Michellehutchison.com.au Website Review

SMART Spelling is an approach that supports primary school teachers to teach spelling well.  There is a clear Foundation – 6 scope and sequence that is well established in many schools.  Teachers start by teaching the meaning of words to expand vocabulary and then break words into syllables, sounds and letter patterns (graphs, digraphs and trigraphs) following a simple routine that is in the SMART Spelling In a SMART Spelling clas*room, students are explicitly taught spelling patterns, one at a time.  Teachers choose a range of words (from simple to complex) from a suggested list in the manual.  Students are then guided to choose from that list, to meet different needs.  Personal words are also a focus in SMART Spelling.  Teachers use their strong professional knowledge they gain in the course to give meaningful feedback to students about their spelling in writing, teaching at the point of need.   Teachers feel confident in their content knowledge and know that SMART Spelling is easy to fit into a busy clas*room timetable.  Schools love SMART Spelling because it’s systematic. Teachers love it because it just makes sense! When I graduated as a teacher, I didn’t really know what I was meant to do for spelling. In those days, teachers would ask students to brainstorm words. Then the students who knew a lot of words would volunteer a lot of words (that they already knew)! Those who didn’t know lots of words would pick the bottom of their school shoes (or pick other things) - as they were disengaged as the brainstorming went Then it became trendy to do ‘personal words’. This meant that every child in a clas* had their own words.. So struggling spellers had 10 words and the more advanced spellers had 10 words. Hmmm...They all had the same amount of words. Anyway...Let’s do the maths for a second. In a clas* of 25, if each student had 10 words...10 x 25 = 250 words per week...that I certainly couldn’t teach!  Aaaaaagh...I Then we had a phonic approach to spelling. I was a researcher and lecturer at university at this time, so I know the evidence that