20TRA159 Helping the Struggling Speller

Title:   Helping the Struggling Speller

This talk will examine spelling as a skill and also as a developmental process. It will explore reasons why children struggle with spelling and what can be done to overcome these difficulties. It will also examine strategies to aid spelling development. Using case studies, it will show how to detect spelling difficulties and suggest methodologies.

Expected Outcomes:

Participants will have an increased awareness of spelling as a skill and how spelling develops. They will be able to examine children's writing and detect strengths and weaknesses and build up a profile of the child's spelling development. It will also lead participants to reflect on their own classroom practice and how the quality of errors determines spelling improvement.

Brendan Culligan

Brendan spent thirty years as a primary school teacher in Dublin. He specialised in learning support teaching for fifteen of these years. He spent another fifteen years lecturing in initial teacher training both in Froebel College of Education and Marino Institute of Education. He was a member of the D.E.S. task force on Dyslexia in 2001. He is a past secretary of I.L.S.A. and past president of the Literacy Association of Ireland. He delivered the keynote address at their last year’s conference. He is a designer and tutor of inservice on Literacy Difficulties and has presented papers both nationally and internationally. He has edited journals for both I.L.S.A. and L.A.I. He has published many articles on literacy and is the author of ‘Improving Children’s Spelling’ and also ‘Spelling and Handwriting’. His latest work is a cursive handwriting programme from the beginning called ‘Go with the Flow’.