Instructing children to learn lists of words for homework does not work for lots of pupils. They learn them the night before, for the test the next day, and forget most of the spellings the day after!
Children need to have easy visual access to words that they want to spell along with regular opportunities to refer to them and use them.
Spellings need to be eased into the visual memory and to do this, children need opportunities to see the correct spelling clearly written to have it pointed out to them, and to talk about it and the way it is made up. This can be done from classroom labels, charts, the Word Wall, the chalk board, charts, thumb indexed word books. (One class I saw had a list of the week's words being focused on by the door. As the class lined up ready for going out or going to another part of the school, one child was selected to hold a pointer and choose one of the different words to point to. As each child moved forward to exit the classroom, he or she had to read the word pointed to.reading and spelling taught together..well shouldn't it be?)
Labels. Some words can be clearly written on labels on the theme area display ready for when the children write about the theme.
Charts and Word Wall. Other words should be on charts or on the word wall, where the letters of the alphabet are put on the wall and the most needed words are written on individual cards underneath the appropriate letter, ready for the children to refer to.
Or if you are working on descriptive words, ideas to broaden vocabulary should be easily available, but should have been worked on a lot before children are expected to use the charts for reference. The children should be very familiar with the charts, the colours, the pictures, the shapes and this will be their first clue to finding the word they want to use.
Thanks here to the Dominican teacher who allowed me to photograph her word wall.
Thumb indexed word books for individual children pay great dividends.
These can be made by cutting out different lengths of the margins from an everyday exercise book, to look like an address book
These word books should be readily available for the child at all times. It should not be a chore for the child who finds he needs a spelling, to put his hand instantly on the book and to find the appropriate page to check if it the word is there already.
I have even made 24 individual fabric pocket bags to slip on the backs of 24 pupil chairs, so that the word books can live in there and be at hand for when they are needed.
Zigzag a length of fabric into three equal parts, seam up the two sides, one pocket slots over the back of the chair and the other pocket houses the spelling book. I did the pockets in different colours to denote which "working team" the children were in. They loved and were proud of these pockets and always knew where their word book was.
The child asks for a word, having already opened the word book at the appropriate page to check it is not there already.
The teacher writes the word in the book, using columns for easy finding later
e.g.on the b page the columns would be headed
ba be bi bu bo
on the c page
ca, ce, ci, co, cu....similarly and so on.
If the teacher can draw a small illustration beside the word, the brain more easily remembers it.
Although, at first, the system of the teacher writing the word needed can take time and teacher patience, after a while, the children become more and more independent spellers, because they have their everyday words in their word books to refer to.
Also, if this system is used diligently, its use becomes a habit and the teacher has less marking to do..so you can save on red ink!
Click here for How to make a thumb indexed word book
And about red ink! Fewer red marks not only save teacher energy, but encourage, rather than discourage the writer. Children lose confidence when every spelling mistake is slashed with red ink, so they use an easier to spell word next time. The weary teacher often scribbles the correct spelling in small, illegible letters over the top of a mis spelling, which helps no one, makes the teacher despair and spoils the look of the child's book, disheartening him. What a wasted opportunity!
To further improve spelling skills, teachers need to find more ways that avoid using so much red ink!
And so, to help children learn to spell, please:
give them access to the word neatly written…(oh those teachers who left it up to the pupils to guess a spelling and then spent hours and hours of their lives scratching a red line through every mis spelling and then scribbling a few illegible letters above the mistake area. What good did that do for anyone? I am not saying do not correct spelling errors but I am saying do it in a positive rather than a taking-away-their- confidence way.
And better still, by giving easy access to the spelling in the first place, you are preventing children making mistakes from the start. Much better for everyone don’t you think?
give them opportunities to have a good look at the word, mentioning special characteristics as you write it on the board, on the computer screen, or in their Word Book. Pictures by the word, finding words in the word, making up a mnemonic, using rhythmic chants, adopting a kinaesthetic angle, all these can help the brain create that visual memory.
