Review by ELAINE DONG (www.angelolli.com)

TEACHING KIDS TO SPELL FOR DUMMIES
By Tracey Wood
Publisher: For Dummies

I usually steer clear of the Dummies series for any topic, thinking these books are too simplistic and general, so I was pleasantly surprised by this one. The back flap of the book reads: “The fun and easy way to help your K-5th grader become an A+ speller.” Which indicates you can start from kindergarten, which is superb news for me, because I would like my kid to discover the joys of reading as early as possible.

Learning to spell would be part of the journey. The author is a children’s reading specialist and former teacher.

The book is quite comprehensive, but the author breaks it down to manageable parts, probably due to the nature of the series (for dummies right?) There are six major sections, with three to four chapters in each section. The six are: Understanding the basics of good spelling, Getting easy words onto paper, Coming to grips with long vowel sounds, Using Word Families, Spelling words in chunks and The parts of tens.

To give you an idea of what to expect, each chapter starts with a simple summary of what it hopes to achieve, followed by methods for the parent/teacher to ease the child into spelling. It then gives quite a detailed rundown on the technical aspects of spelling - what are long vowel sounds, copy-cat vowels, long and short sounds and more.

The author also inserts some well-remembered childhood chants, like “I before E, except after C” that are sure to jog your memories when you teach your child. Lest you think the book gets too technical, it’s not. The author correctly balances the technical terms with layman words, so you yourself don’t find yourself swimming in a sea of vowels.

You will find yourself learning along with your child, as you “re-learn” soft ‘g’ words, silent ‘t’ words and ‘igh’ and ‘ight’ words. The vocabulary in the book is expansive, and includes adult words like pricey (vs pricy). It also tells you how the child thinks a word is written, and why he or she thinks that, so you are better able to correct it.

After the technical part is over and done with, there are lots of interesting exercises for you and your child. As the book progresses, the words do get harder, but that’s understandable as you’d probably be working with your child and growing with his or her ability as well.

The author uses a variety of methods to help the child remember words and correctly figure out the spelling of new words. “Taking the words away” is a simple memory game where you have your child write 10 words onto individual cards. Then he or she looks at the cards for 30 seconds and you take one card away. The child then has to remember which word is missing. This is a game you’re probably already playing with images, and what better way to teach word recognition.

Then there is the marking up of words, which means highlighting parts of a word that make a particular sound. The theory is if you child learns to identify the hard bits of a word, it helps him or her to remember the whole spelling later. So go ahead, break up those tricky words!

She also uses wrong sentences and words to teach the child to catch the errors. This is an excellent method, as I have yet to come across a child who is not the most triumphant when pointing out other people’s mistakes!

All these tell of a mind that understands how children’s minds work, and use it to their own advantage. The games in the book rarely take more than five minutes, and can be used as a daily reinforcement to school work, or as a starting point for parents whose child is learning to read and write. Highly recommended!