What Can I Do?
As teachers, what can we do to ensure that our students receive the best possible instruction for spelling success? Firstly it is important that students understand why it is important that they learn how to spell. Alderman & Green (2011) note that “children’s success or failure with spelling is strongly linked to their academic motivation” (p. 599). This motivation includes giving students as many spelling strategies as you can to ensure that they are on the right track, and rewarding progress and improvement in spelling, rather than only concentrating on praise when spelling is perfect.
There are so many contributing factors in effective spelling that it is often hard to know where to start, but any good spelling program makes sure that what has been learnt by the students is continually practiced (Support for Spelling, 2015). Ensuring that students understand some basic spelling patterns is a good place to begin; for example, looking at plurals, silent letters, and endings on commonly used words. This includes exploring prefixes, suffixes and word families. Spelling rules, some of which need to be explicitly taught to students to enable spelling success, such as “I” before “e” except after “c”, are aids that with frequent use and discussion will become second nature to students in time.
Working in a whole class scenario can be a positive way of developing spelling and extending vocabulary. But it seems that having personal spelling lists for each student each week a more individually relevant approach. One example of this is having a spelling journal for each student in the class. This journal includes a list of all their misspelt words for the week and then these words can be used for their spelling test list for the following week. Having a list of words that they use is also of great benefit as children are less likely to remember words that they are unfamiliar with. They also find it particularly hard to remember the spelling of words that they do not know the definition of, “children should not be expected to correctly spell words they cannot read or words they rarely hear or use” (Jongsma, 1990, p.609) This also reinforces the belief that a whole class spelling test approach can be counter productive.
There are so many contributing factors in effective spelling that it is often hard to know where to start, but any good spelling program makes sure that what has been learnt by the students is continually practiced (Support for Spelling, 2015). Ensuring that students understand some basic spelling patterns is a good place to begin; for example, looking at plurals, silent letters, and endings on commonly used words. This includes exploring prefixes, suffixes and word families. Spelling rules, some of which need to be explicitly taught to students to enable spelling success, such as “I” before “e” except after “c”, are aids that with frequent use and discussion will become second nature to students in time.
Working in a whole class scenario can be a positive way of developing spelling and extending vocabulary. But it seems that having personal spelling lists for each student each week a more individually relevant approach. One example of this is having a spelling journal for each student in the class. This journal includes a list of all their misspelt words for the week and then these words can be used for their spelling test list for the following week. Having a list of words that they use is also of great benefit as children are less likely to remember words that they are unfamiliar with. They also find it particularly hard to remember the spelling of words that they do not know the definition of, “children should not be expected to correctly spell words they cannot read or words they rarely hear or use” (Jongsma, 1990, p.609) This also reinforces the belief that a whole class spelling test approach can be counter productive.