Customer Reviews

The ABC's and All Their Tricks: The Complete Reference Book of Phonics and Spelling

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For intermediate to advanced phonics, Bishop's text is a great resource, but it's not for every reading teacher. It should be particularly valuable for reading specialists, speech therapists, and anyone looking to develop curriculum material.

How have I used the text? It's helped me adapt and develop materials for a junior-high student who reads 3-4 grades below level because of dyslexia. He hates the skill-sheets that were so obviously developed for elementary students. Now I can adapt or create materials easily.

What does the text offer? It generally gives 20-40 examples for every spelling-sound pattern, and explains the situations that lead to the exceptions. Entries are cross-referenced to examples that follow similar patterns. Bishop points out differences you probably haven't thought of noticing before (for example, when the featured spelling-sound pattern is stressed or unstressed, voiced or not voiced. Each of these distinctions comes with a separate set of supporting examples.) Bishop offers clues that help readers know which pattern to follow when sounding out a word that "sounds" equally like two different spellings.

This book far exceeded my expectations!
It unravels the mystery of the so-called unexplainably strange ways of spelling so many of our English words. Clear & concise format.
EXCELLENT for young children learning to read & spell...it answers any questions you might have about the rules of the way letters are put together in words & pronounced.
A must have for any home library...

Although this book is a great book to use with readers who are in need of more instruction than an average phonics program provides or to help a new reader who wants to know why certain letter combinations are sounded in certain ways. It will not be helpful to increase spelling.

In the back of the book the section on remedial readers tips off the reader as to why this might be. The author assumes that poor reader = poor speller. This is not the case. There are many strong readers who are lousy spellers. For those students this book is not a remedy.

The majority of the book is lists of letter combinations (arranged alphabetically) and the sounds they can possibly make and the words that are examples of those sounds. This format is a clear warning of the book's lack of spelling usefulness. A book that is intended to help with spelling would instead be arrange by the sounds of the English language and then show the possible letter/letter combinations of such sounds.

Take for instance the letter "g." Generally G make a hard G sound or a soft J sound. Generally it makes the soft sound before the letters E and I. But there are some words that need the hard G sound before the sounds of E and I. To get that, they insert another letter between the G and the E or I. While these letter combinations are shown in the book, there is no explicit help that can be given a poor speller. Obviously the teacher who is using this reference can come up with this on her own, but in doing so she only proves how the book does not do what it's subtitle promises.

Further, there are many places where the author notes that there is no real way to determine which letter combinations might make which sounds and that a student must try them all. Most students do just that on their own.

I also have reservations about the depth and complexity of the material. I doubt any student would be able to deal with it all. A remedial reader who went to a tutor using this book without any plan, might shut down about their ability to read more than before they came to the tutor. Although there are hints the author expects some sort of targeted plan to be created, at no point is a teacher given any kind of direction as to how to assess the remedial student's errors and proscribe a program from the book.

I have looked up several things that came up while teaching phonics (do English words end in c?)so I could better explain them to my daughter. It is well written, and well laid out. Every time I open this book I learn something!

I am using this book to homeschool. Reading, and rereading, the introductory passages has been very helpful in getting my head wrapped around spelling. The lists, which each have a beginner, middling, and advanced section (plus exceptions in the margin) are very useful to me as I work on spelling lists for the kiddo.

I use other programs, e.g. Spelling Workout and All About Spelling, but when I want to flesh out a list, give kiddo more exceptions, raise the bar a little above the level of book we are working on that day, or if I want to make a page of columns of, e.g., the various ways to spell a long /a/ (and then I dictate words with the various spelling of /a/), this is the book I turn to.

If you are serious about teaching a child to read and spell from the ground up, and you are a beginner, I advise you get the hardback. I've flipped through it so much, and made so many notes in the margins, the hardback has kept its shape, and given me the backboard to support the page as I make notes in my bed, late at night.

For those who claim this book's lists are not "complete", once you get the idea about levels, I've found it perfectly easy to start rattling off other examples; but really, if a 6th grader gets all the words in this book down, s/he has a clear lead over most American school kids.

This has those spelling rules to teach my kids (elementary thru middle school age) that I can't quite put my finger on why the spelling is that way. This has been great helping me remember those details what I was taught in 2nd & 3rd grade but my kids don't seem to hear now in the classroom. Great resource. My kids grasp the rules easily and do great with the exceptions. It's been a gem of product. We'll continue to use it to augment their spelling prowess and to fill in the why behind the spelling lists the public school provides each week.

If you're a teacher of reading/spelling or just curious about how English works, then the ABC's and All Their Tricks is a must have. This book is an absolutely wonderful resource for any educator regardless of subject matter or grade level taught.