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Did you know that reading, writing, vocabulary, and spelling are all related? This means that getting better at one of these subjects makes you get better at all of them.

According to Joshi et al (2008), in the past, teachers taught kids how to read by teaching them how to spell. Everyone does better at reading and spelling when somebody takes the time to teach them how words are put together.

Really good spellers can look at a word and know a little about what it means and how it's pronounced. In order to become a good speller, you need to understand why certain groups of letters make certain sounds.

You can start to learn this by sorting words. Start a word notebook, take a blank notebook and give each letter its own page. Now go find some words to sort. This could be your spelling list, your little brother's spelling list, or some words you spelled incorrectly at school recently.

Start looking at your words, and find ways that some of them are alike. Do some of them end in a vowel? Do some of them have ou in the middle of them? Look for letter groupings like st or nk.

Make some pages in your notebook for the groups you sorted, and when you find a new word to add, see which groups it can go in. Do you know what your words mean? What do all the words that start with un- have in common?

Reading is also a good way to improve your spelling. Lucky for you, any kind of reading counts. You can read comic books or graphic novels. You can even read your favorite websites, as long as the words are spelled correctly.

According to Rayner et al (2006), looking at misspelled words slows you down a lot. Reading words that aren't spelled right also makes it hard for you to learn how a word should look when it is spelled correctly.

Reading is also a good opportunity for you to encounter words you don't know. When you see a word that you don't recognize, take a minute to write it down and then look it up when you get a chance. What does it mean? Did it come from Latin or French or some other language?

Add it to your word notebook and then see if it fits in any of your groups. Can you sort it with any other words? Try to use your new word in something you write this week. Even working on one new word a week is a good start to building spelling skills in grade 3.

REFERENCES

Joshi, R M, Treiman, R, Carreker, S, Moats, L C 2008, 'The Real Magic of Spelling,' American Educator, Winter 2008-2009, p 9.

Rayner, K, White, S, Johnson, R, Liversedge, S (2006), 'Raeding Wrods With Jubmled Lettres; There Is a Cost', Psychological Science, v17, i3, pp 192-193.