SPELLING

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Six spelling principles

Teaching Kids to Spell by Richard Gentry and Jean Wallace Gillet (Heinemann 1993) has a chapter on developing each of the three main strategies.

Implementing spelling

Children need to have high frequency words displayed in some readily accessible place so that they can find them when they need them while reading and writing. Just having a Word Wall is not enough; you have to ‘do’ the Word Wall. Doing the Word Wall means:

1. Being selective and limiting the words to those really common words that children need a lot in writing
2. Adding words gradually - five a week
3. Practising the words by chanting and writing them, because struggling readers are not usually good visual learners and can’t just look at, and remember words.
4. Doing a variety of review activities to provide enough practice so that the words are read and spelled instantly and automatically.
5. Making sure that Word Wall Words are spelled correctly in any writing students do.

Each week children learn five words from an ever-increasing list of words collected from their writing or reading. Words are added to the list throughout the week. At the beginning of each week the next five words listed in ;the journal become the focus.

Process

An example of a spelling mini-lesson.
A year five/six class were reading the well-known story Alice in Wonderland

Early on, spelling can be taught within a phrase,
for example:
A piece of cake
A can of coke
A glass of milk
Add these to a chart (students can add more)

Once meaning is associated look and say the word (visual)
Chant the spelling (auditory)
Write the word (kinaesthetic)
Trace over the word (kinaesthetic)
Practise reading the phrases on the chart.

Keep the chart so that next week you add
A piece of cake for Tom

The week after you add
A piece of cake for Tom from Alice

The process of proofreading written text is not easy. The process requires the reader to move away from the powerful influence of the meaning of what is being read to allow careful attention to the actual letters and words on the page. Teachers expect students to proofread their work but are proofreading skills, knowledge and understanding taught? Students need to be aware of the writing process and where proofreading is placed in the process - after the draft writing has been edited for meaning.

Teachers need to model proofreading and think aloud as they do so, demonstrating how:

• to slow the reading down so they can ’see’ visual patterns and letter sequences
• to change from writer of a text to reader of a text
• the use of resources (Word Walls, dictionaries) in the room can assist with locating the correct spelling
• to make links between spelling patterns students know and new words

Students need teachers to model proofreading strategies. For example

• Use a slip of paper or a ruler to cover all but the line you are checking
• Experiment with starting at the bottom of the page and working upwards
• Read slowly, word by word
• Underline any word that needs to be checked
• Write two or more versions of a word and try to decide which one looks correct
• Sometimes exchange writing with a partner for proofreading purposes
• Teach some of the typical symbols used by editors to signal changes needed in the text

Taken from Peter Westwood 1999 Spelling - approaches to teaching and assessment ACER

Once students have completed their proofreading, they can copy some of the underlined words from their writing onto a Have-A-Go sheet like the one below. After students have tried alternative spellings a teacher or helper can provide assistance if necessary. The last column can be cut off and used as a personal spelling list or for individual cards for spelling games.

Download a copy of this card (32k)

Spelling strategies

Students should be encouraged to reflect on their learning and the strategies they apply in the spelling process (metacognition). Students need to develop the language to talk about their learning. These strategies should be explicit taught and constantly referred to in the classroom.

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Brainstorm ideas children use to learn new words. Give time and practice to develop some of the following strategies.

.Brainstorm with the class the things you think make a good speller.
Place these on a chart in your classroom

It is not just important to teach knowledge about words but to include teaching of strategies of how to learn words. Students must be taught how to learn words and how to check spelling of words they have attempted.

Look Say Cover Write Check

• Look at the word
• Say the word
• Cover the word
• Write and say the word
• Check the word

(You could add another step to this)
Trace and say the word
Write the word from memory and check it.

Camera

• Use your eyes like a camera. Take a picture of this word
• Close your eyes and imagine you can still see the word
• Trace the letters in the air with your eyes closed
• What colour are the letters in your mind?
• Imagine the letters have changed colour. What colour are they now?
• Open your eyes and write the word on your paper
• Now check your spelling with the word on the card

Visual imagery

• Look at the word
• Close your eyes and imagine you can see the word as you say it
• Name the letters from left to right
• Open your eyes and write the word
• Check against the model
• Repeat if necessary until the word can be recalled easily

Ú Syllables

• Analyse the words into syllables

Analogy

• Think of other words with the same letter pattern

Motor Habit

• Include letter strings in handwriting lessons. Research indicates that linking the letters of letters strings assists recall of these patterns.

