Julie Shepherd Education Cons.

Reflecting about Guided Reading and how it helps readers develop effective reading strategies. Such a powerful and time efficient teaching tool.

Morphemes are the building blocks of our writing system. Morphemes are base elements, prefixes and suffixes. Some words are just the base eg. , whilst others are a mix of bases and affixes (prefixes, suffixes) eg. ,

Many text books tell us about the 'base word'. However, it is more accurate to say 'base' or 'base element' as some bases aren't words. For example, the base of and is . It isn't a word and therefore is a bound base element. That is one reason why we always announce (spell aloud) the base...

All English words have a base
The base holds the meaning
and is the key to the spelling.

Thanks for the rhyme - Lyn Anderson.

We need a revolution about the way spelling is learnt and taught in schools. We need to unlearn and rethink.

Morphology, etymology and orthographic phonology are interrelated aspects of orthography. More to follow on this.

Words have families, but they need to be related through meaning and structure. Therefore , and are in the same word family, but and aren't. Words like , , and have the same visual pattern, but don't belong in the same family.

English spelling's main priority is to represent meaning.

Each day I am going to post a statement to reflect my learning about English orthography.

Today's statement:

English spelling makes perfect sense.