Parents Ask: How Can I Help My Child Learn to Spell? – Part 1

PART 1-Early Elementary Students

“Reading [decoding…my add] is like breathing in, and writing [spelling…my add] is like breathing out.”

Pam Allyn

Pam Allyn’s quote refers to the idea of sharing the voices and perspectives of the reader and the writer, but I think it also perfectly captures the reciprocal and interdependent nature of reading and spelling. Let me explain.

Reading and spelling development start with the idea of moving from speech to print. Let me explain. 

Oral language develops naturally and is a child’s first pre-literacy experience.  Once a child begins formal reading instruction, a child uses individual speech sounds (phonemes) to help ‘crack the code’ of the print. The print ‘maps’ these oral speech sounds.  Educators (and I hope parents too) explicitly support this development by teaching children to notice, isolate, blend, and segment these individual speech sounds (phonemes).  If you hear your child’s teacher use the term ‘phonological awareness’, it refers to this type of instruction, but that is a different topic saved for a different blog post! The body of research known broadly as Science of Reading tells us this is the best and most efficient way for us to teach our children the ‘code’ of the English language.  

When children learn to read or ‘breathe in’, they use their ability to isolate phonemes and then blend the phonemes to literally decode.  So if a kindergarten or first grade child attempts to read words such as: ‘mud’, that child will likely say (either orally or internally) /m/…/u/…./d/–that is, if and only if that child has learned the sound/symbol correspondences of ‘m’, ‘u’, and ‘d’.  Then, that child will literally blend those sounds together to come up with the word ‘mud’–and hopefully, that child will be familiar with that word, which will reinforce the “wordness” of that word. 

Kindergarten children are also introduced to the concept of a ‘digraph’–2 letters that make 1 phoneme and include: ‘ch’, ‘th’, ‘wh’, ‘sh’ (most well thought out programs will save ‘ph’ for later on), which can be confusing to some of our young ones. The skills notch up in grade 1, where children are introduced to words with 4 or 5 phonemes, and include the concept of a ‘consonant blend’ (2 consonants next to each other each retaining their own sound) in words such as ‘flag’, ‘best’, or ‘trust’.  It is best practice to teach children to isolate these blends in the same way as the words with 3 phonemes: ‘flag’: /f/…./l/…./a/…/g/. But now a child needs to remember 4 or 5 sounds instead of just 3 sounds, which can be a load on auditory memory. 

Once words contain more than one syllable, best practice dictates instruction of breaking words into syllables (again, another blog post!) and combining these syllables in order to decode the longer word. This process is developmental and fairly linear, with harder skills dependent on mastery of easier ones. Typical readers are able to increase the speed with which they are able to decode. This will then leave ‘brain space’ for attaining meaning from the text–the ultimate goal of reading.

So…what does all this have to do with spelling? Think of spelling as ‘breathing out’. A child must have or be aware of an accurate oral representation of the word. If a child cannot say the word properly, that child may have trouble spelling it. Once a child says the word, best practice dictates that the child literally ‘break’ or ‘segment’ the word into its individual phonemes. For example, the word ‘rug’ would be broken down into /r/../u/../g/. The child would then code those individual sounds into the letters ‘r’, ‘u’, ‘g’–and state the letter names and hopefully write those letters down as a cohesive unit. 

Again, the skills needed become more complicated with increasing load on auditory memory as the child practices the spelling of words with digraphs and blends. And again, when attempting to spell words with more than one syllable, a child must be able to break the word down into its syllables, and then spell each syllable.  And again, typical spellers are able to increase the speed with which they are able to spell (encode).  This will leave ‘brain space’ for children to express their thoughts in written form–the ultimate goal of spelling.

Hence, the process of reading takes children from the written symbols to oral language, while the process of spelling takes children from the oral language to the written symbols.  These skills are forever interconnected and can be viewed as a reciprocal relationship.  Typically, reading development occurs a bit faster than spelling development–reading is a bit more ‘passive’ in nature, but just a bit for most.

Forget the Monday Pretests, followed by the dreaded Friday Tests!  

The best way to teach spelling to children, especially younger ones, is to marry the concepts taught for reading to the ones practiced for spelling. If beginning with 3 phoneme words (CVC words–consonant-vowel-consonant) such as ‘cat’. This way, instead of having children simply ‘memorize’ a word list, they learn concepts in both directions (written symbols to oral language/oral language to written symbols).  So instead of ‘learning’ a list of 10-15 words, children can apply the concepts learned to spell so many more words sharing the same concept. Again, new concepts should build on old concepts to ensure the best success.

Reasons traditional spelling lists and traditional ways to practice do not teach spelling:

1 – Many spelling programs teach too many skills/sound-letter combinations at once.

2 – Typical practice exercises involve nothing more than repetition and/or ‘sorts’, which do not help students understand the phoneme-grapheme (letter name) relationships I described above. These exercises include: alphabetizing, writing each word numerous times, defining each word, completing word scrambles, crossword puzzles, etc. Almost everything but examining word structure.

3 – One of my former students said it best: “I practice ‘em all week, and then just forget ‘em after Friday!”  If your child (or a child you teach) manages to get decent grades every Friday..and that is after you–the parent—have spent what appears to be a part time job helping your child each week, only to see your child forgetting and/or misspelling those same words the very next week…well, a change is certainly in order.

