Strategies for spelling?Strategies for spelling?

• What strategies do you use to spell words?

• Do these strategies work - sometimes- all the time- never?• What do you think you can do to be

be a better speller?

Best Practice in SpellingBest Practice in Spelling

Methodologies which effectively help us to be

accurate spellers :Phonemic spelling ‘Whole Word’ approach (Visual)Morphemic spelling

Spelling should be explicitly Spelling should be explicitly taught because:taught because:

• The English language DOES conform to predictable patterns

• These patterns can be learnt

Collins, 1983Dixon, 1991Graham, 1999Dixon and Engelmann, 2002

1. Phonemic Spelling1. Phonemic Spelling

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

• We have less difficulty spelling words that are based on predictable letter-sound relationships.

• About 87% of our language has predictable letter-sound patterns

example

• the word hat has three sounds: /h/, /a/, and /t/ • It can be correctly spelled using the

three letters (h, a, and t) that correspond with each of those

sounds.

The Dyslexic SpellerThe Dyslexic Speller

Disadvantage•The area of the brain that is used to connect the sounds to letters is normally a weak area in people with dyslexia.

The Dyslexic SpellerThe Dyslexic Speller

AdvantageThe brain can be rewired to work with

these sounds (even in adults).

Rewiring is achieved with - • Systematic phonics instruction

boosts the spelling skills(National Reading Panel, UK, 2000)

• practice (research shows to form a neural pathway a word, sound, pattern must be reviewed over 20 times)

2. Whole Word Approach

Not all words in the English language can be spelled correctly using letter-sound correspondence.

About 13% of words do not follow the letter- sound patterns

Irregularly spelled wordsIrregularly spelled words• Examples of irregular words include

the words yacht, straight, and friend• These words cannot be spelled

correctly by applying a regular phonics approach.

• To learn irregularly spelled words, different strategies are required.

Advantages:Advantages:

•Whole Word approach works well with words which do not conform to a regular spelling pattern.

Disadvantages:Disadvantages:• Memorisation is not the most

efficient strategy for spelling instruction.

• In a typical ‘Whole Word’ program, groupings of words are based on some similarity

– Similar sound patterns sounds like th- or –and words– Word lists for a particular topic eg

work related words, course words.

Strategy for learning whole word spelling - the Look-say-cover-write method.

• First, a student looks at a word. • Then, while touching each letter of the

word, the student spells the word. • Next, the student covers the word so it is

no longer visible.• The word is then written on a separate

piece of paper. • Finally, the student uncovers the correctly

spelled word and checks to see if he or she has copied it down correctly.

•The English language contains words with both regular and irregular spellings.

•Both the phonemic and whole-word approaches are required to teach regularly or irregularly spelled words.

3. Morphemic Approach

• A morphograph is the smallest unit of identifiable meaning in written English.

• Morphographs include prefixes, suffixes, and bases or roots.

• Recognising different morphographs can help to create many words in the written English language.

• For example, the word recovered is made up of the prefix re, the base cover, and the suffix ed.

• Learn the basic rules applied when adding a suffix to the end of a word.

• Eg try – tried• stop – stopped• wave - waved

Advantages.

First• 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.

Second• When the spelling of a morphograph

changes across words, it does so in predictable ways.

• 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.

Third• The number of morphographs is far

fewer than the number of words in the written English language

and • the number of principles for

combining morphographs is relatively small.

Therefore:Therefore:

Learning to spell morphographs and the rules for combining morphographs will allow students to spell a far larger set of words accurately than by learning individual words through rote memorisation of spelling lists.

• In summary, phonemic, whole-word, and morphemic approaches are useful for teaching the wide variety of word types in the English language.

• Together these approaches represent a comprehensive set of strategies for learning how to be an accurate speller.