Reading and Spelling Transfer

Krashen believes that worrying about spelling detracts from writing quality... and suggests that we have students read, read, read.

It's a recipe for widening achievement gaps, since the poor spellers are the poorer readers, who won't benefit as much from "read read read" because they're not getting as much from it (and that's without factoring in their tendency to point faces at books when it is "reading time," which is, believe it or not, not the same thng as reading). "Let spelling develop naturally through massive reading in the early years."

Rather major assumption: spelling develops naturally.

Even if we grant that, though, the article I just read would say that isn't the best way to teach spelling.

From reading to spelling and spelling to reading: Transfer goes both ways.
Conrad, Nicole J.
Journal of Educational Psychology. Vol 100(4), Nov 2008, 869-878.

She does a good survey of research that yes, repeated reading improves spelling ... but not necessarily all that effectively.
Her research on 40 second graders had some of them practicing reading, and others practicing spelling (and, she acknowledged, quite possibly *reading* the words, too, though they weren't told to).
The readers could read those words and others well at the end... but hte proportion of words they could spell right wa smore like 65%. However, the spellers could read *and* spell soemthing like 95% of the words.

I don't know about you, but that tells me that the second group is getting a much better foundation.