Spelling Isn't a Scary Halloween Costume

Spelling has always been the scary part of reading instruction.  It's always the thing we don't have time for because we are avoiding it at all costs.  People tell us spelling doesn't make sense or that learning to write is becoming obsolete with increasing technology to do it for us.

In schools, teachers have focused less and less on spelling instruction.  Many schools even quit teaching it at all after third grade.  Parents whose children struggle to read are often in favor of ignoring spelling.  After all, there's spell check for that, right?  And memorizing those spelling lists each week seems like cruel and unusual punishment for a struggling child.  I've even heard professionals tell people that it's OK to ignore the spelling lists.  So let's talk about that.

Get ready. I'm going to use the word "research."  Brace yourselves.  I'll be brief so stick with me.  Here goes.  The research tells us that kids can more easily read what they practice spelling and spell what they practice reading too.  BUT there is a greater ability to transfer what was learned in spelling practice to the ability to read than to apply what we learn to read to the ability to spell (Conrad, Nicole. (2008). From Reading to Spelling and Spelling to Reading: Transfer Goes Both Ways. Journal of Educational Psychology. 100. 869-878). 

Whew!  You survived the research portion.  Good job.  Keep it up!

What does that research mean?  Learning to spell is an essential component to supporting the ability to decode words.  So does that mean we should happily spend hours at the dining table with our children trying to hammer those words from the spelling list into their minds?  Nope.

Lots of the things we have children do to learn spelling words are not supported in research.  Things like writing the word 20 times, writing words in rainbow colors, and drawing lines around the shape of the word are not research based.  So these are not things to do to help learn words.  What are the things we should do?

1.  When your child brings that list of words home on Monday, talk about the sounds in the words.  How many sounds do you hear in the word 'glad'?  Many students who struggle to read also struggle to hear the sounds correctly and to be able to isolate each individual sound in the word.  So here's what you do:

Parent:  Let's think about the sounds in the word 'glad'. Tell me the sounds you hear.

Child:  /g/  /l/  /a/  /d/  (saying the sounds, not the letter names)

Parent:  Good job.  Yes, /g/ /l/ /a/ /d/ are the sounds in the word 'glad'.  Let's draw one line for every sound we hear.

Child:  Says the /g/ sound while drawing one line, says the /l/ sound as he draws another line, says the /a/ sound while drawing a third line, and says the /d/ sound as he draws a fourth line.

__________          __________          __________          __________

Parent: Show the child the word 'glad' and say "Lets write the letters in the word that go with each sound we hear."  (You will write letters that represent one sound on each line.)

Child:  Says /g/ sound and writes a 'g' on the first line.  Says /l/ sound and writes an 'l' on the second line, and so on.  It is important that your child says the letter sounds out loud as he writes them to make a connection between what they are saying, hearing, writing, and seeing.

____g_____          ____l_____          ____a_____          ____d_____

In words where multiple letters are responsible for a single sound the letters go together on one line.  For instance __p__   __i___   __ck__  __le__ (pickle-4 sounds),     __s__   __ch__   __oo__  __l__  (school - 4 sounds),    __s__   __t__   __r__  __aigh__  __t__ (straight - 5 sounds)

Instead of drawing lines, you can use paint sample strips from your local hardware store.  I like to laminate mine and write on them with dry erase marker so I can re-use them.  Also, fixing mistakes by wiping off the marker is a lot less labor intensive than erasing on paper.

2.  Now that you have talked about the sounds in the words and made sure your child understands the individual sounds in the words, let's talk about syllables.  Just go down the list and say the words for your child.  Ask them to clap the parts of the words.  How many syllables in the word 'piano'?  

pi  -  a  -  no

I have children divide the word where they naturally break the word apart in speech.  This is a pure speech to print method.  Other methods teach specific syllable division rules.  Whichever way your child has learned is fine.  The point of this exercise is to have your child note that every syllable has a vowel.  Every syllable or word part has a vowel representative.  So when your child is attempting to write a word, and they aren't sure if they spelled it correctly, a basic check they can make is to check that they included a vowel in every syllable of their word.  Neat, huh?  

