synthesis

Teaching Spelling

Teaching Spelling -

Simple view of Writing, developed by Dr. Louisa Moats, shows that competent writers need both lower level and higher-level skills to be competent writers. Students that master both low level skills and high-level skills are more likely to be competent writers. Better spellers can produce compositions of higher quality and quantity. Spelling development helps free working memory so that students can focus on other metacognition tasks and higher-level language skills. Spelling, although categorized as a lower level transcription skill, is an important aspect of writing.

Simple View of Writing (similar to the Simple View of Reading) says that students need to develop/ master lower level writing skills as well as higher level writing skills to be a competent writer.

· Higher level writing skills- Using story structure or information text structure, selecting a topic, choosing format, adding or deleting info, varying sentences, audience awareness, remembering the plan, etc.

· Lower level writing skills- forming the letters (handwriting), spelling, capitalizing, punctuation, monitoring noun/verb, using standard English/grammar, editing, proofreading, etc.

5 Principles:

· 1. Language of origin- the language from which a word came into English,, as well as its history, often explains the word’s spelling (etymonline.com)

· 2. Phoneme-grapheme correspondences- Phoneme-grapheme correspondences are the mappings between speech sounds and letter groups. A grapheme is a unit that spells the grapheme.

· 3. The position of a phoneme or a grapheme in a word- the position of a phoneme or grapheme refers to whether it is at the beginning, middle, or end of a syllable and what sounds (or letters) come before or after it. Position of sounds and letters often determine what letters are used from spelling.

· 4. Letter order and sequence patterns, or orthographic conventions- over the past few centuries, scribes and dictionary writers put constrains on how we are allowed to use letters. In addition, there are syllable-spelling conventions, and syllables can be classified into 6 regular types.

· 5. Meaning (morphology) and part of speech- English is morphomenic! A deep orthography like English represents both sound and meaning.

Focusing on these principles, how do we teach Spelling?

· Emphasize multisensory techniques- saying, writing, (and manipulating with letter tiles) at the same time

· Teach the patterns in written English- don’t memorize words in isolation

· Limit the number of non-pattern words (sight words); then gradually introduce

· Practice through dictation, phoneme grapheme activities, cloze exercises, and writing and in written expression (sometimes teachers include at the end of spelling tests)

· Set goals for the week

*Spelling/Learning disabled student- may only need to have 3 or 4 words per week, continue to show patterns, establish word memory for words