Effective Spelling Instruction By: Riley Smith

The Great Debate Spelling instruction has been a source of debate in the education world for a while. Parents often believe that spelling tests are necessary because they had them when they were in school. Parents also believe that students learn best through this type of spelling instruction. Teachers have disagreements on the most effective ways to teach spelling, but many teachers don’t believe that spelling tests are a good option.

Spelling Often times, the students can spell the word for the test, but then forget it the next week. We don’t want to teach the students to memorize words. Spelling tests aren’t effective because they aren’t a tool of teaching, but more of a tool to teach memorization. We want to teach phonemic awareness. Phonemic Awareness- is a subset of phonological awareness in which listeners are able to hear, identify and manipulate phonemes, the smallest units of sound that can differentiate meaning.

Effective Spelling Instruction Develop Phonemic Awareness Understand phonemic nature of spelling Learn the phonemic code Approach the process of spelling phonemically Acquire knowledge of spelling patterns and learn helpful guidelines Learn/memorize specific and ‘tricky’ spellings: Sight Words

Checking for understanding Spelling tests can still be an ok tool to use in the classroom, if the words have been taught with phonemic awareness in mind. Create spelling lists that contains words with the same sounds. (Ex. Words with the long a vowel.) Have the students practice the words throughout the week in various ways. Incorporate the words into the weeks reading lessons. Teach the students strategies.

Let’s Practice! Take out a blank sheet of paper. An effective way for students to learn phonemic awareness is for them to use their fists to sound out the word. Once I say the word, we will all raise a close fist. We will sound out the word together. I will repeat the word and use it in a sentence. You will use your knowledge on word sounds to spell out these elementary words. This is still a test in the classroom, but the words are from the same sounds and the students have been learning phonemic awareness throughout the year.

http://thespellingblog. blogspot http://thespellingblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/spelling-tests-necessary-evil.html http://www.readingrockets.org/article/word-study-new-approach-teaching-spelling http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/raising-readers-writers-and-spellers/201103/fad-fails-our-children-no-more-spelling-tests http://www.righttrackreading.com/howtospell.html Sources