Every parent wants their child to learn to read in order to succeed in school. Every teacher and school administrator in the country is working to fulfill that wish, aiming for higher levels of literacy than have ever been achieved in our nation’s history. What most Americans do not realize, however, is that the key to reaching those higher levels may lie in a better understanding of spelling and spelling instruction. And while many Americans don’t consider themselves strong spellers, the spelling system of English makes more sense than most of us think. We just have to know where and how to look for the clues.

Over the last several years, a number of educators across the country—in states such as Arkansas, California, Florida, Nevada, New York, Utah, and Virginia—have focused more specifically on helping students at all levels learn about and understand how spelling supports their reading and writing. This is a promising beginning, but these efforts need to continue and expand to include all our teachers.

Spelling knowledge is the foundation of students’ ability to read more effectively: The more students understand the structure of words as they are written—their spelling—the more rapidly and accurately they will identify words when they read. This in turn leaves more brain space available for thinking during reading. Importantly, students’ understanding of spelling will also help them grow their vocabularies as they read.

Helping students realize the potential of the spelling system must begin with teachers and parents. Before we can guide students toward a better understanding of how spelling and sound relate and how spelling provides clues to the meaning of words, we should realize that we often get in the way: How often do we hear parents joke about what poor spellers they are, or, for example, that one’s spouse is an excellent attorney but a terrible speller? What most of us don’t realize is that we—or our spouses—may be much better spellers than we think. We tend to fixate on a few words that always seem to give us fits while ignoring the fact that we spell most of the words we use correctly: “Is it accomodate or accommodate? Benefitted or benefited? Admissible or admissable?” We may believe that spell check is the answer, but we may not realize that in order to use spell check most effectively we must already know a lot about spelling.

Our children will learn in the primary grades that, while there may not always be a one-for-one correspondence between letter and sound, on balance there are more predictable spelling patterns according to which sounds are spelled than not. In the later elementary school years and beyond, students learn that spelling represents meaning in a strikingly consistent manner: Thanks to the way they are spelled, words that are similar in meaning look similar. This connection between spelling and meaning is not obvious when we look at words one at a time, as we traditionally have done, because we then invariably ask questions about sound: “Why is there a g in sign?” or “Why does column have a silent n at the end?” It is only when we group words together like sign-signature and column-columnist that the connection between spelling and meaning becomes obvious: Words that are related in meaning are often related in spelling as well, despite changes in sound.

Students’ awareness of this spelling-meaning connection becomes a tool for growing vocabulary. For example, when a fifth-grade student misspells mental as mentle, her teacher could introduce the word mentality—which most students do not know until they are sophomores in high school—but this will do two things: It will help the student remember the spelling of mental , and because the student knows the meaning of the word mental she can learn the meaning of the word mentality. Spelling and vocabulary instruction become two sides of the same instructional coin. This relationship between spelling and meaning suggests that we do not have to wait until students are in high school to teach so much of the vocabulary that is critical to reading, writing, and communicating—and which is also critical to learning across all subject areas in the curriculum. We can begin much earlier, and in the process, help our students develop a lifelong fascination with words.

Our focus on spelling should be part of a broader emphasis on teachers learning more about spoken and written language in general. This emphasis will ensure that all our teachers have the best knowledge foundation possible for helping students become literate and for using literacy as a critical tool for understanding themselves and their world. That is truly revolutionary.