The Characters Dick, Jane, and Spot

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The Characters Dick, Jane, and Spot Dick, Jane, and Spot are all

characters that are used to teach Elementary School Children reading and spelling skills.

Spelling is a difficult concept to master, especially when learning the spelling of American

Standard English. "George Bernard Shaw said that the word fish might as well be spelled

ghoti--using gh as in rough, o is in women and ti as in vacation"(Glazer 99). Sometimes

the spelling of certain words can seem illogical and may have no other similar spelling in

the language. When a young child looks at these words, the student cannot use logic to

spell certain words. Learning Disabled children have a hard time conquering spelling and

it may be the hardest task for elementary school children with learning disabilities to

conquer. The question has been proposed of whether or not children with learning

disabilities need to be taught spelling differently in comparison to children without learning

disabilities. Children with learning disabilities learn at a slower pace and do need to be

taught spelling differently than students without learning disabilities.

According to the learning disability information web site," A learning disability is

a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in

understanding and using language spoken or written which may manifest itself in an

imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, spell, or do mathematical calculations."

Basically, there are two parts to a learning disability: one is processing and the second

is discrepancy. Learning disabled students have a hard time unders...

... middle of paper ...

...teaching strategy. Hodges puts more emphasis

on making sure that the student understands the meaning and relationship of words and

not the basic rules of spelling. A rule based strategy must be taught to learning

disabled students in order for them to learn spelling. Hodges believes that spelling can

be taught through spelling activities such as Dick and Jane books, knowing the

definition of the spelling words, using the words in sentences, and using the dictionary.

This method has been proven ineffective in teaching learning disabled elementary

students. Learning disabled students learned better when they were taught spelling

rules in which they used morpheme and phoneme strategies to spell the words.

Learning disabled children are not stupid, their brain just chooses to learn a different

way in comparison to children without learning disabilities.

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