pronunciation is essentially an attention device. It helps spellers focus on all the letters in a spelling. It boosts memory of letters that don’t map to sounds at all or in the expected manner.
The takeaway? Explicitly teach kids to use spelling pronunciations. It’s not the end-all-be-all of spelling strategies, but it’s a worthy addition to all of our toolkits. It takes an arsenal.
Sources and Further Reading
Ocal, Turkan and Linnea C. Ehri, “Spelling pronunciations help college students remember how to spell difficult words,” Reading and Writing 30, 5 (May 2017): 947-967
https://www.thoughtco.com/schwa-vowel-sound-1691927
Kids love a good story and, when we parents take the time to teach them, can appreciate the stories behind how words come into existence. That history brings spelling to life, makes teaching time more fun, and helps answer the perpetual question of why many words aren’t spelled the way they sound. Plus, stories make spellings stick in memory better than just staring at or copying words.
Here’s a quick list that explains the origin of spellings from karaoke and hangry to squawk and Achilles tendon. As you read the descriptions below, see if you can identify which category each of these words fits into. Then review the answers at the end of this post.
1. Absorption. English swallows spellings from other languages, especially where food is concerned. Quiche, pizza, tortilla, anyone? Over time and with instruction kids can recognize that words derived from certain places tend to spell sounds a certain way. Such as French-derived words using ch for /sh/, as in chalet, chauffeur, and chivalry.
2. Compounding. Putting two independent words together to form a new word is the most universal method of creating more complex words across languages. But the meanings of some pairings are more transparent than others. Think doorbell versus hogwash. When kids recognize that a rattlesnake is a snake that rattles, they have a better shot at spelling it right than if they approached it letter by letter.
3. Imitation. The spellings of some words, “onomatopoeias,” are influenced by the sound of the item or action they refer to. Think of comic book favorites like, boom, pow and splat or other examples, like hiss, ping, and whack. Some examples like cuckoo have been present with various spellings since Middle English.
4. Naming. English takes names and turns them into words, too. Such “eponyms” include Leotard, hypnosis, and Mary Janes, along with thousands more. “Proprietary eponyms” includes words like kleenex, post-it, crockpot, and breathalyzer. They were born of brand names that got so popular that their names came to stand in for the whole product class.
Creating words from people’s names is particularly prevalent in medicine, where diseases, symptoms, and tests are often named after their discoverers. And more than 350 additional medical terms are derived from literary character names. (Fun fact: Some physicians argue against the use of eponymous distinctions, driven by a desire to better reflect the collective nature of medical discovery and to develop more clear scientific nomenclature for patients’ benefit.)
5. Abbreviation. Collections of initials, or “acronyms,” can be either pronounced letter by letter, like CNN, or as single words, like NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) or GOAT (greatest of all time). Words can also be shortened by dropping off the end, such as adorbs (adorable) and rando (random).
6. Errors. Once a spelling goes viral, it’s hard to change it, not because it’s any more “correct” than an alternative spelling but because it’s more popular. Even mistakes have become conventional spellings because printing and distribution gave them wings. Dord, a misspelling, went unchallenged in the Oxford English Dictionary as a synonym for density. Expediate, invented when a politician misspelled expedite in the 1600s, lives on today.
7. Blending. Combining parts of two words to create a new one has given us frenemy (friend + enemy), glamping (glamour + camping), and cosplay (costume + play). Author Lewis Carroll named the blends that he created—like mimsy (miserable + flimsy) and chortle (chuckle + snort)—portmanteaus, after stiff leather suitcases with two compartments.
As for the words listed at the top of the post? Karaoke was imported from Japan and means “empty orchestra.” Hangry is a blend of hungry and angry. Squawk is likely an example of onomatopoeia as its name imitates the harsh abrupt scream of a bird. And Achilles tendon is an eponym derived from the Greek mythology warrior Achilles.
Taking an existing word and giving it a new meaning is yet another way to make a new word. And so, the list goes on.
Do you have other examples? Have you used stories to enliven spelling, reading and writing practice with your kids? Share in the comments.
Pin Me for Reference 📌:
Sources and Further Reading
Say Young Kim, Melvin J. Yap, and Winston D. Goh, “The role of semantic transparency in visual word recognition of compound words: A megastudy approach,” Behavior Research Methods (2018), doi:10.3758/s13428-018-1143-3.
