What Are The Best Ways Of Teaching Spelling?

What Are The Best Ways Of Teaching Spelling?

It seems that most studies of teaching spelling begin at the same place: a child’s understanding of communication begins with sound. From infancy they are surrounded by sounds, which become words. As they are exposed to printed text, they learn to associate phonemes, the sounds they here with graphemes, the visual representation of those words.

Toddlers who are exposed to the alphabet are usually fascinated with the letters. Once they have learned the names of the letters, they can begin to invent spellings.

Students entering the first grade will have developed their invented spelling. At this grade level when they begin to read, teaching spelling becomes a critical part of the process. Reading along with a spoken text will extend their grasp of letters and help them understand the complexities of certain sounds and their related spellings.

Teaching spelling begins with lots of reading. If the student needs help, that’s just encouragement to keep on reading. Hand in hand with this early process is frequent writing assignments. Made up spellings are the precursor to correct spellings, but the student has to be comfortable with the process.

Transitioning to proper spelling is another critical point in the process of teaching spelling. Reading helps, but it is not the complete answer since English is only partially phonetic. Rote memory can help. If a student has a printed list of the 100 or 200 most common words in his writing folder it will serve as a reference source until the correctly spelled word can be visualized.

One of the important components of teaching spelling is discussion of spelling patterns. All of the lessons we learned about long A’s and short A’s still apply. Showing a classroom that ea and ee both produce the long E sound will help a student sound words out and also narrow the possibilities for spelling an unfamiliar word.

Some of us are born spellers; some born mis-spellers. It seems to be as simple as that, although dyslexia seems to be much more common than originally thought when it was first diagnosed. By the middle of the elementary grades, it will be clear that spelling ability varies greatly among students and that often it has little to do with native intelligence.

At this juncture, the most important traits for teaching spelling are patience and compassion. It is important to keep away or take away any stigma associated with the problem.

Teaching spelling to problem spellers may become a process of teaching the importance of proofreading. That’s not a common process with elementary and secondary students but it may become an important one for a student who struggles with spelling. 

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Teaching young learners to read

What are the main issues? 

• Different alphabet. 

• Children are still learning to read their own language. 

• English is not a straightforward language to learn to read. 

• Teaching children to read English is only part of our job. 

• We haven’t been properly trained to teach reading. 

We need to devise a reading program for our students. 

• Letter and sound recognition 

• Whole word recognition & comprehension 

• Learning to sing the alphabet 

• Learning to use the letters of the alphabet 

• Learning to say the alphabet 

• Whole sentence recognition and comprehension 

• Recognizing questions 

• Reading silently for comprehension 

• Reading aloud to others 

• Reading with expression 

Teaching the alphabet 

Alphabet mosquitoes 

• Write some of the letters of the alphabet on the board. 

• Draw circles around them. 

• Add ‘stings’ and wings to the circles to make them look like flying insects. 

• Ask one child to come to the board and give him or her a fly swatter. 

• Ask the child to find one of the letters and ‘swat’ it. 

• While the child is searching for the letter, encourage the rest of the class  to buzz like mosquitoes. 

Alphabet fish 

• Cut 26 simple fish shapes from thin card. 

• Write a letter on each fish. 

• Put a metal paper clip on each fish. 

• Tie a piece of string to a small magnet. 

• Tie the other end of the string to a stick or a ruler to make it look like a  fishing rod. 

• Give a child the ‘fishing rod’ and ask him or her to ‘fish’ for a certain letter. 

Alphabet mats 

• Write the letters of the alphabet in small case randomly over a piece of thin card, large enough for two children to share at a desk. 

• Decorate the page to make it look colourful. 

• Either have it laminated or stick transparent plastic on the back and front  to make it into a durable mat. 

• Give the children small cards with capital letters of with words beginning with each of the letters of the alphabet and let them play with their mats by covering the letters on it. 

• You can make mats to match the seasons of festivals; for example you could have one shaped like a snowman, a flower, an ice cream. 

Alphabet trees 

• Draw a large tree on card. It could be a banana tree, an orange tree, a coconut tree etc. 

• Cut it out and either have it laminated or cover it on both sides with transparent, sticky plastic. 

• Cut out 26 pieces of card in the shape of the fruit of the tree ( for example coconuts). 

• Write a letter of the alphabet on each piece of fruit. Again, it is best if this is laminated or covered. 

• Let the children come and stick their fruit onto the tree as you teach each letter.

Vanishing letters 

• You can do this activity with a blackboard (but not with a whiteboard) 

• Dip your finger in some water 

• Draw a letter on the board 

• The children call out the name of the letter before the ‘water writing’ dries. 

• Let the children write letters with water. 

• You can write whole words too. 

Using songs as reading material. 

• Write the words of the song you are going to play on the board. 

• Read through it with the children. 

• Rub out some of the words, saying them as you do so. 

• Give the children cards with the missing words on them. 

• See if they can remember where the words go before you play the song. 

• Let them come out and stick the words in place. 

• Play the song and check that the words are in the right place. 

• Sing the song. 

• Repeat, this time rubbing out different words. 

• Write two versions of the song on the board. One should be the correct version and the other should be slightly different.

• Play the song and let the children decide which is the correct version. 

• Photocopy the song from the book. 

• Cut the song into lines. 

• Play the song and let the children arrange the lines in the correct order.

Using stories 

• Let the children enjoy looking at the pictures. Give them time to 

• Ask them what they can see in the pictures and write the words on the board. 

• Ask them if they can find any of those words in the story. 

• Listen to the story on the CD. Let them listen as many times as they wish. 

• Read the story to them, putting lots of expression in your voice. 

• Let them read aloud. 

• Let them read silently and complete the follow-up activity. 

• Make black and white photocopies of the story pages in your course book 

• Blank out the speech bubbles (or some of the words)

• Photocopy these pages again. 

• Use these copies for children who finish activities early, or give them as homework. The children complete the speech bubbles, either from memory or by copying from the book. 

• Encourage your students to do project work. 

• Give each child a sheet of paper. 

• Encourage the children to write one or two sentences about a picture they have found or drawn. 

• Punch holes in the papers, make a thin card cover and decide on a title for the ‘book’ they have written. Tie together with ribbon and put it in the class bookcase. 

• Prepare homework or extra work books which the children can complete at their leisure. 

• On each page of the book write a simple sentence which they read and illustrate. For example; It’s a pirate. This is a star. It’s a red ball. 

• Encourage the children to do something in their books whenever they have a spare moment. Children who learn quickly and finish activities ahead of other children can keep themselves occupied in this way and 

they will be less disruptive.

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