Teaching Spelling: Exploring commonsense strategies and best practices equips teachers with the vital knowledge and skills needed to help their students become proficient writers and spellers. Peter Westwood provides a very clear and concise account of the important skills and processes that underpin accurate spelling, and describes in very practical terms, many evidence-based strategies and methods that teachers can use to help all students become confident, capable and independent spellers. The book also addresses the purposes of various forms of assessment of spelling skills, to guide teaching and planning. Chapters in this accessible and timely text include: the importance of correct spelling visual, auditory and cognitive components of spelling ability general principles for planning instruction proven teaching strategies and methods word study as a teaching approach formal and informal assessment At the end of each chapter the author provides a list of online and print resources, thus enabling readers to extend their knowledge in the various topics. The extensive reference list is also an invaluable source of information on recent research and thinking on the topic of spelling instruction. Teaching Spelling: Exploring commonsense strategies and best practices is an essential resource for all those in teacher education and taking in-service courses.

This second edition provides a comprehensive overview of current issues, perspectives and methods in a clear, easy to read style.

First Published in 2005. Analyse and correct simple spelling mistakes or tackle more complex problems. This book includes how to make assessment pain-free by setting realistic learning targets; easy to remember spelling rules that really work; photocopiable masters for error-analysis and analysis to action forms, detailed case studies to supplement key points. For teachers and teaching assistants as well as parents.

This volume unites spelling and word recognition -- two areas that have largely remained theoretically and empirically distinct. Despite considerable advances in the investigation of processes underlying word perception and the acknowledgement of the seminal importance of lexical access in the reading and writing processes, to date the development and functioning of orthographic knowledge across both encoding and decoding contexts has rarely been explored. The book begins to fill this void by offering a coherent and unified articulation of the perceptual, linguistic, and cognitive features that characterize an individual's advancing word/orthographic knowledge, providing evidence for a common knowledge base underlying spelling in writing and word recognition in reading. From a developmental perspective, the studies and syntheses presented in this volume blend insights from psychology and language study with those from clinical and classroom observations. These insights help explain how individuals, from preschool through adolescence, develop knowledge of the orthographic system underlying word structure in English and how they apply this knowledge in actual writing and reading contexts. Implications are drawn for the assessment and teaching of spelling, vocabulary, and word analysis from primary through middle grades.

This volume tells the story of research on the cognitive processes of writing—from the perspectives of the early pioneers, the contemporary contributors, and visions of the future for the field. Writing processes yield important insights into human cognition, and is increasingly becoming a mainstream topic of investigation in cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience. Technological advances have made it possible to study cognitive writing processes as writing unfolds in real time. This book provides an introduction to these technologies. The first part of the volume provides the historical context for the significance of writing research for contemporary cognitive psychology and honors the pioneers in cognitive and social-cognitive research in this field. The book then explores the rapidly expanding work on the social foundations of cognitive processes in writing and considers not only gender differences but also gender similarities in writing. The third part presents a lifespan view of writing in early and middle childhood, adolescence, higher education, and the world of work. There follows an examination of the relationships of language processes –at the word, sentence, and text levels—to the cognitive processes in writing. Part V covers representative research on the cognitive processes of writing—translation and reviewing and revision—and the working memory mechanisms that support those processes. A review of the current technologies used to study these cognitive processes on-line as they happen in real time is provided. Part VII provides an introduction to the emerging new field of the cognitive neuroscience of writing made possible by the rapidly evolving brain imaging technologies, which are interpretable in reference to paradigms in cognitive psychology of writing. The final section of the book offers visions of the future of writing research from the perspective of contemporary leaders in writing research.

This ground-breaking book argues that spelling and writing need to be given more consideration in teaching and remedial settings. It helps teachers and student teachers to understand the valuable contribution spelling and handwriting makes to literacy development.