Cluster Analysis Glass Analysis
Glass analysis focuses on letter clusters, for example, the cluster ‘eigh’ taken from words in progress. Ask:
In the word weigh -

Which letter stands for the /a/ sound?
Children reply ‘e’ ‘i’ ‘g’ ‘h’ says /a/ in ‘weigh’

Which letter stands for the /w/ sound?
Children reply ‘w’ says /w/ in the word ‘weigh’

In the word ‘neighbour’ which sound does the letter ‘n’ stand for?
Which sound do the letters ‘eigh’ stand for?
Children reply ‘e’ ‘i’ ‘g’ ‘h’ says /a/ in ‘neighbour’

(Taken from Bolton & Snowball (1993) Teaching Spelling: A Practical Resource, Heinemann.)

To spell any unknown word that has not been seen before the writer may try to represent the sounds heard in the word. Beginning writers rely heavily on this strategy because they do not yet know a lot about written language. Experienced writers may use this strategy first and then try to apply other aspects they know about written language.

Example 1
The beginning writer who is aware of representing the sounds in a word may write the word said as S or SD or SED.

Example 2
An older writer who can apply many strategies may attempt an unknown word such as phagocyte as fagosite or fagasite or phagasite. Then they would apply knowledge about its meaning (a special type of blood cell), decide the spelling is more likely to be phagocyte (because other science words end with cyte) and then use a dictionary to check the correct spelling.

To develop sound symbol strategies:

• Teach students that letter-sound correlation is different in different words.
  Students need to learn that:

One letter can represent a number of sounds; eg. cat, able, car, probable, apparent, father, any;

The same sound can be represented by different letters; eg. ate, ray, rain, obey, steak, veil, gauge, reign, ballet.

• Teach students an awareness of onset and rime (eg tr-uck; sh-op; p-et)
• Sort words according to spelling patterns - strings or clusters of letters which occur in many words sharing common sound units (eg ite/ight)

• Teach children to listen to the order of sounds in a word and represent these with a letter or letters in the correct sequence. Map sounds into Word Frames or Elkonin boxes.

If a child asks for the spelling of ‘jumped’, the teacher might prepare a frame to help the child fill in as many letters as possible.

Teachers can ask:
What is the very first sound you hear?

Do you know what letter can be used for that sound?

In which box do you think it should be written?

• Teach phonemic awareness through shared book sessions - rhyme, alliteration and syllables. For example: Possum Magic by Mem Fox can be used as the basis for tongue twisters such as, ’The precious possum has a piece of pavlova in Perth.’ This could be followed by reading the rhyme, ‘Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater’ and further ‘p’ words could be collected.

Sometimes the writer remembers what a word looks like, or will try a word several ways and then decide which way looks the best. Sometimes they will recognise particular visual patterns of letters and know that some are acceptable patterns in the English language but others are not. They may know that a particular word is likely to have the same spelling pattern as another known word.

Example 1
To spell the word cake the writer may think of the spelling of words such as take and bake and presume it will have the same spelling pattern and then possibly check with a dictionary or wordbook.

Example 2
To spell the word misspell the writer may think that mispell looks better than misspell, but another strategy will need to be applied, such as adding a prefix to a base word (mis/spell)

To develop visual strategies:

• Teach students to look for highly predictable patterns or letter sequences of English. Encourage children to make associations with words of similar patterns. Focus on sequential letter patterns. Group words that contain common patterns; eg other brother, mother, bother. Word sorting and categorising activities are useful.

• Teach students that words must not only sound right, but they must also look right
• Choose a high frequency word to focus on each week. Every time a child reads or writes the word they are allowed to place a coloured dot on the word. This word can also be used as a screen saver for the week.

• Identify the critical features of words whenever children are shown how to spell a word, (i.e. the most significant features in the word and the pattern) Then encourage them to write the word from memory, not by copying. See Spelling Journals

• Collect words. Regardless of sound, collect according to visual patterns. When you have a collection, you classify them according to sound or pattern.
  For example:
  ‘ough’ or ‘cracked hoped planned cried‘
  double consonants ‘ll’, ‘bb’, ‘tt’ (Try to have vowel plus consonant cluster ‘ell, ill all’)

Example 1
To spell a word such as somebody the writer should use knowledge about the spelling of ‘some’ and/or ‘body’ and realise that a compound word will have the same spelling because it has the same meaning base.

