Spelling is taught to benefit students’ writing. Think of spelling as a skill developed over time to make everyday writing easier. Writers with instant mental access to the spelling of words used in everyday writing possess writing fluency far superior to writers who lack this ability. In fact, the latter are usually “would-be writers,” if only they could spell.

To develop the ability to spell for writing, it makes good sense to teach words writers use in writing. Easy enough! These words have been carefully documented over the years by multiple studies. They are called high-frequency writing words. The Sourcebook methodology relies on these studies, cross-referencing several studies to compile a Core Word list of 1200 words. Research tells us these words are necessary for writing, regardless of the topic, and make up over 90% of the words that adult writers use in their everyday writing.

Instant mental access to the spelling and use of the Core Words ensures that students’ writing is less challenging for them and more fluent. The higher a Core Word’s frequency, the more it contributes toward this end, and the more useful is the word in writing. The Core Words with the highest frequencies are targeted for mastery early in the Sourcebook methodology to give emerging writers immediate spelling and writing confidence.

the (1), of (2), and (3), a (4), to (5), in (6), is (7), you (8), that (9), it (10)

The program design of the Sourcebook carefully follows the research to provide students access to these essential words in the order of the students’ need for these words, in the order of the words’ frequency of use in writing.

Ongoing Sourcebook tests systematically gather information about each student’s level of mastery and use of the Core Words. The Core Words that students have not yet learned are identified by the Sourcebook tests so that these words can be examined, studied, and learned. Testing, then, is formative. It tells students, parents, and teachers exactly which words students need to learn to aid their writing process. There is no guessing—the tests instantly pinpoint every student’s Spelling Words.

Indeed, the Sourcebook tests provide practical instructional information to increase student achievement; however, there is more. The tests provide spelling practice in context toward this increased achievement. As you may know, the tests are in cloze format and/or in sentence dictation format. Core Words are recycled extensively through these in-context tests so that students are afforded continuous experiences with them. Students have more than one chance to learn the Core Words. This ongoing exposure promotes long-term mastery of the words to make students’ writing easier and more fluent—the goal.

Yet teachers may ask, “What happened to the word lists that helped students understand spelling patterns or vowel sounds: run, bun, fun, sun? When instruction focuses on high-frequency words, there is no skill, right? We want skills, so must we reorder the Sourcebook word list?”

Not to worry. Knowledge of spelling patterns, vowel sounds, other phonic elements, and various aspects of language acquisition and writing are interwoven into the Sourcebook activities—in fact, there are more activities than a teacher may be able to use! And these essential skills are tested in every unit to provide teachers with feedback as to how well students can apply them. These are Skill Tests, formative assessments that elicit instant information regarding every student’s progress toward skill mastery.

Let’s look at spelling patterns, or onsets and rimes, for one example. Over 40 research-based rimes are introduced in Level 1, including _un, from which students make the words run, bun, fun, sun and other words with this pattern. All the rimes are recycled in Levels 2 and 3. This ongoing focus gives students an understanding of how words are constructed for both reading and writing.

Word work with the rimes translates, according to the research, to experiences with over 650 one-syllable elementary words. Students learn how to make hundreds of additional words by adding prefixes and suffixes to these words and by learning about irregular forms. For the _un rime, when students make the word run, they learn the words runs, running, runner, runny, and ran. Activity ideas for run springboard to run antonyms—walk—and run synonyms—jog, race, gallop—and ending-letter phonics when the n in run is changed to make rub and rug. For ran, students brainstorm more irregular verbs—said, get, know. With the _un rime, Sourcebook activity options not only teach multiple skills but extend the Core Words to many more word experiences. And so it goes with the other rimes!

On a frequency-of-use list, the word run does not occur until the early 300s. Nonetheless, students can and should learn how to spell run far sooner!  And they do. To accomplish this, the Core Words need not be reordered. Children learn to spell run within the Sourcebook methodology without compromising the integrity of the frequency-of-use word list.

An obligatory feature of a spelling and word-skill curriculum that targets spelling for writing is the occurrence of words in order of their utility, or frequency, in writing. Yet these high-frequency Core Words are the catalyst, or “seeds,” for learning essential skills and many additional words to accomplish the Sourcebook goal—to help teachers make their students able writers!