Many years ago, That Reading Thing was proving so successful that teachers started asking if they could deliver it in their classrooms. The answer was no because TRT is and always will be a one-to-one programme for those who need it most. However, there is plenty a classroom teacher can do to improve spelling and increase vocabulary - two things that will benefit any student including those working on their reading. While TRT is an incremental programme with every lesson planned, That Spelling Thing is a method for approaching any word and can be used in any situtation with any student in year 5 and above.
More recently, OFSTED began asking secondary schools how they are using phonics to improve literacy. Our approach is the most grown-up phonics you can find. It is firmly grounded in linguistic phonics, working from speech to print. It also makes use of 'everyday morphology' to support memory for the trickier spellings.
The book is a training manual which will get you started with the basics of the method. It isn't an intervention and doesn't come with a scope and sequence. Instead, this is an approach for any word in any subject. This book is written especially for teachers from year 5, secondary and post-16/adult literacy with no experience of using linguistic phonics (speech to print phonics) to improve spelling.
For whole school spelling, we suggest taking an action research approach. Buy the book for several spelling leads and work through it together. Involve your students.
- Here's an action research project from a high school English teacher. (opens as a pdf)
- Here's an action research project from a post-16 (community college/TAFE) college maths tutor. (opens as a pdf)
