From Misspelt to Mastered: Understanding Spelling Instruction
The importance of teaching spelling has long been overlooked. If you trained as a teacher during the ‘balanced literacy’ era (as I did) then you may have very limited knowledge on how to teach children to spell and how essential spelling is to reading and writing development.
So … What does the research say about spelling?
“Research has shown that learning to spell and learning to read relies on much of the same underlying knowledge – such as the relationship between letters and sounds – and, not surprisingly, that spelling instruction can be designed to help children better understand that key knowledge, resulting in better reading” (Moats, 2005).
There are numerous reasons why spelling instruction is essential:
- It helps the reader understand a text more easily
Accurate spelling contributes to the overall quality of students’ writing - Good spellers can focus on ideas and the content of their writing, rather than being concerned about how to spell words
- It aids writing fluency
- Good spellers are likely to use more interesting and adventurous vocabulary in their writing
- Spelling is important for reading
- There is a high correlation between spelling ability, reading ability and
In order for students to spell well they need to acquire knowledge in areas of:
- phonology – learning to work with sounds (blending and segmenting etc)
- orthography – learning how these sounds are represented by letters (alphabetic principle, spelling rules and conventions)
- morphology – word parts and structures (prefixes, roots, suffixes etc)
- etymology – the origins of words (Greek, Latin, French etc)
Connecting to meaning is also an essential component. Learning multiple meanings speeds up word retrieval, word recognition and contributes to vocabulary development (Wolf, 2007).
What to teach?
Scope and Sequence
To teach spelling effectively teachers should follow a scope and sequence. A scope and sequence for spelling is more likely to see longer-term benefits when it is used as a whole school approach, across the primary year levels moving from simple to complex in a systematic and sequential way. In the early years this scope and sequence will also be integrated with phonics and handwriting. The reciprocal skills of reading and writing (including handwriting and spelling) are taught together and reinforce each other.
Scope – what will be taught.
Sequence – order in which the content will be taught.
The Sunshine Phonics Scope and Sequence can be found here.
Segmenting to spell (Encoding)
Children need to learn the connections between sounds (phonemes) and letters (graphemes). Early spelling requires children to use this knowledge to spell words.
We spell a word by saying it, identifying the phonemes, and writing each grapheme. When spelling we are encoding (the reverse of decoding). An early example might be if a child hears the word ‘cat’, they would segment ‘cat’ into its three sounds /c/ /a/ /t/ and then write down the letters c-a-t to encode ‘cat’.
Spelling Activities for Juniors
Ensure activities for junior students are fast, fun and engaging. These activities should last for approx 10 minutes daily. Activities should encourage students to move their fingers, arms and bodies. The words chosen for the activities below must relate directly to the phoneme/grapheme correspondence being explicitly taught.
Spelling Fingers
Students use their fingers to count the sounds in a word. Students and teachers can hold their hands in the air, lift fingers for each sound from left to right. Sweep from left to right to show when the sounds blend together into words.
Sound Hunt
Put a variety of small toys/items or picture cards into a hoop on the floor. Students make a circle around the hoop. Ask “Which pictures/toys have a /d/ sound at the beginning (initial sound)?” Students call them out and take them from the hoop. Record the words on the board as you segment the sounds. The same process can be repeated for medial and final sounds.
Read My Mind
“I am thinking of a picture/item/toy. Listen as I make the sounds /b/ /a/ /g/. You put them together and tell me what the word is.” “b-a-g” Record the word on the board after you have blended the sounds together.
Word Chain
Show students a picture card. “This is a bug. This word says bug. Write it using magnetic letters. How can I make it say bag? Which letter do I swap?” Ensure each time there is only one letter swap. These changes could be the initial, medial or final letter sounds. bug → bag → bat → bit → bot → bog → bug
Jumping Sounds or Syllables
Line up hoops (2-3) depending on how many syllables or sounds there are in the words. Say the word, segment the word together. Students jump with two feet into each hoop saying the sounds as they jump. At the end they blend the sounds and say the complete word, e.g. ‘dog’ /d/ /o/ /g/ (3 sounds, 3 hoop jumps) ‘dog’. This can also be done with syllables.
Meaning Webs
Link to meaning. Place the target word in the middle of a diagram, place or draw a picture of each meaning on a separate branch of the web. Write a simple child-friendly definition beside the picture.
Dictation
Decodable readers are a wonderful resource for this activity. Dictate a short sentence of 3-4 words using text from a decodable reader. Students repeat the sentence out loud. They count the number of words in the sentence on their fingers. They hold it in their memory while they make a line for each word they will be writing. Remind students about punctuation as they begin. Encourage them to finger spell as they write. Show them the correct sentence written on the board, and self correct any errors. Read the sentence together.
In the Free Resources section of the Sunshine website you will find Sentence Cards and Silly Quizzes which can be used for this activity.
Test the Teacher
Hold a letter card above your head so your students can see it, then ask students to make the sound of the letter. You guess the letter name after the students have made the letter sound, e.g. hold letter card ‘a’ above your head, students say /a/ the short vowel sound and you check.
Poetry/Nursery Rhymes/Songs
It is essential to expose students to a wide range of quality poetry, nursery rhymes and songs. Draw attention to the rhythm and rhyme in these texts and play with the patterns.
Sunshine Sound Card
Spelling Activities for Middle/Senior School
15-20 minutes daily, working on one spelling pattern for the week, is required. Ensure instruction addresses multisyllabic words and includes morphology instruction.
Word List (Decode/Encode/Decode)
Create a list of 8-10 words which follow the spelling pattern which is being explicitly taught that week. Read the list. Segment and spell the words (I do, We do, You do). Re-read the list. Draw students’ attention to the placement of the sound in a word (beginning, middle or end) as this often determines what letters are used for spelling.
Connect to Meaning
Re-read the word list. Create a mind map of the meaning of some of the interesting words. Change the endings of some of the words. Students can create their own mind map and illustrate it. They can also write up their own definitions (child-friendly) or use the words in a sentence which shows the meaning of the word. Ask students to draw meaning icons (small pictures) which represent the meaning of the words on the list.
Spelling Fingers
Teach students how to use spelling fingers to count the sounds in words. They raise one finger for each sound they hear in the word. Re-read the word list, hide it and then ask students to listen to the sounds and use their spelling fingers to help them spell the words in the list. Check with a partner.
When finger spelling multisyllabic words, ask students to break the word into syllables then finger spell each syllable.
Dictated Sentence
Re-read the word list for the week. Create a dictated sentence (ChatGPT is helpful for this) that includes words which use the spelling pattern focus or from the word list. Read the sentence out loud a few times. Students write the dictated sentence. Prompt students to listen for the sounds, and to use their finger spelling to assist them. Prompt them to use punctuation. Write the dictated sentence on the board, students can mark their own work. Ticks are given for correct spelling and punctuation.
Etymology
English has adopted words and their spellings from many other languages. Explore the language of origin of different words with your students, once students have a more advanced understanding of spelling.
Morphology
English is morphophonemic, meaning that our writing system is organised by both sound/symbol correspondences and morphology. Breaking words into its meaningful parts often provides clues as to how to spell a word and what it means.
Johnna Alborn
Deputy Principal/Literacy Facilitator
References:
How to Teach Writing, Spelling and Grammar; From research to practice. Dr Helen Walls and Dr Christine Braid, 2023. Essential Resources Educational Publishers Ltd.
LETRS: Unit 1-4. Louisa C Moats and Carol A Tolman, 2019. Voyager Sopris Learning. Effective Instruction in Reading and Spelling. Kevin & Robyn Wheldall, 2023. MRU Press.