Rethinking Spelling Instruction
I was never great at spelling. I grew up thinking that it was something that people were either born with or not. I was not.
Then I started teaching second grade. began following our literacy and spelling program and picked up random spelling and phonics rules that I had never been taught. However, it still seemed like every week, I assigned 15-20 words on Monday and a large group of kids were bombing the Friday test. I spent more time “practicing” these words with this group in awesomely creative ways. Their weekly test grades went up slightly, but I didn’t see the transfer in their writing at all! What was wrong? I had a nagging feeling that I was missing something. I was.
After doing countless hours of research, attending the latest and greatest literacy trainings, and learning the phonics I was never taught, I finally had the light-bulb moment. We are teaching our kids spelling in a way that sets them up for failure. All of the spelling menu ideas (ways to practice spelling) rely on kids memorizing individual words each week. This is daunting for dyslexic kids and those who struggle with literacy. Kids are memorizing the list for that week, but are not internalizing a pattern that can be generalized to other words, in other contexts.
WE NEED TO RE-FRAME OUR THINKING ABOUT SPELLING AND COMMUNICATE OUR RATIONAL TO TEACHERS AND PARENTS.
The 6 Basics of Good Spelling Instruction.
2. Red & Green Words. Orton Gillingham is an approach to teaching literacy that explicitly teaches kids phonics in a systematic way. The terms Red Words and Greens Words come from this approach. A Green Word is a word that follows a phonetic pattern and can be sounded out.
Here is an example: /c/ /a/ /m/ /p/ -all the sounds of camp can be heard and follow the rules. These words do not need to be memorized!
A Red Word is a word that has an irregular part and does not follow all phonetic rules. Students are explicitly taught to recognize and know these words. The “heart part” is the irregular part and can often be explained by etymology or history. Two-four red words should be taught each week along with the pattern. Ex. said –if you simply sound it out, it would be spelled incorrectly. However, the word used to be pronounced with a long a. The pronunciation has changed, but the spelling did not.
Students need to be explicitly taught the difference between Red and Green words. You can find out more about teaching red words here.
If you’re looking for a systematic way to teach spelling to 3rd-5th graders, check out the Reading Rev Phonics, Spelling, and Morphology Program. We’ve done the research, creating, and planning for you. This program will change everything!