Spelling : Best Practices

Kristan Bachner Ashley Smith Michele Renner

By:

The Complete Spelling Program

Teaching spelling strategies

Matching instruction to students stage of spelling development

Providing daily reading and writing opportunities

Teaching students to learn to spell high-frequency

Important Strategies

Segmenting the word and spelling each sound often called sound it out

Spelling unknown words by analogy to familiar words

Applying affixes to root words

Proofreading to locate spelling errors in a rough draft

Locating the spelling of unfamiliar words in a dictionary

In The Classroom

*Word walls

*Making words

*Word sorts

*Interactive writing

*Proofreading

*Dictionary use

*Spelling options

The Code

phonological code -coding and awareness of sounds in spoken words.

morphological code -word parts at the beginning of words that modify shade of meaning and at end of words that mark tense, number, or part of speech.

orthographic code -coding and awareness of letters in written words.

Phonemic Approach

Understanding the relationship between letters and their corresponding sounds is an important skill for successful reading and spelling performance.

The National Reading Panel (NRP) reported to Congress that teaching phonemic awareness exerts “strong and significant effects” on children’s reading and spelling skills, with those effects lasting well beyond the end of training (National Reading Panel, 2000).

Spelling curricula that use explicit instruction in the letter-sound relationship to teach high frequency regular words have demonstrated effectiveness teaching students to spell accurately.

The phonological awareness skills of segmenting, sequencing, discriminating, and identifying phonemes all play a role during the encoding process.

The decoding process draws upon the phonological awareness skills of identifying, sequencing, and blending phonemes

Morphemic Approach

A morphograph is the smallest unit of identifiable meaning in written English. Morphographs include prefixes, suffixes, and bases or roots

Morphographs are generally spelled the same across different words.

For example, the morphograph port is spelled the same in the words porter, deport, and important.

When the spelling of a morphograph changes across words it does so in predictable ways.

An example of a morphograph that changes across a word is the morphograph trace is spelled differently in the words trace and tracing, but the change is governed by the rule for dropping the final e.

Teaching students to spell morphographs and teaching the rules for combining morphographs will allow students to spell a far larger set of words accurately than by teaching individual words through rote memorization of weekly spelling lists.

Mental Orthographic Memory

✴Individuals need to develop clear and complete mental representations of previouslyread words in order to automatically and accurately read and spell.

✴When spelling, individuals rely upon the mental image of a word when phonological awareness and knowledge of phonics, vocabulary, word parts, and related words are not sufficient to correctly spell a spelling pattern within a word (e.g., soap not sope; ticket not tickit; sailornot sailer).

✴These mental images of words, also known as mental orthographic images are stored in an individual’s long-term memory after repeated exposure to them in print.

Whole-Word Approach

Whole-word approaches work well for words that are

considered irregular.

Many whole-word approaches, however, rely on rote memorization for all words, instead of taking advantage of phonemic rules that can simplify the task of spelling.

Memorization is not the most efficient strategy for spelling instruction of all words but can be used effectively to teach irregularly spelled words.

Vocabulary Knowledge

Individuals use vocabulary knowledge to accurately store and retrieve the correct spelling of words

Word meaning, coupled with awareness of the complete phonological and orthographic structure of the word, is the “glue” that holds new reading vocabulary in the individual’s long-term memory.

Spelling Tests: Yes or No?

•Controversial thoughts

•Ineffective use of spelling tests

•Effective use of spelling tests

Bibliography

Tompkins, G. E. (2010). Literacy for the 21st century (5th ed.). Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Merrill.

Simonsen, F., & Gunter, L. (2001). Beat Practices in Spelling Instruction: A Research Summary. Journal of Direct Instruction, 1(2), 97-105.

Berninger, V., & Fayol, M. (2008). Why spelling is important and how to teach it effectively. Encyclopedia of Language and Literacy Development (pp. 1-13). London, ON: Canadian Language and Literacy Research Network. Retrieved [insert date] from http://www.literacyencyclopedia.ca/pdfs/topic.php?topId=234

Wasowicz, J. (n.d.). Improving Written Language Using a Multiple-Linguistic Spelling Word Study Approach. Learning by Design . Retrieved November 15, 2011, from http://www.learningbydesign.com

Davis, B. G. (n.d.). Sitton Spelling and Word SkillS. School Specialty—Literacy and Intervention. Retrieved November 16, 2011, from http://eps.schoolspecialty.com/download