My Kid Can't Spell!: Understanding and Assisting Your Child's Literacy Development

My Kid Can't Spell is a readable and accessible handbook for parents who want to play a more active role in their children's reading, writing, and spelling development. Spelling, after all, impacts virtually every aspect of reading and writing, and it is the key to unlocking literacy. But helping your child with spelling can be confusing. When is the right time to correct misspelled words? How can you help your child move to the next level of development? What are the important underlying concepts to reinforce?

Spelling expert J. Richard Gentry offers timely and practical solutions to many of the problems parents of K-8 children face. The book is packed with tools, guidelines, and strategies that parents can immediately use, including:

• development guideposts to track children's literacy
• tips for helping children progress through early spelling stages
• a spelling test to determine children's level of spelling
• strategies to help children visualize words
• guidelines for identifying poor spelling instruction at school
• ways to recognize if a child has a spelling disability.

A former struggling speller himself, J. Richard Gentry, Ph.D., has authored three books and a video on the topic with Heinemann, including My Kid Can't Spell (1996), Teaching Kids to Spell (1992), Spel...Is a Four-Letter Word (1989), and Richard Gentry on Spelling (1992), as well as numerous articles in academic journals and textbooks for school-age children. A former elementary teacher and university professor, Gentry is a Heinemann Professional Development provider and has lectured and conducted workshops on literacy and spelling throughout the world. Visit http://JRichardGentry.com for additional information about Richard Gentry and his work.