“How can I help my child learn to spell?”

1-Practice oral phonological awareness skills such as blending sounds, segmenting sounds, and use letters as soon as you can (yes, you can use letter tiles–many are available commercially–or make your own out of foamies and let your child manipulate the letters!). 

2-Practice the same concepts for reading and for spelling. If your child is working on short vowels with consonants (typically the first thing taught), then work on reading and spelling words with these concepts simultaneously. 

3-Be sure your child is able to correctly form the letters and include writing in your practice. Research has consistently shown that writing words significantly improves a child’s ability to read and spell.

4-Knowledge is power! Take some time to read some of the articles in the Resources Section of my website. Of particular note would be articles by Moats (“How Spelling Supports Reading”, “Evidence Challenges Teaching Words ‘By Sight'”) and Joshi, et. al. (“How Words Cast Their Spell”). And, continue to ask questions!

“What about the words that are not phonetic?” A Paradox For Sure

English spelling is far more predictable than one might think. It is estimated that the spellings of nearly 50% of English words are predictable based on sound/letter correspondences that can be taught. And another 34% of words are predictable except for one sound.  That leaves about 16% of all words categorized as ‘non-phonetic’.

Here is the paradox: Early spellers need to learn a good number of these ‘non-phonetic’ words because they occur so frequently (and young children may not have learned some of the sound/letter correspondences yet), especially words such as: of, the, was, to, are, said, were, etc.. These words are precisely the ones that make us think that English is so unpredictable.  

What are the best ways for parents to help their children learn these words for spelling, as well as reading?  

1 – Tell your child the word when reading if she needs help. Do not make her ‘sound out’ non-phonetic words since it will be difficult if not impossible.

2 – Help your child to visually ‘map’ out the sound-letter correspondences, as pictured in ‘said’ above.  The ‘s’ and the ‘d’ will serve as anchors to help your child remember the parts of the words which do follow the sound-letter correspondences and learn the non-phonetic parts more easily. The Reading Rockets article explaining the process of teaching these words is worth a look. These words have been referred to as ‘Heart Words’, ‘Red Words’, ‘Trick Words’ in various programs–just some type of way to set them apart from decodable words.

3 – Attempt to teach only 2 or 3 of these non-phonetic words at a time (while working on phonetic concept words as well) until your child can read and spell these words with mastery. Then attempt new ones while spiraling back to old ones for review.  Children often benefit from ‘taking a snapshot’ (tuning into the non-phonetic parts of the words), in their minds and practicing these words writing in shaving cream, a layer of sand, on your back, on a piece of felt, or in the sky.

4 – Pay close attention to your child’s writing as a way to see if he/she is applying the skills you have been reviewing (for both reading and spelling)–it is also a good way to see what your child needs to continue to work on.

Common Errors/Early Spelling Conventions

1 – Pay special attention to teaching/reviewing the letter-sound relationships of:

• – ‘g’ as in ‘game’–do not teach the second sound of ‘g’ to young readers early on
• – ‘h’, ‘w’, ‘y’ are particularly tricky since the names of these letters do not match the sounds they represent.
• – ‘qu’ represents 2 sounds /k/ and /w/, but ‘qu’ is typically taught as a unit for ease of instruction. Teaching ‘qu’ will avoid common spelling errors such as: ‘kwit’ for ‘quit’. Children’s names and other words may have a ‘q’ without the ‘u’, but “names or words from other languages do not count” and ‘q’ always goes with ‘u’ in the English language. 
• – ‘x’ represents 2 sounds /k/ and /s/. Again, this is taught as a unit for ease of instruction. A good cue is “never put an ‘s’ after an ‘x’.”  This will avoid common spelling errors such as ‘foks’  or ‘foxs’ for ‘fox’.

2 – Teaching the short vowel sounds for both reading and spelling is critically important. I once heard a linguist whose name escapes me say, “English is all about the vowels.”  Words with short vowels comprise nearly half of all syllables in all English words.

3 – Teach the various spellings of the /k/ sound–it will solve a multitude of errors:  

“Use ‘k’ with i and e, use ‘c’ with the other 3” as in cat,cot, cut, kit, Ken

“Use ‘ck’ at the end of a word after a single short vowel” as in sick, pack

Do not teach the second sound of ‘c’ to young readers early on.

4 – Teach the suffix ‘s’, which helps early readers to understand that the ‘s’ means either plural (more than one) or that something is happening right now (present tense). Teach that suffix ‘s’ can make either the /s/ sound as in ‘picks’ or the /z/ sound as in ‘rugs’. It will help to avoid spelling errors such as ‘rugz’.

5 – When working on words with consonant blends, common errors include:

‘jrag’ for ‘drag’                         and/or                                ‘chruck’ for ‘truck’

Children often have difficulty perceiving the separate sounds of /d/ and /r/  or /t/ and /r/ without direct instruction and spell what they ‘hear’ when these words are said quickly. We need to train the ears of children to slow down to realize the two separate consonant sounds in blends.

More tips to come in future blog posts. I know this one has a lot of information packed into it already, and I am also aware that many of today’s parents were not taught to read or spell this way. Just think, you can learn along with your children! Let me know of your successes, challenges, and questions.