My eldest went to school. He’s now in sixth form college. I have quite a few of his old school books. Whilst in primary school, starting in year two I think (the year my youngest would be in were she in school), maybe even in year one, my son had weekly spellings to learn, and tests. He did… okay on them. He was more proficient in his times table tests, but his spelling wasn’t abysmal or anything; probably in the top third of his class maybe? He can spell pretty well now (though you wouldn’t know it from his texts. I know he wants something when I get a proper message instead of a ‘k’ or a ‘ye’!)
Anyway, I’ve never ‘done’ spellings with my youngest. Instead, when she doesn’t know how to spell something, she asks me, and I tell her. I get a little bit of input from her (e.g. “what letter do you think it starts with?” “So it starts with a T, and there’s an ‘ow’ sound. Do you think it’s ‘ow’ or ‘ou’ or something else?” etc.) but mainly I just write it down on the mini whiteboard and she copies it down.
When she started doing more ‘free’ writing - as in, just writing something by/for herself, for the sake of it, so no input from me (although she does sometimes ask for spellings anyway) - I noticed something.
*Her spellings are at almost *exactly* the same ‘level’ my son’s were at, in his school work, from the same age.*
Even the spelling mistakes are sometimes *identical* (e.g. goast for ghost, baech for beach, and so on). This is despite these being the exact kinds of words that my eldest would bring home each week to ‘revise’. In fact if anything I’d say my youngest is *marginally* ‘ahead’ of where he was in terms of mixing up vowel digraphs.
Now, I know that’s a sample size of two. But I can’t help but think that to an extent, for *some*, maybe even many children, much of spelling just comes naturally, over time; the more a kid sees a word written down, the more they get a sort of ‘feel’ for whether something’s spelt correctly. They might not immediately know the *right* spelling, but they’ll know if something looks *wrong* and can look it up / ask a parent / ask the dictionary - or even, if they have access to such a thing, ask Alexa or a similar device. And the main thing that helps with this? Reading. Lots and lots of reading. Including reading aloud with an adult - I find this in particular helps children spot that some spellings differ from book to book [e.g. - appropriately enough - ‘spelled’ vs ‘spelt’, where the former is more common with American English and the latter with British English].
As it happens, I do think some children *won’t* just pick up spellings. Dyslexic children in particular might benefit from additional support and more specific, detailed explanations of various spelling ‘rules’ and so on. [My daughter is autistic and for arithmetic I’ve found she needs to be explicitly taught various strategies rather than ‘catching’ them (the mantra ‘strategies should be caught, not taught’ definitely doesn’t apply to her wrt arithmetic).] But dyslexia will usually show up in other areas too and quite early on potentially (British Dyslexia Association has some useful info on early indicators).
This is my approach too. I don't know if it will work for all of my children, but my eldest is an early (and very keen) reader and I suspect he'll just pick up correct spelling through lots of reading. I've always been good at spelling and I attribute it to being a bookworm since very young. If children are infrequent readers then learning by rote makes sense as they need that extra exposure.
I have a good program for Americans/Canadians if you have a kid that just doesn't get it and is really frustrated by spelling. This program I'm recommending is a BEAST and takes several years to work through, but for a certain type of kid (i.e., mine) it's been a lifesaver. She was just not able to learn spelling through memorization or familiarization. It's called Logic of English. The younger kids' program is called Foundations, and the upper elementary/middle kids' program is called Essentials. It's based on The Logic of English book by Denise Eide. It works through the origins of English words and WHY they are all spelled so differently, coming up with a list of spelling "rules" that must be memorized initially, but quickly become intuitive. My daughter is a fantastic reader at age 10, thanks to the "All About Reading" program, but her spelling was dismal. She gets very frustrated and wants to know "but WHY is it spelled like that?" She has come along incredibly well since we began LOE Essentials a year ago. It's a lot of work for the parent, but it has been so worth it and has had the side benefit that I've become rather interested in the structure of our language myself. It also covers grammar and vocabulary, and can be modified to include handwriting as well, if that's needed.
We don’t really do much spelling but my son has picked an enormous amount up naturally (I should also say he is hyperlexic as part of his autism so our methods will not work for all!). We’ve been working our way through a poetry book called The B on Your Thumb which looks at spelling rules and exceptions in a fun way. He really loves correcting spellings so that is one thing I can do to check his knowledge!
I appreciate you bringing this up. My oldest is 8, middle is 6.5 and we are about to need ot be more intentional with spelling. I appreciate your post and the comments here!
We’re having good success with Doodle spell. It’s a paid app but the only thing we use an app for and I’m happy to pay to not have to worry about spellings!
