Spelling is an area that many parents are concerned about because they say, "My child is able to spell so well. For every spelling test, they get 100, but when they write an essay, a paragraph, they can spell that word 'had' one way and spell it a different way somewhere else." Many times, children learn their spelling by memorizing it. When I teach them, I want to talk about, what are the possible sounds of C? C has two different sounds, and there is a way of knowing it 100 percent of the time. When C is followed by an E or I, A or Y, it's always going to sound like "ssss;" when it's followed by anything else, C says a "ccc." You teach these patterns and regularity, patterns make sense, reading is enhanced, and it is much more exciting to explore the words. Another area that many people don't look at is, where did this word come from? Is this an Anglosaxon word or is it a Latin word? Many of our words came from Anglosaxon and we used to pronounce the words differently. That's why they have so many different spellings. If I say that to a student, they don't get angry at the words, the get interested about the words.