"Rebecca Sipe, together with Jennifer, Dawn, Tracy, and Karen--incredible teachers, all--provide an encouraging, supportive, practical, and downright inspiring resource....Educators will recognize their own struggles with spelling instruction as they become aware of how motivating and perhaps enjoyable spelling can be--while seeing with new insight through the eyes of adolescents for whom "spelling is not trivial."

--Shane Templeton, Ph.D., Foundation Professor of Curriculum and Instruction, U of Nevada, Reno

Publisher Web Site, February, 2004

Challenged spellers in middle and high school are hit with a triple whammy--they can't spell, traditional strategies don't help them, and poor spelling often inhibits their writing. English teachers face a challenge, too--especially those whose job is not to teach spelling. This book changes that. It offers teachers ways to identify students' problems within the context of writing and the appropriate strategies to correct them in regular English classrooms.

The book is the result of the four-year collaboration of former secondary teacher Rebecca Bowers Sipe, two middle and two high school teachers, and their students. Based on literacy histories, placement inventories, visual memory tests, and analyses of student writing, their book:

• offers a detailed look at the literacy journeys of challenged spellers through student work, vignettes, and interviews
• describes four categories of challenged spellers and their relationship with overall literacy investment
• identifies the pitfalls of "too little, too shallow, too fast" practices, including familiar but ineffective lists and tests
• expands basic spelling knowledge within the constraints of the regular English curriculum
• steps inside the classrooms of these teacher-researchers as they put their strategies into practice
• includes tools, resources, and other materials for immediate use in teaching.

In addition, the book provides ideas and cautions for addressing spelling at the classroom, school, and district levels, plus step-by-step plans for supporting departmental- and school-based discussions about spelling instruction.

I. Who Are Challenged Spellers?

Investigating Challenged Spellers
Getting Started: Learning from Student Spelling Histories
Learning from Student Interviews
Delving Deeper
Profiles of Challenged Spellers

II. What Do Challenged Spellers Need?

Confronting the Dilemma
Promoting Reflection About Words
Less but Deeper: Teaching Strategies and Rules That Generalize
Focusing on Other Supporting Strategies

III. How Does Strategic Spelling Instruction Look in Real Secondary Classrooms?

Teachers Talk About Spelling and Change
Approaches to Teaching Spelling

IV. How Do You Take Spelling Change to the Home Front?

Implementing Spelling Instructional Change That Lasts
Thinking About a Policy for Spelling V. You Know It Works When . . .
Evidence of Success

VI. Tools, Resources, and Information

Appendixes:
Exploring Your Spelling History
Error Analysis Chart
Spelling Conference Log
Spelling Log A
Spelling Log B
Prefixes, Suffixes, and Roots
Writing Rubric
Root Word Web
High-Frequency Words
Spelling Rules Worth Knowing, Ideas for Teaching Spelling Rules
Frequently Confused Homophones
Annotated Bibliography of Helpful Resources