The most important tool for good spelling is simply caring about the issue. I often see documents where something is misspelled and the spell checker is flagging it, but the author didn't take the time to fix it. It takes approximately 10 seconds to do an internet search and find the correct form of a word if you're not sure, and even less to use the computer suggestion, but many people are unwilling to invest even that small amount of time because they are just indifferent to getting things right.
One thing I like to do is have kids find all the words with a given sound on one page of a book they are reading or in a short story (Aesop is good for this) and then sort them by spellings. The goal is to help them notice spelling patterns and when certain spellings appear for certain sounds. Sometimes those patterns are apparent visually (like letters that tend to double at the end of short words - f, s, l - or that the /k/ sound is spelled "ck" at the end of short words), but other times we talk about the etymology behind certain spelling patterns. Once you've sorted the words by spelling, you can use that to quiz - give your child a word orally and ask them which spelling it has. The book Words Their Way also has a lot of useful word lists for sorting like this.
That being said, I have also definitely seen a correlation in my children between reading fluency and spelling. Most of my older children's spelling improved enormously without any extra work after they had been reading fluently for 2-3 years. These days I treat spelling more remedially - we don't really do spelling unless a child has been reading chapter books for a couple of years and is still struggling with correct spelling.
Spelling is such a bugbear for us and I love hearing what works for other people. We flit between things like Nessy and Sir Linkalot, plus lists from Twinkl with some of their explanatory powerpoints, and also some CGP books with explanations of the spelling patterns from Fulford's spelling rules. The jar might help with retention. I have one kid (the younger one) who can retain the rules fairly well, and one kid (the older one) that struggles and may be dyslexic. It's tricky!
Great post, lots of good ideas and I especially like the lucky dip jar. Another method children used to love for irregular words is using a mnemonic: Big Elephants Can Always Understand Small Elephants. They would then draw the most graphic picture of the mnemonic and stick it on the wall. Better still if the mnemonic includes the focus word. Works best if they come up with the mnemonic themselves and it’s humorous/ridiculous.
I never really did formal spelling work with my now 10 year old. We just did a lot of copywork, and then dictation. I dabbled into a bit of spelling rules and all when we were using "the good and beautiful" language arts curriculum. But its been mostly daily copywork and prepared dictation.
So this is my perspective on it all…
My eldest went to school. He’s now in sixth form college. I have quite a few of his old school books. Whilst in primary school, starting in year two I think (the year my youngest would be in were she in school), maybe even in year one, my son had weekly spellings to learn, and tests. He did… okay on them. He was more proficient in his times table tests, but his spelling wasn’t abysmal or anything; probably in the top third of his class maybe? He can spell pretty well now (though you wouldn’t know it from his texts. I know he wants something when I get a proper message instead of a ‘k’ or a ‘ye’!)
Anyway, I’ve never ‘done’ spellings with my youngest. Instead, when she doesn’t know how to spell something, she asks me, and I tell her. I get a little bit of input from her (e.g. “what letter do you think it starts with?” “So it starts with a T, and there’s an ‘ow’ sound. Do you think it’s ‘ow’ or ‘ou’ or something else?” etc.) but mainly I just write it down on the mini whiteboard and she copies it down.
When she started doing more ‘free’ writing - as in, just writing something by/for herself, for the sake of it, so no input from me (although she does sometimes ask for spellings anyway) - I noticed something.
*Her spellings are at almost *exactly* the same ‘level’ my son’s were at, in his school work, from the same age.*
Even the spelling mistakes are sometimes *identical* (e.g. goast for ghost, baech for beach, and so on). This is despite these being the exact kinds of words that my eldest would bring home each week to ‘revise’. In fact if anything I’d say my youngest is *marginally* ‘ahead’ of where he was in terms of mixing up vowel digraphs.
Now, I know that’s a sample size of two. But I can’t help but think that to an extent, for *some*, maybe even many children, much of spelling just comes naturally, over time; the more a kid sees a word written down, the more they get a sort of ‘feel’ for whether something’s spelt correctly. They might not immediately know the *right* spelling, but they’ll know if something looks *wrong* and can look it up / ask a parent / ask the dictionary - or even, if they have access to such a thing, ask Alexa or a similar device. And the main thing that helps with this? Reading. Lots and lots of reading. Including reading aloud with an adult - I find this in particular helps children spot that some spellings differ from book to book [e.g. - appropriately enough - ‘spelled’ vs ‘spelt’, where the former is more common with American English and the latter with British English].
