Spelling for Reading

How does analytical spelling help students develop rich reading skills?

Spelling is a great tool to use for reading instruction. To spell complex words, students must study phonics, grammar, vocabulary, and background knowledge, which are the keys to reading comprehension and writing skills. This process of spelling complex words is a powerful tool in developing a deep knowledge of words.

• Spelling trains students to analyze phonological, morphological, and syntactic structures.

• Spelling teaches and reinforces the alphabetic principle and phonemic awareness, which are the foundations for success in early reading.

• Spelling teaches students to segment or disassemble spoken words into sounds.

• Students learn to name each sound as a letter or group of letters in the same sequence they heard in the spoken word.

• Spelling is the most effective way for students to cultivate a large library of letter-sound correspondences, which makes recognizing those letter-sound associations in print easier. We can refer to this word storage system as a phonological-orthographical library since it serves as a reference for processing sounds and their corresponding letters.

Why is spelling the most effective way to build the brain's library of letter-sound relationships?

Spelling enables the brain to store an extensive sequence of letter-sound relationships because it processes oral language more effectively than written language. This preference for oral language explains why children (and those challenged with reading difficulties such as dyslexia) possess a far greater ability to understand spoken words than to recognize them in print.

Spelling introduces new words directly through the brain's phonological (or sound) processor, making it easier to arrange and store those words as letter-sound sequences. These sound sequences can be automatically activated to recognize and read identical letter-sound sequences in print. Since spelling creates a vast letter-sound library in the brain, it helps students read by mapping stored letter-sound relationships to printed letters. Spelling leads to automatic word recognition. When students learn to spell and read by sound, it's far easier to process sentences at the speed of sight.