Treating Spelling Words like Math Facts

My daughter spent last summer mastering the multiplication and division facts. I was so impressed with the simplicity of the program we used.  You can read about it here.

I remember watching her confidence soar while her ability level in math grew.  She could finally understand fractions.  The key to her understanding was math fact mastery.

Spelling... that was a different story.  My sweet girl worked so hard trying to memorize spelling words, but they just would not stick.  Sometimes she did well on a spelling test.  Sometimes she did not. Either way the spelling test did not help her with word retention.  She could not reproduce a spelling word while writing.  It didn't matter what spelling program she used.  She still struggled.  Sometimes even the simplest of words like "what" and "said" caused her anxiety.  She was so focused on the spelling of words, that her thoughts: her beautiful, profound thoughts, stayed inside her instead of on paper where the world could enjoy them. 


I know that spelling and writing are two separate skills.  I had treated them as such for years.  Experts say to allow inventive spelling while children are writing.  You can fix the spelling later.  Experts say to allow children to dictate their thoughts while the parent or teacher act as a scribe.  These are great modifications that I have used in the classroom and with my own children.  But I wanted more for my daughter. 

And then I had a thought,

"What if I treated spelling words like math facts?"

It was such a strange idea.  Spelling is a different skill than math.

But what if instead of numbers grouped together, I taught Elli to group letters together.  Addends and factors became phonograms and spelling rules.  3 x 2 = 6 because it is three groups of two or two groups of three.  The word said = s plus the AI phonogram plus d. 

But still, this was just conceptual.  My daughter had always understood the WHY behind math facts. 

What she needed was consistent practice and gradual introduction of new words. 

Students spend hours practicing math facts.  They use flash cards, written tests, picture stories: whatever works to internalize them.  They need math fact mastery to go on to higher level math.  You can't reduce fractions without an understanding of factors and division.  Math fact memory is necessary.

My daughter after she completed Automatic Spelling Level 1

All my life I've been told that some students are just poor spellers, and it is a good thing that spell check exists.  This is true, but I was not ready to give up.  My daughter was starting to be embarrassed by her struggles.  I thought that she might be able to master the spelling of common words in the same way she learned the multiplication facts:  by learning just a small number at a time and by practicing previous words over and over again.

So I collected words: commonly misspelled words, Dulch words, Fry words, words that used certain phonograms, words that had to be changed before adding a suffix.  Words, words, words.  I showed her what rules each of these words followed.  I pointed out phonograms within the words.  I created a spelling program. 

And she practiced.  And practiced.  And practiced.  And slowly she learned how to spell.  She can write without the hindrance of a spelling block. She can add any suffix to a word and spell it correctly.  She drops Es, changes y to i, and doubles final consonants without batting an eye.




It worked so well for her that I thought it might help other students.  I was right.  More than fifty students have tried this program.  Fifty children who might struggle with spelling otherwise.  Fifty children, some who for the first time believe that they are capable of learning to spell.  Some of these students ask to do spelling as their first subject. They are seeing results.  Your child could, too.


You can purchase Automatic Spelling here.

The Truth About Sight Words

As a child, I struggled with spelling and reading sight words.  I was told over and over that English is crazy and I just have to memorize them.  Memorizing sight words works for many children.  There are long lists of high frequently sight words that children are encouraged to memorize.  I’m not saying that memorizing the sight words is a bad thing.  It’s is very efficient.  When you read this sentence, you are probably not sounding out every word.  You have probably been reading for many years and have taken some short cuts to read quickly.  I certainly don’t want to get into a Whole Language verses Phonics debacle.  The longer I work in education, the more I see that one size does not fit all.  Personally I use a classical approach to education with phonics instruction and a focus on spelling rules, but I know that there are many children that benefit from a more traditional approach.  Let’s not get into an argument about educational methods today.  That isn’t my goal.  

I want to tell you something that I discovered just recently,  years after I struggled through spelling and reading in elementary school,  years after I studied to get undergrad and graduate degrees in education,  even a few years after I stopped teaching in a classroom.  To my former students: I’m so sorry.  I would have been a much more effective reading mechanics and spelling teacher if I had known more spelling rules. Let me be clear: I learned a lot of phonics in school, but phonics alone does not a good speller make.

Fonix ulon duz not a gud spellr mak.

In school I learned the basic spelling rules: i before e except after c, and when one vowel goes walking the other does the talking. Remember those? I knew a few rules about when to double consonants, or drop the e. That was about the extent of my spelling rule knowledge.  Throughout my school years and college, I felt like I was drowning when trying to remember how to spell basic words like experience, bulletin, and field.  How I wish I could have learned more about English spelling.

Students learn the silent e rules with Super E! Who is that masked woman? The world my never know.

Here is the truth:

 

There are very few English sight words that are complete rule breakers.  Most sight words follow either a phonics rule, a spelling rule, or both.  

 

The word “have” has bothered me for years.  It looks like it should be pronounced with a long A (like the A in Acorn) doesn’t it? The A should say the long A sound because of the silent e.  The only explanation I ever received about the word "have" is that it is a sight word.  I had to remember it.  English doesn't follow the rules.

 

But at the age of 33, I learned that there are  9 different reasons for silent e.  In the word have, the e must be present because English words do not end in v.  The word “have” uses that rule instead of long vowel sound rule. 

Now I know that these obscure spelling rules sound intellectual and not very practical, but as a child with dyslexia, I would have LOVED to hear a reason why the word  “have” had an e.  I may have even remembered to spell it correctly.   



This student used Legos to build the phonogram
"oi that you may not use at the end of English words" 

I learned all these spelling rules, 28 rules all together, from a curriculum called Spell to Write and Read (SWR).  Truly, it moved me to tears to hear the English words do not end in i, u, v, or j rule. (I am not making up the bit about the happy tears...I’m very passionate about spelling rules as it turns out.)  Spell to Write and Read can be dry and not always flashy and fun, but this simple curriculum has helped me teach more than a dozen children to read.  I highly recommend using it for a struggling child.  My daughter has used it for years.



We have recently switched to Spelling You See for a change of pace, but the rules and phonics we learned from SWR have stayed with us.  I use the phonics and spelling rules daily, even with a different spelling curriculum.

If you have a child who is struggling to read or spell high frequency sight words, teach them WHY they are spelled that way with a curriculum like Spell to Write and Read.  SWR is not always teacher friendly.  It takes a while to get your bearings, but once you know what to do the weekly schedule stays the same.  Need more help? Here is a video teaching all 70 phonograms. I have several videos showing how to teach SWR, and I usually teach a beginning spelling and reading class for kindergarten and first graders in the summer.  How have you used SWR?