I’d always been looking for the best way to help my dyslexic students improve their reading and spelling skills. I wanted them to work from their strengths. I wanted energetic sessions. I wanted my students to be the subjects of their own learning. And ultimately I wanted my students to not need me. In my work with struggling readers and spellers, I was using a well-known and popular program. Although it was helpful to some degree, I was not fully satisfied. There had to be something that made more sense. I searched my library and found Real Spelling in a book by dyslexia expert Marcia Henry, and WordWorks and LEX in an article in the International Dyslexia Association Journal. What I read that day excited me: at last, English spelling was making sense. I learned that the foremost function of the English spelling system is to represent meaning in text, not pronunciation. This single shift in understanding revolutionized the way I think about the written word. I began to study with a vibrant international community of scholars comprised of linguists, tutors, teachers, and speech & language therapists (along with a rogue mathematician). I decided to try this new approach with just one student, a 10-year old boy. When I asked him if he would want to try something different, he lit up, confessing that he was tired of practicing reading one-syllable words. We set out as co-learners to work with Real Spelling, a scientific, inquiry-based approach to understanding the written word. Our sessions became more lively as we worked with his questions about words. He became more interested in questions than in quick answers, absorbed in the process of understanding, invested in thinking through problems for himself rather than following a prescribed scope and sequence. Working out of his strengths (seeing patterns, making connections, understanding the visual gestalt), he didn’t have to memorize anything because we were working together with the language, and deeply understanding it. My student was becoming a true scholar.
