32 Unit 3© 2013 Core Knowledge Foundation
“Got it.”
Then we kids would add words to it. When we found words with “So Miss Baker would make a big spelling tree for a sound.
the sound in them we would stick the words on the branches of the tree. We would stick all of the words with the ‘ai’ spelling on
this branch. We would stick all of the words with the ‘ay’ spelling on that branch.”
“I see. And this helped you get better at spelling?”
Gail nodded.
of the spellings. They helped us see which spellings are used a lot “The spelling trees helped us see the patterns and keep track
and which ones are used less. There were a lot of good spellers in Miss Baker’s class.”said. “Why did you?”“But not all of them went on to win the state spelling bee,” I
Gail shrugged.
spelling was so hard. Once I asked Miss Baker why it was so hard. “I was good at spelling. But I did not understand why English
‘Miss Baker,’ I said, ‘why are there five or six spellings for some sounds? That makes no sense. Why isn’t there just one spelling for
a sound?’”
a book on spelling. It was a cool book. It explained how English Miss Baker explained as much as she could. Then she gave me
has taken in lots of spellings from French, Latin, Greek, and Spanish. When I finished that book, Miss Baker gave me a longer
book. Then I found the next book by myself. One book sort of led to the next. So that’s how I got started.”