As it happens, I do think some children *won’t* just pick up spellings. Dyslexic children in particular might benefit from additional support and more specific, detailed explanations of various spelling ‘rules’ and so on. [My daughter is autistic and for arithmetic I’ve found she needs to be explicitly taught various strategies rather than ‘catching’ them (the mantra ‘strategies should be caught, not taught’ definitely doesn’t apply to her wrt arithmetic).] But dyslexia will usually show up in other areas too and quite early on potentially (British Dyslexia Association has some useful info on early indicators).
This is my approach too. I don't know if it will work for all of my children, but my eldest is an early (and very keen) reader and I suspect he'll just pick up correct spelling through lots of reading. I've always been good at spelling and I attribute it to being a bookworm since very young. If children are infrequent readers then learning by rote makes sense as they need that extra exposure.
I have a good program for Americans/Canadians if you have a kid that just doesn't get it and is really frustrated by spelling. This program I'm recommending is a BEAST and takes several years to work through, but for a certain type of kid (i.e., mine) it's been a lifesaver. She was just not able to learn spelling through memorization or familiarization. It's called Logic of English. The younger kids' program is called Foundations, and the upper elementary/middle kids' program is called Essentials. It's based on The Logic of English book by Denise Eide. It works through the origins of English words and WHY they are all spelled so differently, coming up with a list of spelling "rules" that must be memorized initially, but quickly become intuitive. My daughter is a fantastic reader at age 10, thanks to the "All About Reading" program, but her spelling was dismal. She gets very frustrated and wants to know "but WHY is it spelled like that?" She has come along incredibly well since we began LOE Essentials a year ago. It's a lot of work for the parent, but it has been so worth it and has had the side benefit that I've become rather interested in the structure of our language myself. It also covers grammar and vocabulary, and can be modified to include handwriting as well, if that's needed.
We don’t really do much spelling but my son has picked an enormous amount up naturally (I should also say he is hyperlexic as part of his autism so our methods will not work for all!). We’ve been working our way through a poetry book called The B on Your Thumb which looks at spelling rules and exceptions in a fun way. He really loves correcting spellings so that is one thing I can do to check his knowledge!
I love the lucky dip jar idea!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I appreciate you bringing this up. My oldest is 8, middle is 6.5 and we are about to need ot be more intentional with spelling. I appreciate your post and the comments here!
We’re having good success with Doodle spell. It’s a paid app but the only thing we use an app for and I’m happy to pay to not have to worry about spellings!
The most important tool for good spelling is simply caring about the issue. I often see documents where something is misspelled and the spell checker is flagging it, but the author didn't take the time to fix it. It takes approximately 10 seconds to do an internet search and find the correct form of a word if you're not sure, and even less to use the computer suggestion, but many people are unwilling to invest even that small amount of time because they are just indifferent to getting things right.
One thing I like to do is have kids find all the words with a given sound on one page of a book they are reading or in a short story (Aesop is good for this) and then sort them by spellings. The goal is to help them notice spelling patterns and when certain spellings appear for certain sounds. Sometimes those patterns are apparent visually (like letters that tend to double at the end of short words - f, s, l - or that the /k/ sound is spelled "ck" at the end of short words), but other times we talk about the etymology behind certain spelling patterns. Once you've sorted the words by spelling, you can use that to quiz - give your child a word orally and ask them which spelling it has. The book Words Their Way also has a lot of useful word lists for sorting like this.
That being said, I have also definitely seen a correlation in my children between reading fluency and spelling. Most of my older children's spelling improved enormously without any extra work after they had been reading fluently for 2-3 years. These days I treat spelling more remedially - we don't really do spelling unless a child has been reading chapter books for a couple of years and is still struggling with correct spelling.
Spelling is such a bugbear for us and I love hearing what works for other people. We flit between things like Nessy and Sir Linkalot, plus lists from Twinkl with some of their explanatory powerpoints, and also some CGP books with explanations of the spelling patterns from Fulford's spelling rules. The jar might help with retention. I have one kid (the younger one) who can retain the rules fairly well, and one kid (the older one) that struggles and may be dyslexic. It's tricky!
Great post, lots of good ideas and I especially like the lucky dip jar. Another method children used to love for irregular words is using a mnemonic: Big Elephants Can Always Understand Small Elephants. They would then draw the most graphic picture of the mnemonic and stick it on the wall. Better still if the mnemonic includes the focus word. Works best if they come up with the mnemonic themselves and it’s humorous/ridiculous.
I never really did formal spelling work with my now 10 year old. We just did a lot of copywork, and then dictation. I dabbled into a bit of spelling rules and all when we were using "the good and beautiful" language arts curriculum. But its been mostly daily copywork and prepared dictation.