Barry J. Blake, “Sound Symbolism in English: Weighing the Evidence,” Australian Journal of Linguistics 37 (2017): 286–313.
Rodin, Alvin E. and Jack D. Key, Medicine, literature & eponyms: an encyclopedia of medical eponyms derived from literary characters (R. E. Krieger Publishing Company, 1989).
Alexander Woywodt and Eric Matteson, “Should eponyms be abandoned? Yes.” BMJ 335 (2007): 424.
Cousineau, P. and G. Chadwick, The Painted Word: A Treasure Chest of Remarkable Words and Their Origins (Berkeley, California: Cleis Press, 2012).
https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2014/01/16/263096375/researchers-are-totes-studying-how-ppl-shorten-words-on-twitter
http://mentalfloss.com/article/56667/41-brand-names-people-use-generic-terms
https://theweek.com/articles/468355/10-whimsical-words-coined-by-lewis-carroll
https://www.cjr.org/language_corner/chortle.php
http://mentalfloss.com/article/82652/11-words-started-out-spelling-mistakes
Spelling is crucial for reading and writing. Still, spelling instruction limps along in the 21st century as “the abandoned stepchild in the family of language arts,” in the words of researchers R. Malatesha Joshi, Rebecca Treiman, Suzanne Carreker, and Louisa C. Moats. Despite evidence that spelling directly affects reading skill, it gets little time and attention in most American classrooms.
“Probably more than any other school subject, teacher intervention and influence on the spelling abilities of their students is currently negligible,” says language and literacy professor Misty Andoniou. “We are far more inclined to test spelling than to teach it.”
Parents: That means it may be up to us to focus on spelling. At the very least, it’s our job to find out what spelling instruction our children get at school, so we can respond. Checking homework folders and asking kids about in-school spelling is a start. But in lower elementary school, homework often has aims beyond its academic content. For example, my daughter’s first-grade teacher kept the homework content light. Its purpose was to instill good work habits—putting backpacks in a designated spot, checking homework folders nightly, and returning them to school each morning.
We parents need to talk to our children’s teachers to get a real feel for what they are teaching. Here are nine great questions to start the dialogue about spelling instruction:
1. What are your goals for spelling instruction in your classroom?
2. How much time do you devote to spelling in a typical week?
3. How do you choose spelling words?
4. Are spelling words selected for individuals, small groups, or the whole class?
5. How (and how frequently) do you assess and monitor students’ spelling?
6. How do you teach a spelling word or pattern?
7. How is my child’s spelling, relative to her peers and your grade-level expectations?
8. Can you show me samples of my child’s spelling and explain what the errors mean?
9. What should we do at home to support her spelling development?
There are no single right answers to any of these questions. Teachers can get good spelling results from a wide array of approaches. The key things to listen for, then, are the value the teacher places on spelling, their knowledge of spelling content, and their grasp of effective instruction methods.
You should be on high alert if your child’s teacher doesn’t teach spelling because they think kids will pick it up naturally through reading. Research doesn’t support this view. It’s also a problem if the teacher emphasizes memorizing individual words by copying them over and over again. Beware if a teacher’s spelling assessments just consist of marking words wrong. A good spelling teacher can explain the reasons behind spelling errors and address them in subsequent instruction.
Once you have a feel for what’s going on at school, you can better tailor spelling instruction at home to ensure that your children get what they need.
Pin Me for Reference 📌:
Sources and Further Resources
Joshi, R. M., R. Treiman, S. Carreker, and L. C. Moats, “How words cast their spell,” American Educator 32 (2008): 6–16.
English Language Arts Standards | Common Core State Standards Initiative, http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/.
Texas Education Agency – 19 TAC Chapter 110, http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/rules/tac/chapter110/index.html.
Graham, S. et al., “Teaching Spelling in the Primary Grades: A National Survey of Instructional Practices and Adaptations,” American Educational Research Journal 45 (2008): 796–825.
Doyle, A., J. Zhang, and C. Mattatall, “Spelling Instruction in the Primary Grades: Teachers’ Beliefs, Practices, and Concerns,” Reading Horizons 54 (2015): 1–34.
Adoniou, M., Spelling It Out: How Words Work and How to Teach Them (Cambridge University Press, 2016).
Puliatte, A. & Ehri, L. C. Do 2nd and 3rd grade teachers’ linguistic knowledge and instructional practices predict spelling gains in weaker spellers? Read. Writ. 31, 239–266 (2018).
