mudassardev312

Although this article is about a number of significant orthographic principles there are two topics that are particularly pertinent for me: Unravelling the 'story' of one word reveals the intertwined 'stories' of many other words. Investigating <one> clearly demonstrates that meaning and structure are the main concern of English orthography  not pronunciation! Recently, during math week, we investigated the number words, a wonderfully rich source of orthographic understandings. In education, <one> is generally considered a 'sight word' or a 'high frequency word', often a word memorised in isolation. It only seems logical to me, if words are considered  high frequency,  then we should be investigating and analysing them to fully understand the 'how' and 'why' of the spelling. A teacher recently asked, "How can you investigate all the 'sight words'...that seems impossible?" Do you know the singer/songwriter P...

Real Connections: MEANING, STRUCTURE, RELATIVES, PRONUNCIATION < fri end >  ... such a valuable and interesting word to investigate at the beginning of  the  school year... I love that this word has a non-phonemic letter to demonstrate that not all letters in an English word will  represent pronunciation.  I love that this word explicitly demonstrates that the primary function of English spelling is to represent MEANING , not pronunciation. I have been working with a group of young students whose previous spelling instruction has primarily been based on thinking that  spelling represents sound. "Time to change their thinking by explicitly demonstrating and investigating  how the English spelling system really works." I want the children to be able to spell <friend> accurately from the very beginning of the school year but  more importantly I want them to know why it is spelled this way; I want them to understand that not all letters i...