IMPORTANT: Use words in lists, activities and books for spelling every time you work with a learner!
TIP: Be sure you always have your learner read
their writing back to you!
Spelling starts with individual letter sounds. After teaching letter sounds practice spelling just these sounds. “How do you spell /m/?” “Which vowel sound do you hear in mop?”
Incorporate spelling every day with each phonetic skill you are working on. For example when you are working on Magic e, ask the learner(s) to spell some phonetically regular Magic e words (bike, spade) found in the lists, games and other materials. Physically writing the letters, sounds and words is important to building motor memory.
Nonsense words: Reading and spelling nonsense words are important to help the learner use the target skill in cases where the word will not make sense. This will better prepare them for multiple syllable words.
Word Chains: We have many spelling practice sheets where the learner changes one sounds to make a new word (you can also create your own). These do a great job at focusing the learner(s) on the individual sounds in words, and this focus is proven to advance reading skills! Here is an example of this kind of spelling practice sheet.
Click Word Chains: A Powerful Spelling Strategy for more information below.
Practice Unusually Spelled Common Words. Common words like “said” need to be practiced. Click Practice Unusually Spelled Common Words for more information below.
Map Sounds to Letters: Mapping the sounds in words to the letter(s) that represent each sound is the basis of how we spell. Click Mapping Sounds to Letters for more information below.
Click for an Approximate Beginning-Spelling-Sequence
The following spelling review tests were designed come after the group of skills are taught, and include the skills previously taught. These are also embedded in the Steps.
- Spelling Review #1 Open, Closed, Magic e, Vowel Teams, & Bossy r. There is a section for each, so the student knows which syllable type to use. The last section contains multiple syllable words. The key is for the student to say the word in its syllables (for example: de/part/ment). This way the student is not spelling a long word, she or he is spelling three individual syllables.
- Spelling Review # 2 diphthongs/digraphs, -cle and all six syllable types in multiple syllable words
Spelling With Endings
You can start spelling with endings as soon as you have gone through the magic e syllable. See the Adding Suffixes (Endings) page for more on this.
wordchains
Word Chains: A Powerful Spelling Strategy
To read and write we need to hear each individual sound in words in the correct order, and know how to represent those sounds with letters. Word chains help learners focus on these critical skills while also providing a structure to give learners support. In word chains students identify the sounds in a word, write a line for each sound, and then identify one sound that needs to be changed to make the next word, and then decide how to change it. For example:
T: How many sounds do you hear in the word “bat?”
S: 3 sounds: /b/, /ă/, /t/
T: Look at the word at the top of your paper. What does it say?
S: “Bat!”
T: How many sounds in the word “sat?”
S: 3 sounds: /s/ /ă/ /t/
T: Yes! Please draw 3 lines, one for each sound ____ ____ ____
T: Which sound would I need change to change “bat” to “sat?”
S: Change /b/ to /s/
(The correct answer is that the first sound needs to be changed from /b/ to /s/. However, there are many ways to support the student who is not ready to provide that answer. For example: Are the words “bat” “sat” the same or different? What is different? Is the first sound different? (The second sound? The last sound?) The first sound is different. What is the first sound in the word “bat?” What is the first sound in the word “sat?” What do we need to change the /b/ to in order to make it say “sat?”)
T: Yes! Please write letters for each of the three sounds on your 3 sound lines to spell “sat.”
Remember we are talking about sounds! A sound can be represented by more than one letter. One sound needs to be changed to change “b r i ck” to “b r i dge” – the last sound /k/ (spelled ck after a short vowel) is changed to the sound /j/ (spelled dge after a short vowel). Also, sometimes a silent letter makes the sound change: In order to change “k i t” to “k i te” we need to change the middle sound /ĭ/ to an /ī/ by adding a silent letter e to the end of the word.
*With students who struggle with the physical act of writing, rearranging letter cards instead of writing can be effective.
* Once things are automatic, supports like first identifying each sound out loud and drawing a line for each sound can be dropped. Then it sounds like “Next change trick into trike.”
Click here for a beginning sample CVC Word Chain list with directions
cheaterwords
Practice Unusually Spelled Common Words
When practicing spelling unusual sight words (common words that do not follow the rules) we still want to have the learner(s) focus on the actual sounds in the word, we just want to discover and discuss the unexpected spelling of the sound that is spelled in an unusual way. Here is an example for how to teach the spelling of the word “said”:
- Say the word “said”
- How many sounds do you hear in the word “said?” Three /s/ /ĕ/ /d/
- Draw 3 lines, one for each sound. _____ ____ _____
- What is the first sound in “said?” (or start with last – mix it up, but leave irregular sound for last).
- Yes /s/. What letter could we write to show /s/? Yes! draw s on the first line
- What is the last sound in “said?”
- Yes /d/. What letter could we use to show /d/? Yes! draw d on the last line
- What is the middle sound of the word “said?”
- Yes /ĕ/ (short e). Now this is a tricky word. The sound /ĕ/ is written with an ai. We are going to put a heart on the ai since we need to know this by heart.*
*I usually explain that ai says /ā/ (long a) so this word should be pronounced /s/ /ā/ /d/. Maybe people used to say it that way a long time ago? Sometimes I say it that way to remember how to spell it.
PowerPoint Practice Reading and Spelling: they said does laugh were*
*Remember to download as PPTX to keep formatting and animations
Mapsounds
Mapping Sounds to Letters
Map the sounds in the word to the letter(s) representing the sounds, even if it is not a letter combination that has been taught yet. Only an unusual sound/letter combination needs to be remembered “by heart.” Mapping the sounds to the letters is how we remember what words look like. See example below:
Be sure to reinforce what you know and are learning about words, for example:
Schwa Sound: Any vowel might say /ŭ/. Point out that this happens in many common words like: the, of, was, some, from…
What’s Next
Move into studying the meanings and spellings of morphemes, (the smallest meaningful units) and how they are put together to make words. In the beginning we are teaching students to spell based on the most common way(s) to spell the sounds they hear. However, English spelling is based on the meanings of the morphemes and etymology (the history of words). For example the word ‘sign’ comes from the Latin word signum, which means “mark, sign.” We know to spell sign with a ‘gn’ since it is related to words where we can hear the /ḡ/ sound like: signal, signify, and even designate. When the morpheme ‘sign’ is not the last syllable, the g is pronounced. Though this is not the focus of this website, spelling using meaningful chunks of words is definitely what is next!