Spelling Strategies You Can Teach is a valuable instructor/tutor resource. I recently had the opportunity to use this book as I prepared tutor training workshops, and I shared with the tutors many of Tarasoff's suggestions.

The author looks at the learning process and the teaching process. As she states at the beginning, the book's purpose is "to provide you with knowledge about spelling based on research findings and practical teaching findings and practical teaching experiences. Suggestions, not prescriptions, are given." To reach this goal, these topics are included: spelling strategies, spelling knowledge and developmental stages, assessment and evaluation.

Spelling should make the writing process easier. To accomplish this, a student requires a variety of spelling strategies and knowledge of a coding system for writing down sounds and meaning. I find the specific methods for teaching spelling very helpful. Some of these include: visualization, letter sequence patterns, rhyming words, and mnemomcs.

For me, the format of this resource facilitates its use. As is shown on the sample page, main ideas are boldfaced and written in the left-hand column; explanations of these main ideas are written on the right-hand side.

Appendix A provides a word list resource that can be used to teach phonetic sounding out or word analogy strategies, for example, words for teaching short and long vowel sounds, silent letters, the "ed", "t", "d" sounds of "ed", contractions, homonyms, and so on. Appendix B includes some useful rules for spelling multisyllabic words.

Although this book focuses on children, it can easily be adapted to teaching adults.