Entries from AboutSpelling

Who or what is the Mapleton Teacher-Research Group, you ask?

Answer:

Members of the Mapleton Teacher-Research Group teach grades K-5 at Mapleton Elementary School in northern Maine. They have been conducting research on literacy teaching and learning in their own classrooms since 1996. Kelly Chandler is an assistant professor of reading and language arts education at Syracuse University. She attended Mapleton Elementary from 1975-1981.

That was a problem.

So the teachers at Mapleton formed a teacher research group to figure out some way to get their kids to spell correctly without giving in to tradition and actually teaching them how:

For years, we avoided discussing spelling much. We didn't know how to talk about spelling instruction in a way that reflected our progressive philosophy of teaching yet still honored students' and parents' more traditional views of what spelling instruction should be.

Here's the first paragraph of a review:

Readers who open Spelling Inquiry looking for specific recommendations of how to effectively teach spelling will be disappointed—while interested in updating teaching techniques for spelling, the authors do not focus on instructional methods. Instead, they present a very different, and perhaps, ultimately, more useful, approach to instruction. In Spelling Inquiry, they describe whole (and holistic) strategies for creating an environment that is "student-centered and inquiry based," and thus more conducive to effective learning and teaching of spelling.

update

I can't stop myself. I'm Reading The Whole Thing.

But first, I'm searching Chapter 1 for the word 'teach' used in conjunction with the words 'children,' 'students,' 'kids,' 'reading,' 'writing,' or 'spelling,' 'as in 'I teach reading,' or 'I teach spelling.' Anything like that.

Nope, not one. In 20 pages of prose, not one instance of a teacher teaching a student how to spell.

Then there's this:

Since our approach to literacy learning is very different from what most parents experienced when they were in school, we needed to reassure them that basic skills such as spelling were still being addressed.

Basic skills were still being addressed--do these people work for the U.N.?

And again with the public relations. These gals set out to Research Spelling, they tell us, mainly to keep parents on board for the changes we had made in our practice over the past ten years. [Our practice!]

Oh, and also, as an afterthought, to encourage . . . development of what Richard Gentry (1997) calls 'spelling consciousness': "a habit of caring about expert spelling when spelling is important."(48)

Spelling consciousness?

A habit of caring about expert spelling when spelling is important?

Come on.

This is spelling, people.

Your job is to teach kids how to spell.

That's S . . . P . . . E . . . L . . . L.

Get a grip.

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