The Reading Puzzle: Spelling, Grades 4-8

Download a Sample Lesson Plan and Student Activity

Give students the reading skills they need to succeed!

Can all your students read fluently, independently, and with understanding? As puzzle pieces fit together to complete a picture, reading skills are dependent upon one another to make reading meaningful for students. The Reading Puzzle series helps you organize instruction to better develop students' core reading skills—including phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension—to make them successful readers.

Derived from the research-based strategies in Elaine K. McEwan's bestseller Teach Them ALL to Read: Catching the Kids Who Fall Through the Cracks, these standards-based, easy-to-use activities will set students on the course to reading success. This book offers practical techniques that include teacher modeling, guided practice, and independent application, and provides creative reproducibles and ready-to-use tools such as graphic organizers and visual prompts.

Through fun and interactive activities, students can focus on one spelling skill at a time and internalize what they've learned before moving on to the next concept. A chart of spelling rules and their exceptions will help you organize instruction to cover:

• Silent letters, plural nouns, and homophones
• Prefixes, suffixes, and contractions
• The difference between a and an, and using i before e

As students advance in spelling proficiency, their newfound confidence will significantly impact reading success and future academic achievement!