The Importance of Spelling Instruction
Spelling instruction is, in many ways, the poor step-child of the language arts curriculum. Quite a number of elementary school classrooms have virtually no formal spelling instruction, and those that do typically give their students insufficient and ineffective practice. The absence of good spelling instruction is a great problem for many children, for without good spelling skills, writing, which is always a challenging task, is made even more difficult. Many parents find that even bright children who are good readers who don't know how to spell very well will produce extremely simple and primitive writing that doesn't do justice to the sophistication of the ideas they possess.
The good news is that there is relatively straightforward set of instruction and practice steps that can help almost all students become competent spellers.
Analyze
how the sounds in the word are spelled
The fundamental organizing principle of our spelling system is that letters represent individual speech sounds. Cat, for example, is spelled c-a-t, because the word can be understood as the combination of three individual speech sounds, /k/, /a/, and /t/, and the letter c can be used to represent the /k/ sound, the letter a the /a/ sound, and the letter t the /t/ sound. Although the relationship between letters and sounds we find in the word cat is simpler than we find in most words, the underlying organizing principle operates even in those with such unusual spellings as yacht, colonel, and hiccough.
Therefore, the first thing that your child should do when learning to spell a word is to break that word into its individual sounds. A good way to do this is to have her read the word and then say each sound one at a time. As she says a sound, she should underline how each sound is spelled. For example, when marking the word boat, your child would say /b/ and underline the b, then say /o/ (the long-o sound) and underline the oa and then say /t/ and underline the t.
For primary school students, it is simplest and most straightforward to avoid talking about silent letters during this step. For instance, when matching letters to sounds in the word know, don't talk about a silent letter k. Rather, identify the kn as the spelling unit that represents the /n/ sound in this word and have the student underline that. The kn is thus treated no differently than other multi-letter spelling units, such as sh, ch, or oa. There are two sounds in the word know, so the student should have two lines, and the letters need to be distributed sensibly on those lines. The same goes for the so-called "silent e" in words such as make and life. The simplest way to analyze these is to treat the a-e and the i-e as units, and connect them with a little curved line, as shown below, to show that they belong together conceptually as a combination used to spell a particular sound.
When students are in upper elementary grades and above, it is still useful to analyze silent letters in this way, but it would also be appropriate to talk about the different reasons that they are a part of our spelling system. In almost all cases, these letters were not originally silent, but are vestiges of earlier, different pronunciations of the words. Understanding these changes will help students grasp how language changes and give them a richer appreciation of our spelling system.
Say
the letter-names out loud
Of course, identifying the individual sounds in a word is only one part of the practice needed to learn the word, since there are several ways to spell most sounds. The word boat, for instance, could logically be spelled b-o-t-e. Just knowing the sounds in the word won't help your student distinguish which of those two spellings is correct. Your student, therefore, will need to develop some visual memory of the word in order to spell words correctly.
A good way to develop this visual memory is, oddly enough, to reinforce your student's auditory memory by having her say the letter names out loud as she points to each of the sound lines. When reviewing boat in this way, your student will point to the first line and say “bee,” point to the next line and say “oh, ay” and then point to the third line and say “tee.” This first practice should be done with the word visible. Once this task is easy, hide the word and then have her say the sounds of the word one at a time, drawing a short line for each sound. She should then say the appropriate letter names as she points to each line in turn. For fun, you can even have her spell the word backwards or tell you the letters that go on each sound-line as you point to them in random order.
When learning how to spell words with two or more syllables, your student should use the same approach with just a slight modification. After pronouncing the whole word, she should then say the word in syllables and place one index card on the table as she says each syllable. She should then make lines for each of the sounds in the syllable and write how each sound is spelled on the appropriate line. To review, have your student say the word outloud and again place one blank index card on the table for each syllable. After she has said the whole word and placed all of the cards, she should point to each card in turn and spell the word out loud or write it on the card. (If you laminate some index cards, your student will be able to write on them with a dry erase pen, erase, and reuse the cards.) You can still have her practice spelling the word backwards, having only blank index cards as cues. This activity is an amazingly powerful way to help her build a strong visual memory of the word.
