Super Spellers:

Transform Your Spelling Instruction
for Powerful Reading and Writing
(Grades 1-6)

Presented by Mark Weakland
Author of Super Spellers: Seven Steps to Transforming Your Spelling Instruction (Stenhouse, 2017)

Specifically Designed for Educators Serving Students in Grades 1-6: Classroom Teachers, Special Education Staff, Title 1 Staff, Literacy Coaches, and Administrators

Transform your spelling instruction in powerful, cutting-edge ways that strengthen not only your students’ spelling – but also their reading and writing skills
Discover how to optimize your spelling instruction within the confines of the instructional time you already have
Practical classroom-proven activities that boost reading and writing achievement, especially for ELL, special education and struggling students
Powerful spelling strategies that enable students to solve their own spelling problems and increase their spelling accuracy in everyday writing

Practical Ideas and Strategies

Are you concerned about the reading, writing and spelling achievement of your students? Would you like your students to spell more accurately when they write? Do you want to boost reading proficiency, especially for your students who struggle?

In this NEW seminar, you will receive powerful instructional techniques, student-tested strategies and classroom activities designed to help all your students solve their spelling challenges in their day-to-day writing. Equally exciting, the instructional best practices presented in this seminar will support the language development of English Language Learning students and boost the reading and writing achievement of struggling students.

Drawing on research and fMRI brain studies, literacy expert Mark Weakland describes the ways children read words, connects these ways to spelling instruction, explores instructional practices and strategies that build reading and writing skills, and has participants practice activities that create and activate the brain’s routes of learning. Connections, strategies and activities: when teachers choose and use the best ones, they help all students build a robust brain dictionary, critical for reading success, and provide special support to students who struggle.

Transform your spelling instruction and lead your students to super spelling, while strengthening their reading and writing skills.

Ten Key Benefits of Attending

Explore One of the Most Overlooked Ways to Boost Reading and Writing Achievement
Discover highly effective ways to teach spelling and strengthen the reading and writing skills of all your students, especially those who struggle
Identify Myths and Common Pitfalls of Traditional Spelling Instruction
Optimize your instruction by understanding what will and will not help your students become better spellers, readers and writers
Transform a Spelling Program that Isn’t Working for You or Your Students
Supplement “one trick pony” word sort programs with powerful activities … Simplify difficult-to-understand spelling inventories and lesson plans … Modify basal spelling programs to be much more effective
Help Your Students Solve Their Spelling Problems
Learn powerful strategies, routines and practical tools your students can use to solve their own spelling problems … Help your students move beyond “what to spell” to “how to spell”
Increase Students’ Spelling Accountability in Their Everyday Writing
Receive practical tools designed to dramatically increase your students’ independence and accuracy in their everyday written work
Explicitly Teach and Reinforce Skills and Strategies Your Students Need Most
Effectively promote the spelling-reading connection in meaningful contexts by using a variety of teaching techniques, student-used strategies and classroom activities
Strengthen Brain Pathways to Help ALL Your Students Achieve and Succeed
Learn how brain pathways are activated and strengthened through best practice spelling instruction
Reallocate Your Existing Instructional Time to Increase Student Learning
Discover highly effective approaches to create time for spelling in your existing program … Because spelling is for reading, you won’t lose reading instruction time!
Differentiated Spelling Assessments that Work!
Move beyond “one size fits all” instruction … How to use differentiated “big picture” spelling inventories and “small picture” weekly spelling tests to greatly enhance your instruction and make student progress easier to track
Receive an Extensive Spelling Instruction Resource Handbook
Each participant will receive an extensive resource handbook packed with use-tomorrow, highly practical strategies and techniques designed to help you maximize the effectiveness of your spelling instruction

