Teaching+Children+to+Spell

Spelling is a very important aspect of children’s development as it allows them to express information or an idea so that it can be read by others and there development follows and similar path to that of their writing development. Teachers are able to follow and find patterns in a child’s spelling so that the programs can be adjust to suit their needs. As the children’s writing progresses from lines and images they move back and forth throughout the stages until the child can develop a more sequential form if spelling. This is often called temporary spelling. When writing children experiment with letters, numbers and symbols to represent the written language. They explore relationships between the written and spoken language resulting in the words sometimes being represented with pictures and other times letter like symbols. This stage sees the child begin to understand the sound-symbols relationship. A word is generally represented by one or two letters and these are usually the initial and final sounds. Often the child uses consonants over vowels which are more often than not ignored and children may copy words from charts or books as well as experimenting with writing letters by associating them with sounds. At this stage sight words are very beneficial and help the children to learn words which are difficult to decipher purely on there sounds. This stage sees the child develop there writing into an almost perfect match of letters and sounds. A writer can sometimes develop their own rules and may not conform to standard spelling practices. There is an increase in the use of sight words or recall words and letters are chosen on the basis of sound. At this stage the child is trying to understand the concept of a word and in order to spell a child must: It can be seen that this process is very intricate and therefore it is obvious to see why children may sometimes lose their place and forget what to write. At this stage the writer begins to use a range of visual strategies such as common letter patterns i.e. ing and tch. There is once again a greater increase in the use of sight words and children tend to begin to move away from their dependence on phonics for spelling. At this point of their development children are using multiple strategies to decipher spelling problems. Sometimes they use common letter patterns, as well as phonics and also words learnt by sight. As they progress children are able to visually check whether the word looks right and whether there are alternative ways to spell the word. As children become more proficient with spelling visually they are less relying on phonics as a major strategy. Teachers are able to assess at what stage a child is at in their spelling development by considering if a child is depending on phonetic spelling to much more sight words needed to be focused on.
 * Spelling **
 * Prephonic Spelling **
 * Semi-phonetic Spelling **
 * Phonetic Spelling **
 * Say a word mentally to themselves
 * Break off the first phoneme from the rest of the word
 * Mentally sort through a repertoire of letters to find one to match the phoneme
 * Write down the letter decided upon
 * Recite the word in their mind
 * Recall the phoneme they have just spelt, subtract it from the word, and locate the next word to be spelt
 * Match the phoneme with a letter of the alphabet, and so on, until all phonemes are spelt
 * Transitional Spelling **
 * Independent Spelling **

This website leads to a video on You Tube that talks about Invented spelling and shows a teacher in the classroom with her students. She focuses on getting the ideas on the paper first before focusing on spelling and other punctuation. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkyqyjzXXz0

There are many of spelling mistakes in a child's writing and analysing errors provides visual cues to what kind of instruction the child needs to improve. The words that children need to learn Children need to learn to write to convey ideas to others and therefore teachers can create lists of words for children to use in their writing. Sometimes these words can be personal like family names and other words might surround a particular interest or topic that the child chooses. The topic words can come from key words used within the curriculum by the teacher i.e. if the class is interested in dogs there might be a word list of dogs names and characteristics that the children might be interested in. High frequency words are a way of teaching common words that children may need to use within their writing. Words are written on cardboard shapes which can be attached to walls, floors and doors. When the children enter a room they can say and spell one of these words. They can also be used to play games both individually and with partners such as bingo and pairs. There are several other strategies that can be out in place to help with children’s spelling. Phonic generalisations are letter sounds and combinations of letter sounds and many teachers ask children to sound out words using their phonic knowledge. This is not always reliable as there are so many variations and unwritten rules when looking at phonics. Another popular method is called Look-Cover-Write-Check and involves the child looking carefully at the word, covering it, having a go at writing the word and checking it with the original word. If the child makes an error they are able to have another go and keep trying to help remember the word.
 * Analysing Children’s Spelling Errors **
 * High frequency words
 * Words they ask to use for their writing
 * Topic words for curriculum areas
 * Words they cannot spell

There are words which are demon words within the English language and do not have phonetic or morphemic patterns and bases. Morphemic bases are such as //walk// and then a past tense is added such as //ed// to make //walked.// A mnemonic is used to give a clue on how the word is spelt. My pal is the principal Affect has an ‘a’ for action The middle to ‘ll’s’’ are parallel There are many other games that can be played to help children with their spelling develop rather than just the traditional spelling tests.
 * Other Activities **
 * Wordo can be used to integrate spelling and reading practice
 * Word sorts could help children focus on changing the final letters
 * Interactive word walls can help children identify common prefixes
 * Word boards and word notebooks are useful to help vocabulary growth.
 * Word trees help children identify base/root words.