How to deal with the schwa sound
The first sound in about and the next to last sound in lemon are examples of a kind of sound that requires special attention when learning how to spell. These sounds, a little /u/ or /i/ sound, respectively, are referred to as the schwa, and they often are how the vowel sounds in unaccented syllables are pronounced. Any of the one letter vowels (a, e, i/y, o, u) and some vowel digraphs can be pronounced in this way, leaving no particular clue from the sound about how to spell it.
A good way to help students spell schwa sounds correctly is to encourage them to remember a special "spelling pronunciation" of the word in which the letter representing the schwa sound is changed to represent one of its more common possibilities. Thus, about would be pronounced for spelling as "ay-bout" (to rhyme with stay out) and lemon would be pronounced as "lem-on" (to rhyme with hem on). This technique provides the student with an additional auditory clue to help make it easy to remember some visual information that would otherwise be difficult to recall.
Distribute practice throughout the day
Ideally, your student should practice spelling some words every day in several short sessions spread out in time. The exact number that is appropriate will vary considerably from student to student, depending upon how much repetition is necessary for her to master any given word. For many students 8-10 words is a good number to be working on at a time, although some students will need to work on as few as 3 or 4 and some may easily do 15-20.
When to stop practicing a particular word
It's a good idea to have your student practice a word until she can spell it 3 days in a row without any difficulty. Ideally, you would re-test your student on these words about a month or so after she had originally mastered them and review those she had forgotten.
How
to correct errors
It is usually best to correct each word immediately after your student has written it. A good way to do this is to have all of the words written individually on index cards and then show the card to your student after she has spelled it. She then uses the card to determine if she spelled it correctly. Having her correct her own work makes her more independent and also helps her develop her visual memory for spelling patterns.
If your student does make a mistake, work with her to figure out where her problem was. Some spelling mistakes are caused when a student is not thinking about the sounds in the word correctly and thus adds a sound, or leaves a sound out, or reverses the position of a sound. An example of this sort of problem is if she spelled “ground” as “groud.” To help correct this sort of problem, you should have your student say the sounds of the word again one at a time, first looking at the word, and then with the word hidden. Once again, having her place an underline on her paper as she says each sound is a good idea.
Sometimes, however, your student knows all of the sounds in the word in the right order, but makes a spelling mistake because she does not remember the correct letters for a particular sound. An example of this sort of mistake is if she spelled ground g-r-o-w-n-d. In this case, it is good to have your student copy the word correctly and put the misspelled part in red or some other bold color. Have her say the sounds of the word one at a time making an underline, and then point to the underlines and have her tell you what letter or letters are used to spell each sound.
If your student persists in misspelling a particular word, a good way to help her overcome this problem is to conduct a practice session in which she has to choose the correct spelling from two or more options that you present her. One of the incorrect spellings should be the persistent misspelling that she makes. A fun variation is to have your student cross out or erase the “bad” spelling.
How to select the proper words to practice
Selecting the proper level of words is extremely important. I have known many well-meaning teachers who gave students words that were much too difficult, thinking that even if the student didn't get the words completely correct, the work would be good for them nonetheless. It isn't.
A very good assessment that is readily available is the McGuffey Qualitative Inventory of Word Knowledge, available in Words Their Way by Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton, and Johnston, and also readily available on the internet. There are, as well, many other tests that are fairly easy to administer and give the teacher a reliable idea of what level students are on.
An appropriate scope and sequence of instruction is listed in the table below:
|
Grade |
Content |
|
1 to 3 |
High-frequency words (Dolch, Fry, Extended Ayres List, etc.) |
|
3 and 4 |
English and Latin prefixes, suffixes roots (e.g., construction, visible, attractive) Suffix-adding patterns
When to use ck, tch, dge, and Consonant-Consonant-le |
|
5 and 6 |
Greek combining forms (e.g., geography, political, catalogue) |
|
6 and above |
Proper Nouns Native American Words Words from Names (e.g., Amazon, hooligan, sequoia) Various unusual spellings |
The "Breaking Words Apart" words in each unit of ABeCeDarian Levels B1 and B2 are excellent to use with 1st and 2nd graders and will give them an excellent start in spelling. If you do not have a list of words, find a high-frequency word list such as the Fry or Dolch list on the internet. It is best to start spelling using these word lists after the student has finished the B1 workbook.