Example 2
To spell words such as unnecessary (un/necessary) or commitment (commit/ment) the writer should use knowledge about adding prefixes or suffixes to base words.

Example 3
To spell words such as hopped, budgeted, carried, troubled, panicked the writer should use knowledge of generalisations about how to add suffixes to base words.

Example 4
To spell words such as pasteurisation the writer should apply knowledge about how the word was derived. In this case it is from a person’s name (Louis Pasteur). There are many words where the origin of the word provides valuable information about the spelling. This is often referred to as etymological knowledge.

In English language, most words that have the same meaning-base are spelt the same. If the meaning is different, then the spelling is different. The way a word is written (orthography) reflects meaning. In this way we can go straight to the deep structure or meaning of written texts without sounding-out the words. For example; sign and signature have related spellings and related meanings, while seen and scenery have different meanings and different spellings.

To develop meaning based strategies:

• Teach children word meanings and derivations; eg. graphics, graphology, telegraph or sign, signal, resign. Teach base word and its derived forms e.g. Latin ‘medica‘: medical, medic, medicine (teach the pattern as word is tied to meaning rather than sound.)
  Ask: why is medicine spelt like the following words? medical, medico, medication. This encourages students to think about the word meanings as a problem-solving approach to working out the connections between words.

Latin Roots

Greek roots

• Teach students to use morphemic knowledge, because this will also help them to recall spelling. Morphemes are units of meaning. Dissolve contains two morphemes dis and solve, and thus has a double ‘s’. Disappear only has one ‘s’ because the two morphemes are dis and appear.
• Practise word building - base words and prefixes and suffixes that are added to these
• Introduce word association — start with a word morpheme and build an ever — growing set of branches where the new word is related to the previous word
• Teach knowledge of word structure; eg past tense
  want-ed/ sounds id
  bang-ed/sounds d
  pick-ed/sounds t
  The common element is ed, which signals the past tense

Ask: why do all these words end with ‘ed’?
How many different sounds does ‘ed’ represent in these words?

• Teach other meaning knowledge through suffixes.
  For example ‘-er’ suffix
  Write these words on cards:

1. Place randomly along whiteboard; say words; ask students what “chunk” they have in common.

2. Arrange words in 4 columns as above. Ask, ‘Why have I put them in these groups?’ If students need help, say, ‘In one group the words are all for people who do something.’ ‘In another group the words are all things that do something.’

3. Explain and label the columns:

4. Add other words to the appropriate columns

Other suffixes

-tion (same applies for ‘ment’)

-sion

Adapted by David Hornsby, taken from Cunningham (2000) Phonics They use Addison Wesley.

Adapted by David Hornsby, from Cunningham, P. (2000) Phonics They use Addison Wesley.

• Teach students about compound words. Try sorting compound words according to the following categories.

• Provide grids for compound patterns (similar to the one illustrated), for students to develop patterns using compound words.

• Model consulting an authority and encourage students to consult an authority (a dictionary, word wall or a good speller) when they are unsure if spelling is correct.

• Dictionary skills need to be taught and systematically reinforced throughout the primary years. For example, develop an understanding of:

Alphabetic order, Function of guidewords at the top of dictionary pages, Words being listed under the root word eg ‘paint’, ‘painting’

• Word wall activities familiarise children with the words on the wall and ensure it becomes a resource for spellin

As word solvers students have categories for words in their head. As they meet unfamiliar words, they connect the unfamiliar words to those categories. Teachers need to help students expand the categories by making connections among words and drawing out important principles that they know.

One useful strategy to assist students make links between the words they are learning and those already known is outlined in the following chart.

Make connections

(Adapted from Fountas, I & Pinnell, G (1998) Word matters: teaching phonics and spelling in the reading/writing classroom Heinemann.)

Connections can be made with meanings, as in word association.

Memory Joggers/Gimmicks/Mnemonics
Most people have difficulty remembering how to spell particular words and they devise something that will help overcome this. As students learn about memory aids and share them they may like to make a class book for the class library. Students may also record the ones they find useful in a personal spelling book.

Some useful memory aids: