Spelling Tips

Teaching spelling is really a challenging task. If children simply memorize the word by copying the word repeatedly (Rote memorization), they will forget it easily. Giving dictation on random words makes them frustrated. I learnt some meaningful spelling activities from themeasuredmom and that helped me a lot. Here is a list of few things what I follow.

1. Teach them the phonemes to identify the different sounds involved in a word.

2. Teach them the spelling rules such as,  

1.    Silent ‘e’ alters the vowel sound.

Example: mad – made, fin-fine, tap-tape, hop-hope, man-mane.

2.     ‘ck’ follows single vowel to make ‘k’ sound whereas, simple ‘k’ follows double vowel or consonants.
       Example: Duck, Lock,Neck,Pack,Sick, Book,Beak,Seek,Week/Weak,Ask

3.    We often put double ‘f’, ‘I’,  ‘s’  after single vowel at the end of the base words. 

Examples: Ball, Tell, Tall, Wall, Moss, Cliff, dull, mall, pull.

4.    Never ending letters:   ‘u’ and ‘v’ never comes at the end. We always add a silent ‘e’.  ‘I’ and ‘j’ also never comes at the end.  Replace ‘i’ by ‘y’ and ‘j’ by ‘ge’.

Examples: Value, Blue, Glue, Argue, True, Valve, Love, Give, Solve.

                    Happy, rally, Silly, Bridge, Fridge, Judge,

3. Sort the words according to the spelling patterns and teach them. Word sorting helps them compare, analyze and recognize the spelling.

For example, I started with a simple word ‘and’ then I continued dictating words like band, sand, stand, wand , brand, gland, random, standard,  and understand.

Similarly you can sort words like, cake, fake, make, shake, wake, Lake in a group and Apple, people, purple, couple, maple in another group.

We can even involve our children in these sorting activities by giving them a set of words and ask them to group it. We can play cut and paste, cross it out and Bingo.

My little one loves to write with a water filled glue bottle.

Instead of sitting down with paper and pen, she will run here and there in the terrace and write the words. It is fun to watch these water words which evaporate quickly.