And although I don’t like to say the word don’t too often, please
don’t tell children to learn their spellings before you have taught them how to learn them!
don't say, “Look it up in a dictionary” if they are mid stream in a piece of exciting creative writing. You have to be a nearly right speller of that particular word in order to use a dictionary quickly and efficiently.
don't call out the letters in response to a request of “How do you spell…please?” This only tests your spelling. It is not an efficient way of teaching your pupil to spell, as it is not using the visual memory.
Now for the fun!
1. Picture drawing by a word really helps and you don’t have to be an artist for this to work. (Generally, the brain remembers pictures better than words and by visualising the picture, the brain is jogged into starting to visualise the letters.) For example
There. A signpost with a flower at its base around the spelling for “there” will help fix this in the visual memory as this spelling of there denotes a place..hence the sign post.
Their. A house, a T shirt, a pair of socks beside the word “their”, with the explanation of the letter I in this word showing that these things belong and so the owners can say “I have a house, I have a T shirt” so this is the their with i in it
They’re = they are.
Bear.Similarly a bear drawn by the word bear and a shivering pin man by the word Bare would work in the same way.(Maybe a bare man does not shiver where you live, so you will have to think of some other symbol suitable for the warmer climate!)
2. Mnemonics To think that a word with a spelling like mnemonics can actually help learning to spell, but it does! For example
Because = big elephants can always upset small elephants
Together = we went to get her to be together
Necessary= never eat cheese eat sausage sandwiches and remain young (if you are an ordinary sort of a person) or
never eat caviar, eat smoked salmon and remain yuppy (if you are aspiring to the up and coming aristocracy).
Believe = Never believe a lie..point out the three letters lie in each word
3. Story telling Children love stories, (don’t we all?) So why not use this to your advantage to help teach children how to spell? For example, and you can add the flourishes to this, try this story to teach the children how to spell the word
“ friend”. On Monday, a child asks his or her parent if a friend can be invited round after school. The parent says, “No, you have homework this evening and school tomorrow.” This question and answer goes on every day of the week until Thursday. The child then asks yet again, “Please may I have a friend home to play after school tomorrow?” The parent says, “Yes, you may have your friend round tomorrow as tomorrow is Friday and it’s the end of the week i.e. fri….end spells “friend”.
4. Rhythm
When teaching spelling rules, it can be useful and fun to chant them, with the teacher conducting the pace and volume. “Now whisper it." " Now the girls only." " Now say it in a deep voice", "Now a squeaky voice" " Now drum it!” etc. etc...and any other way you can think of to make it fun.
I have used this a lot with the rule of changing some words from singular to plural, like “Leave off the y add i, e, s,” (This is for words like country/countries)
Some children develop their own rhythm to a word to learn to spell it. This is so of a young boy in Dominica who is an excellent drummer, but was a poor speller until he started to drum a rhythm to the words he was learning to spell. His teacher has now commented on his improvement. I also heard from someone who had been watching a movie about a good speller who was in a Spelling Bee competition. She got to the final word..a difficult one of course, and she could not memorise the letter strings for the correct spelling, so she moved away from the microphone, held an imaginary skipping rope in her hands and jumped to a skipping rhythm as she called out the correct letters in the correct order. She had taught herself to spell by skipping a rhythm to the letters!
5. Kinaesthetic.
Another difficult word to spell, yet it has an important place in helping a lot of children to learn how to spell. The very act of writing clearly and unhurriedly can help children acquire the visual image of a spelling. It’s as if the message goes down the fingers, via the arms to the brain. This method has been used a lot with young children who write in a sand tray or trace their fingers over sandpaper letters.
Similarly, I made a break through with one young teenager who regularly invisibly “wrote” words she could not spell onto the inside of her lower left arm. I recollect invigilating in a huge, pupil -filled examination room when this pupil was 16 years old. She wanted a word and I saw her fingers on her right hand feel out the letters on the inside of her lower left arm as if they were written in Braille! Despite the silence rule, I truly wanted to shout