Outstanding Strategies You Can Use Immediately

Strengthen your literacy framework by including best practice spelling instruction that boosts reading and writing achievement
Update your traditional “one-size-fits-all” spelling instruction with progressive instruction that accommodates the learning needs of individual students
Transform your traditional “memorize-and-move-on” spelling instruction to instruction that builds reading and writing skills and teaches students how to spell, not what to spell
Learn how teaching spelling principles is better than teaching spelling rules
Make the transition from grades based on a “Friday test” to grades based on long-term word mastery, as well as the ability to correct spelling mistakes in writing
Elevate your lesson design by engaging in purposeful language that connects spelling to reading and teaches children to notice the sounds, patterns and meanings of words
Powerfully connect spelling with real world reading and writing activities
Build your students’ knowledge about how words work, and how words are correctly spelled, using explicit modeling, thoughtful prompting and timely feedback
Build a master word list that enables easy differentiation for advanced learners, typical learners and struggling learners
Learn how brain pathways are activated and strengthened and use this knowledge to help struggling students and special education students achieve more in spelling, reading and writing
Connect phonemic awareness and decoding (phonics) to spelling, thereby creating a more integrated and robust literacy program
Give students the tools and routines to independently solve their spelling problems, including correcting frequently misspelled words used in writing
Learn how seven syllable types can be used to organize your instruction and powerfully connect spelling to reading
Accelerate reading achievement through spelling word lists and activities that build the “dictionary in the brain,” which is critical to the reading process

A Message From Your Seminar Leader

Dear Colleague:

The core message of this seminar is: “spelling is for reading.” Research exploring the connections between cognition, brain structure and learning shows us that spelling is foundational to reading. Effective spelling instruction not only activates reading circuitry but also creates the neural pathways and cognitive “wiring” that lead to higher reading achievement.

Because spelling is for reading, spelling should be taught, not assigned. In this seminar, I’ll show you how. Afterward, armed with numerous practical ideas, strategies and activities, you will be ready to give your students spelling instruction that enables them to independently solve their spelling problems, boosts their confidence while spelling all types of words, improves their writing fluency, and best of all, increases their reading achievement, especially for your students who struggle the most.

Some students misspell many words on a spelling test, week after week. Others spell their test words correctly but they don’t spell correctly while writing. And many students struggle to read and write fluently. The knowledge, strategies and activities you gain in this seminar will help you teach these students. When you use best practice spelling instruction, you stand ready to not only accelerate the achievement of typical students, but also to help those with dyslexia and other reading difficulties begin to build better functioning neural pathways, thereby making reading and writing easier for them.

I have designed this dynamic day to equip you with practical tips and ways to broaden the role spelling instruction plays in your literacy program. The practices I offer are practical and time efficient. Most can be done in whole group instruction. In addition, I will help you establish a different set of high expectations for spelling, as well as for reading and writing, all the while maintaining your focus on the recipients of those expectations – your students.

I look forward to spending the day exploring how to maximize the instructional potential of spelling. Now, more than ever, we know that spelling is for reading, as well as for writing. New understanding about how the brain works has afforded us an opportunity to reexamine literacy and its component parts. How fortunate we are to have this opportunity! I look forward to meeting you at my seminar!

Sincerely,
Mark Weakland

P.S. The job you do is so very important. Investing a day with me will give you knowledge, strategies, and activities that can make a real difference in the reading, writing and spelling lives of your students.

Who Should Attend

Educators Serving Students in Grades 1-6: Classroom Teachers, Special Education Staff, Title 1 Staff, Literacy Coaches, and Administrators.

Special Benefits of Attending

Extensive Resource Handbook
Each participant will receive an extensive resource handbook specifically designed for this seminar. The handbook includes:

Strategies that students can use to independently solve their spelling problems
Activities you can use to teach children to notice and understand the sounds, patterns and meanings of words
Examples of words lists that are focused, varied and helpful for building a student’s “brain dictionary,” which is a critical component of reading
A “big picture” spelling inventory that is easy to give and useful for understanding how to differentiate spelling instruction for your class

Meet and Share
This seminar provides a wonderful opportunity for participants to meet and share ideas with other educators interested in dramatically strengthening their students’ spelling, reading and writing skills.

Consultation Available
Mark Weakland will be available at the seminar for consultation regarding your questions and the unique needs of your own program.

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