Customer Reviews

Word Matters: Teaching Phonics and Spelling in the Reading/Writing Classroom

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Clear, to-the-point, and full of great ideas to help those who work with elementary children learning to read. The feature I like best is the built in professional development suggestions to use the book within a building, a grade or a district as an inservice tool. Don't miss this one!

This book is a must-have resource for teachers in the primary grades. It is clearly written and full of useful ideas. The importance of learning about words is clear, but it can be boring. This book presents the concept of "word study" and describes children as "word solvers" in a most appealing way, and takes the drudgery out of phonics instruction. The lists in the back (e.g., phonograms) are very handy for a busy reading teacher.

I teach college students--both preservice and practicing teachers--and I require this book every year. Students tell me that it is one of the few textbooks that they intend to keep and use regularly.

One of the best references on word study; making it relevant, easy to implement and a fun way to learn words, their characteristics and patterns.
My Third Grade class looks forward to the variety of activities and their use of the high frequency words and the word wall has increased.

Phonics is barely addressed at all in this textbook, despite the title. The implication of the authors of the various articles is that phonics is somewhat helpful (but barely) for spelling, and that phonics serves virtually no purpose for reading. If a teacher wants to learn about how to teach children to decode written English, or encode spoken English while spelling, this is not the book to consult. This book leaves teachers clueless about phonics instruction. The children will remain clueless about the fact that written English is code for spoken English.

Why are whole-language proponents so afraid of vowels? Yes, they are complicated in written English, but they are also the meat of spoken English, so TEACH them!
Teachers, if you want to learn about the alphabetic code and how to teach children to decode unfamiliar words, read Why Our Children Can't Read and What We Can Do About It: A Scientific Revolution in Reading and use a synthetic phonics program such as The Phonics Handbook: In Print Letters (Jolly Phonics)

This book has many tips to help you organize your classroom. I will use some of these tips in my own classroom. It is eassy to read.

The text supports beliefs that I learnt years ago - that children must be supported, to learn well and at a pace that suits their own learning style.
Concise lists are an aid to developing patterns of words and give an ordered framework to develop reading and spelling.

This book is a great resource for teachers of students in elementary school or for those struggling in upper grades. It offers ideas about classroom set-up, classwork, scheduling, and has lots of resources in the back of the book. I really enjoy using this as a resource to help me teach language and reading.

Words are part of our language and students must be given the opportunity to play and experiment with words in different contexts. This book is a great resource for the primary grades. It provides useful word study activities that can be implemented in the classroom such as, making new words, word sorts, word ladders, and webs. The text offers an array of appendixes that teachers can use in their classroom. The ends of the chapters are dedicated with professional development ideas to help teachers grow as learners.

This was a book that I needed for school. It arrived quickly and was exactly what I needed.