3.  At this point you have talked about the sounds in words and your child has written them down.  As your child wrote he said each sound in the word.  Then thought about syllables and how many parts were in the word, noting the vowels in each syllable.  Now let's think about some of the parts of the words that may be the same.  So if your child brought home a list with the words 'farm', 'charm', 'harm', and 'arm', it would be important to look at these patterns.  If you can spell 'arm' it will be a lot easier to spell all those other words if you apply what you know about spelling the word 'arm' to the other words.  *You might notice that I separate the /a/ and /r/ into 2 separate sounds.  In my speech-language pathology training we are taught that technically these are two different sounds and this is how I instruct my students.  Many programs call them r-controlled vowels and lump them into 1 sound shown as /ar/.  This is fine as long as you are consistent.  

Have your child highlight the similar word endings to draw attention to them.  Notice how understanding the sounds in the word 'arm' now allows us to spell 3 words from the list without having to memorize.  We are just relying on listening to the sounds in words, writing down one letter for each sound we hear, and then using what we have learned to help us spell more words.  

4.  OK, now let's talk a bit about word meaning.  This part often gets ignored because everyone is so focused on memorizing the way we write the words.  Discussing meaning is so important.  Understanding and spelling what we mean is utilized when we determine whether to use the word 'to', 'too', or 'two', right?  If we spell "I love you too." it means something totally different than "I love you two."  Talking about meaning helps us think about spelling.  It's what tells us to write "two cookies" instead of "to cookies."  We understand that one spelling refers to a quantity. Got it? 

Understanding word origins and meanings can also help us to figure out the meaning of a word.  For instance, knowing that 'flam' in the word 'flammable' means 'flame' can help us make sense of words like 'inflame', 'inflammation', etc.  So a cut that is 'inflamed' might be burning like fire.  Knowing word origins and word parts can help us create stories in our minds about words and word meanings and that helps give our mind more "hooks" to find and grab that info when we need it!  You can find a lot of great info on word origins from the website etymonline.com.  Once you've found some great information about the words on your list, it's time to think about related words.

5.  Words that are related often share very similar base words.  For instance, what if your child has a word on his list like "muscle?"  Ahh, those pesky silent letters.  Here's where we hear many adults telling children that spelling doesn't make sense.  Why on earth is there a 'c' in that word?  There's a great reason!  Think about words related to 'muscle' like 'muscular' and 'musculature.'  Oh wait!  Did you hear that 'c' suddenly being pronounced in those related words?  Crazy, right?  Spellings in root words often don't change even though the way we pronounce the word does.  So even though we don't say the 'c' in 'muscle' we need it there to form the related word of 'musculature.'  Your child knowing this will help them create a story or more detailed picture of that word in her mind.  When discussing related words, you can add them to a "word web".  I usually have my students fold their paper in 4 and we build 4 word webs on the front and 4 on the back.  You don't need to build a word web for every word on the spelling list.  Maybe just for the more interesting words that have lots of relatives. You don't have to be fancy about it.  Just put the spelling word in the middle and draw lines connecting it to another related word.   

So that's it.  It sounds like a lot of work, doesn't it?  This takes about 15 minutes each night.  It may take longer the first few times you do it.  Then as your child learns the skills and the routine, they will go faster.

  

Monday - Work on thinking about the sounds in the words and the syllables

Tuesday - Look for patterns in words.  Are there words on the list that have similar endings (-arm, farm, charm, etc)?  

Wednesday - Word meanings

Thursday - a word web or two to discuss relatives.

Friday - spelling test 

Now, here's the part I'm going to tell you not to worry so much about.  If your child can't ace every word on that test, it's OK.  Tell him it's OK.  The point about spelling is not to memorize the words.  I would rather a child have a deep understanding of 2 or 3 words from the list.  I want them to be able to discuss them with me along with word parts and related words.  I don't want them to regurgitate words.  I want them to KNOW words.  So if they deeply understand all about just a handful of those words, that's going to be better than the 20 other kids who memorized them long enough to scribble them on the test correctly only to be misspelling them again on Monday.  If your child really understands a word, they will carry that understanding with them and be able to apply that understanding a lot better than kids who write the words 20 times.  

So the part you should ignore? The grade on the test.  Because your kid now understands a lot more about words than they did on Monday.  Keep going.  You will be growing a child who understands that words aren't random.  Spellings weren't just pulled out of thin air and spelling isn't scary.  There are reasons for the spellings and there are stories about origins of those words.  And they are fun and exciting and magical!

Also check out Ten things you can do to help your child become a better speller!