Lee Pesky Learning Center

Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling

LETRS Module 10 Reading Big Words: Syllabication and Advanced Decoding

LETRS is a professional development program that responds to the need for high-quality literacy educators at all levels. Developed by Louisa C. Moats, EdD, LETRS provides the deep foundational knowledge necessary to understand how students learn to read, write, and spell—and why some of them struggle. Then to support that knowledge, many classroom instructional tools are provided.

The program's underlying principles are the groundwork in many scientific research reports, including “Blueprint for Professional Development,” Reading First Leadership Academy, U.S. Department of Education (Moats, 2002); “The Missing Foundation in Teacher Education,” American Educator (Moats, 1995); and “Measuring Teachers' Content Knowledge of Language and Reading,” Annals of Dyslexia (Moats and Foorman, 2003).

Module 10 addresses the instructional needs of students in grades 3 and up who are inaccurate and/or slow in reading and spelling multisyllabic words. Beginning with phoneme-grapheme mapping, the module goes on to address systematic teaching of syllabication, syllable spelling types, and ending rules. Morphology - including inflections, Anglo Saxon compounds, Latin and Greek roots and affixes, and derivational word learning processes - is addressed in some depth. An Advanced Decoding Survey is included with this module along with lists of instructional resources and programs.

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