It's more than just the long and short of it. I remember being in school and focusing on the long and short vowel sounds. And words like cat, fat, take and make sure fit the long and short of it and these words soon became part of my spelling program and I would memorize them faithfully for the typical Friday spelling test.

However, along came words like far and star and raw and haul. I soon became confused and didn't know if those vowels were long or short. That's the danger in some of those old spelling programs. Unfortunately, there has been minimal research into what works with spelling. This article focuses on what best practices are that lead children to become better and informed spellers.

Believe it or not, our English language has 44 sounds in total. Children need opportunties to learn these sounds in a natural setting.