Help My Students Learn to Spell!

I am a third and fourth grade teacher at a small elementary school in the East Village. I teach all academic subjects to an extremely diverse group of students, in terms of ethnic background, socioeconomic status, native language, and special education needs. I interweave writing skills (both content and mechanics) throughout the different subject areas. One support that I have found to be extremely effective is the spelling dictionary. For the past few years, I have received grants to buy copies of a spelling dictionary for every student. I have observed that spelling dictionaries provide great motivation for kids to learn standard spelling. They love having their own dictionaries in which they can independently find words that are important to them, words that they need in their writing, and words that are related to the social studies and science subjects that we are studying. I have recently encountered The Scholastic Dictionary of Spelling by Marvin Terban. This dictionary is ideal for children of this age. It includes over 15,000 words, which are displayed in bold face and broken into syllables, making it easy for students to locate and read them. In addition, it clearly explains many helpful spelling rules (such as how to correctly add suffixes to a root word), and provides tricks to help students remember difficult words. It also has a “misspeller's dictionary,” designed to help children find words that they are not even sure how to look up. This particular feature will undoubtedly be especially valuable to those students who find spelling difficult and anxiety-provoking. I am very excited to work with The Scholastic Dictionary of Spelling and I know that my students will refer to it frequently. This resource will be an invaluable reference for me and my students as I teach children spelling patterns and rules that they can use to spell hundreds of new words. This grant proposal provides for an individual copy of The Scholastic Dictionary of Spelling for each member of my class entering in September 2005. I anticipate that as in the past, students will use these dictionaries on an almost daily basis throughout the year, not just in writing, but in every subject. Once again, I believe that these spelling dictionaries offer a vital resource as children learn the important skill of standard spelling.