It is extremely helpful when presenting these high-frequency to group them so as to show the students important relationships among the words. For instance, when teaching students how to spell the word one, it is also good to have them learn lone, only, and alone. I will soon have a list of some of the important relationships and categories available on this website.
ABeCeDarian Level C can be used for spelling practice of words with English and Latin prefixes and suffixes, as well as a number of common Latin roots. The companion Spelling Patterns workbook teaches the 3 suffix-adding patterns as well as when to use ck, tch, dge and consonant-consonant-le.
ABeCeDarian Level D provides excellent words to help students spell Greek combining forms. I will post some lists soon of important proper nouns, eponymous words, and unusual spellings, all suitable for 6th graders and above.
There are, however, many sources of words in each of these categories that would provide excellent word lists.
Sentence editing
If a student is to become a good speller, it is very important for her practice spelling individual words using the techniques I have described. While this practice is necessary, it is not sufficient in and of itself to insure that she will spell words correctly when she is writing sentences and paragraphs.
There are three key activities for helping a student extend her spelling skills to her sentence and paragraph writing. These are: sentence editing, sentence copying, and sentence dictation.
Sentence editing is similar to the practice activity for individual words in which students have to select the correct spelling from several choices. When doing sentence editing, you present your student with sentences or paragraphs that include the words she has been studying. Some of these words should be misspelled. It will be your student's task to find these misspelled words and provide the correct spelling for them. You should also customize your practice sheets to work on basic punctuation that your student needs to study.
This activity mimics what a student does when she has to proofread and edit her own compositions, but has several advantages. First of all, the misspellings are not the student's own--they belong to the author of the worksheet (perhaps you!) and so there is none of the emotional tax that is exacted when identifying one's own errors. Indeed, there is a certain satisfaction to be found in correcting the mistakes of others, since it highlights one's own skill. Furthermore, the editing sheets focus on words that you know your student has studied, so there will be some added efficiency of writing a focused set of words correctly several times over the course of a few days. And finally, this relatively confined editing task is not part of a lengthy and exhausting series of steps for preparing a written composition to turn in.
Sentence copying
Another important sentence level practice activity is to have the student copy sentences. These sentences can come from material that your student is reading. Some can be from material that you select, and she can choose some of the material. These sentences can be used not only to aid with spelling practice, but to record amusing or useful sayings, or to serve as a resource for talking about how an authors express themselves well. When you select sentences, choose some that you find especially interesting or nicely written, and try to have most them be a little bit longer and more complicated than the kind of sentences your student writes independently. Your student can also select some of the sentences for copy work, selecting these from books she is reading. Give your student a special copy book for this work.
Sentence dictation
After your student copies a sentence in the copy book, review the sentence with her, asking what words in it she needs to study in order to spell correctly. Practice these words using the techniques listed above for practicing individual words. After your student has practiced all of these words, work with her to memorize how to say the sentence without reading it. A good way to do this is simply to have her repeat it several times, first reading it, and then with the text hidden. Once she can say the sentence from memory, have her write the sentence from memory. When she is done, have her correct her own work by showing her the sentence correctly written. Review and discuss any mistakes and practice them using the individual word techniques. Continue over several lessons as necessary until your student can easily write the sentence correctly from memory. Even if she writes it correctly the first time, you should test her on it a couple times over the next week to make sure that she still retains the correct spelling. Working on one or two sentences at a time during a spelling lesson is generally sufficient.
Happy Teaching!
Michael Bend
| Summary of Steps |
| Teacher assesses students to determine proper level |
| Students say the word one sound at a time underlining how each sound is spelled |
| Students says letter names out loud |
| Students practice initially by saying the word one sound at a time, drawing a line for each sound, and saying the letters that go on each line |
| Students practice briefly several times a day |
| Teachers help students analyze what they did wrong if they make a spelling mistake |
| Students continue spelling a word until they can spell it easily 3 lessons in a row |
| Students correct spelling errors in sentences the teacher has given them |
| Students copy sentences |
| Teachers dictate these sentences for students to spell from memory |