These websites contain research articles and other information about the Word Study approach to teaching spelling. You may find them useful for yourself or to plan training for colleagues in your school. We’ve also shared the powerpoint documents we have used in our own staff training.

Books we recommend:

• Talk for Spelling by Tony Martin, opublished by UKLA
• Words Their Way by Bear, Invernizzi, Tampleton and Johnson; published by Pearson

Links to pages which will teach you the how and why of Word Study:

• A Teacher’s Idea Base Words vs Root Words
• Video: Words Their Way An Introduction
• Article from dyslexics.org about teaching spelling
• Spelfabet - a brilliant phonics site with research and resources on teaching spelling and phonics. Based in Australia
• Teaching Spelling Through Word Study
• Teaching the Do’s and Don’ts of Spelling
• Reading Rockets article on teaching spelling through Word Study
• Video: Word Study in Action Overview - YouTube
• Words Walls - A Complete Teacher’s Resource
• Reading Rockets article about phoneme awareness and spelling development
• American Spelling Instruction: What History Tells Us Bob Schlagal, Woodrow Trathen
• Explorations in developmental spelling: Foundations for learning and teaching phonics, spelling, and vocabulary
• Chracteristics of Effective Spelling Instruction, Wallace
• Article on improving learning and recall
• How Words Cast Their Spell
• A meta-analysis of morphological interventions: Effects on literacy achievement of children with literacy difficulties

Other interesting word linked resources:

• Latin Cognates list - words which have a common etymological origin

Video clips:

• Words their way trailer