SPELLING STRATEGIES THAT WORK.

Easy lessons to help kids spell well in school and beyond

"I can't figure out what to teach when!" "How will I ever find the time to teach it all?" These are comments I hear all the time about spelling. But teaching it doesn't have to be complicated or time consuming. By focusing on two key aspects that I know help students--how to learn useful words and how to learn strategies related to sounds, spelling patterns, and meaning--I save myself a lot of time and worry. In essence, I concentrate on the habits of competent spellers, which makes the teaching of spelling more manageable, because I'm clear about what I want for my students.

Developing a Sense of Purpose

I strongly believe that students must have authentic reasons for learning how to spell. Here's a quick way to find out if yours do: Ask them, "Why should we want to become better spellers?" If they answer, "So others can read our writing," super. They have an authentic reason. But, if they answer, "To pass the test," it's a good time to think about the bigger issues underlying your program. The following ideas have helped my students develop a sense of purpose.

* Encourage Peer Review--My students do lots of writing in various genres, and they frequently share their work with peers who might ask questions about the whole text or an individual word. For example, when Luca says to Eric, "I'm not sure what you mean here. What's this word meant to be?" it gives Eric a genuine purpose for learning about spelling.

* Offer Clear Feedback--When I review the students' writing with them, I comment on what I notice about their spelling. I also ask them what they think they are doing well and what they should work on to improve their spelling.

* Look for Common Struggles--I examine each student's writing, during and after a writing exercise, to pinpoint their areas of spelling difficulty. For example, when I noticed that many fourth graders in one class didn't know how to use an apostrophe correctly in possessives, I planned a focused study to build their understanding.

* Teach Proofreading--I teach students to proofread their writing by making overheads of their work and then demonstrating how to look carefully at each word for correct spelling: I tell students not to leave proofreading until the end, when it could become an overwhelming chore.

STRATEGY ONE:

Learning Useful Words

Once a sense of purpose is developed, we move on to learning some useful words. I begin with a few words that the entire class is using frequently, but which they are spelling incorrectly.

1) Select Words -- I involve students in the selection of words so that they have a stake in learning how to spell them correctly. In grade three, for example, they may choose common words such as because, specially, and might, and some from social studies, math, and science, such as prairies, multiplication, and photosynthesis.

2) List and Study Words -- I write the words on a chart or overhead and ask the students to:

* Notice if anything is surprising about the spelling of the word, such as, "I can hear a /sh/ sound in specially but the letter is a c."

* Focus on the most useful strategy to remember a word, such as listening for sounds, looking for spelling patterns, using a memory aid, or building from a base word to form the whole word.

* Use the "look, say, spell, cover, write, check" technique many times until the students spell the word correctly and automatically. Many students need to be taught to "look" closely at words, to picture them in their minds and to notice their features.

3) List More Words -- Together, the students and I come up with additional words that extend their knowledge, and I write them on the chart. For example, we may focus on words with the same rime (might: fright, light, sight, plus bite, write, white), with the same spelling pattern (because: cause, fraud, gauze), with the same suffix (multiplication: addition, subtraction, fiction), or with prefixes and/or suffixes added to a base word (especially: specialize, specialization, specializing).

The focus depends on the students' stage of spelling development and to what extent I've demonstrated these ideas. When students are comfortable working with words this way, I ask them to try it independently.

4) Post Wards -- We place the words on a word wall labeled "Words We Use." Students can use these words in future spelling studies, such as the one described below.

STRATEGY TWO: Learning Sounds, Spelling Patterns, and Meaning--A Spelling Study

By observing students' writing and pinpointing their needs, I can custom design spelling studies. Here's one on learning about sounds that I do with first graders, but the same process can be used for studying spelling patterns and meaning as well, with students in all grades.

To ensure that my students understand the principle, and that they can apply it in their writing, I always spend sufficient time on a study. This study, for example, usually takes me about 10 minutes each day for three days. However, a study for learning all of the rules associated with using the ed suffix may last a few weeks.

1) Select the Focus--I select the focus based on what I notice my students doing, for example, learning about the /f/ sound and how it can be represented. I open the study with something like, "I've noticed in your writing that you are trying to make use of the /f/ sound you hear, so let's investigate that sound and see how that helps you."

2) Find Examples--We find examples of words from sources students can read, including the word wall, and we list them on a chart. For example, words with the /f/ sound might include off elephant, for, laugh, from, Sophie, Raffael, family, and rough.

3) Find More Examples--All of the students find more examples on their own, from books, poems, charts, and signs, and add them to the chart. One way to do this is to have students write each word on a blank card for the class to refer to. Usually the hardest part of this study is getting students to stop finding words because they are so interested!

4) Group Words--Using a pocket chart to arrange and group words and letter cards, we work as a class to group the words with the same letter or letters, for example, laugh and rough; elephant and Sophie; off and Raffael; for and family. Students add words, written on cards, to the groups over the next few days.

5) Make Observations--Once we've gathered a sufficient number of words, we begin to form hypotheses such as, "Most words seem to have one f" and "gh is only at the end of words." Then we talk about how this knowledge can help with writing and reading.

6) Apply the Knowledge--I try to demonstrate to students how to use this knowledge during shared writing and shared reading. I also prompt students to do the same during independent writing. For example, if a student writes "foto," I might say, "That's a good try at spelling the word photo. Does it look right? Remember our study about the /f/ sound. What's another way you might try photo?"

Putting It All Together

Using an inquiry process to learn about words will boost your students' spelling by allowing you to focus on their needs, either as a class or individually. And since you won't be trying to cover everything, you'll have more time to devote to what's really important: writing and reading.

Diane Snowball works in schools in North America to help teachers and administrators learn more about teaching children to read and write successfully She is the coauthor, with Faye Bolton, of Spelling K-8: Planning and Teaching (Stenhouse, 1999).