Approaches to Teach

Spelling
How did you learn to spell
words?
•By studying list of words?
Etc
•By studying rules?
• Too much that is known about how to
teach spelling isn't being put into
practice. I can think of no subject we
teach more poorly or harbour more
myths about than spelling.
—Richard Gentry, 1987
 Do we need to explicitly teach
spelling?
• List reasons why you believe spelling
should be explicitly taught at school.
• Share your reasons with your
neighbour
• Add to your reasons, one more from
your neighbour’s list.
 We should explicitly teach
spelling because:
• The English language DOES conform
to predictable patterns
• Those patterns can be taught directly
to students.

Collins, 1983
Dixon, 1991
Graham, 1999
Dixon and Engelmann, 2002
Approaches to Spelling:
Methodologies which effectively
teach students to be accurate
spellers are combinations of:
- Phonemic Approach
- Whole-Word Approach
- List Approach
- Rule Based Approach
- Morphographic Approach
 Context
Wendy Bean & Chris Bouffler; Spelling: An Integrated Approach,
Eleanor Curtain Publishing, 1997
 Phonemic Approach
• Understanding the
relationship between letters
and their corresponding
sounds is an important skill
for successful reading and
spelling performance.
• For children as young as
kindergarten, the letter-sounds
of words play an important role
in their spelling skills.
• Within the context of reading, letter-sound
correspondence (also known as
phonemics) allows students to identify the
sounds that correspond to the written
symbols (letters) in printed reading
passages.
• Conversely for spelling, students identify
the written letters that correspond to the
spoken sounds.
•Children (especially young
children) have less
difficulty spelling words
that are based on
predictable letter-sound
relationships.
• Teaching phonemic
awareness has “strong and
significant effects” on
children’s reading and
spelling skills, with those
effects lasting well beyond
the end of the teaching
period.
• In a meta-analysis that reviewed 1,962
research articles on phonemic awareness, in
the UK and the US, it was reported that:

Many words in the English language have regular

phonemic patterns. Predictable patterns for
regular words allow students to spell these
words solely on the basis of their letter-sound
relationships.
• Spelling programs that use explicit instruction in
the letter-sound relationship to teach high
frequency regular words (word lists), have
demonstrated effectiveness in teaching
students to spell accurately.
• Most Phonics programmes start with emphasis
on high frequency regular words from early
years.
• This lists of words changes to reflect the
physical, emotional and academic development
of students.
 example
• the word hat has three sounds:
/h/, /a/, and /t/
• It can be correctly spelled using the
three letters
(h, a, and t)
that correspond with each of those
sounds.
• Systematic phonics instruction
(benefit) boosts the spelling skills of:
– at-risk students
– young developing readers
– students from across the socio-
economic spectrum, from low to high
Socioeconomic backgrounds

(National Reading Panel, UK, 2000)

• Students should have at least 1 year
of instruction in a systematic
phonics-based programme to
develop skills related to letter-sound
correspondence.
• This is most effective in the early
years when students are building
their capacity with written language
and with reading skills.

http://www.fonetiks.org/foniks/1/pagessou/ii.html
• Because of the importance of phonemic
knowledge for spelling, specialists in this area
argued that all other forms of spelling
instruction should wait until students have
received sound instruction in phonics. Students
who have not mastered phonemics need basic
instruction in those skills.
• When upper primary or secondary schools set
up literacy programmes, they have to insure
that students revisit and are taught explicitly,
the relationship between letters and sounds.
 Reflection:
• What are some of the key concepts
addressed so far?
• My personal convictions
• The correlations I am prepared to
make between my convictions and
the new learnings
• Aspects I need to explore further
 Whole Word Approach

Not all words in the English

language can be spelled
correctly using letter-sound
correspondence.
 The phonemic approach can be used to spell a
large number of regularly spelled words (i.e.,
words that are spelled just like they sound such
as hat and stop). However a phonics approach
is but only ONE way to teach spelling.
Irregularly spelled words
• Examples of irregular words include
the words yacht, straight, and friend
• These words cannot be spelled
correctly by applying a regular
phonics approach.
• To teach irregularly spelled words, a
different instructional strategy is
required.
• The ‘whole word’ approach is more
effective in this situation
 However….

• Whole-word approaches to spelling

instruction have both
– advantages

– and disadvantages.
• The primary advantage of whole-word
approaches is that they work well for
words that are considered irregular.
 Advantages:

• Whole Word approach works

well with words which do not
conform to a regular spelling
pattern.
• In a typical ‘Whole Word’
program, groupings of words are
based on some similarity
–Similar beginning sounds like
wh, th
–Words belonging to a common
theme
–Word pools for a particular topic
–Word groupings
 Disadvantages:
• Often students are asked to
memorise word lists for a test ‘later
on’ in time.
• Memorisation is not the most
efficient strategy for spelling
instruction.
• It should only be used to teach the
spelling of words with extreme
irregularity.
• Heavy reliance on memorisation strategies
for spelling could be compared to requiring
students to memorize the answers to all
multi-digit subtraction problems instead of
teaching them the rule for borrowing
(Dixon, 1993)
•When students are given
spelling lists they need to:
–be convinced that there is a
purpose to learning the words
on the list
–Be given the skills to learn the
words
 Whole-word approaches to
spelling have been shown to
produce highly accurate
spellers. Example
• ‘Add a Word’ programme
• ‘Write-Say’ method
 A third example is: ‘irregular words in
a whole sentence’ approach
• e.g: I thought he was through.

• At first the unpredictable letters or letter

combinations are provided and students must fill in
the missing letters (e.g., _ _ _ ough _ _ _ _ a _ _ _
_ ough).

• Gradually, the number of provided letters is

decreased until students are able to spell all the
words without visual prompts.

• Once the sentence is learned, variations are

presented so that students can apply the spelling of
irregular words to various sentence contexts (e.g.,
She thought about her homework throughout the
night.).
• Presenting the irregular words in this
way, teaches the students that even
irregular words have some
predictable elements.
• (ought) (ough)
•This method has been
found very effective with
Middle Years/secondary
students.
• The English language contains
words with both regular and
irregular spellings.
• Both the phonemic and whole-
word approaches are required to
teach regularly or irregularly
spelled words.
 Reflection
 Note two things you agree with
 Note two things you dispute or would

like clarification on
 Note something you would like to

explore further
• Approaches to spelling

• The major approaches to teaching

spelling, which have persisted over many
years, include the :-
• Phonemic
• whole word
• List
• the rule-based
• morphographic spelling.
• Hundreds of schemes and programmes
have been produced using these
approaches.
• However, to spell is part of the complex
process of language learning, an
Integrated Approach is thus
recommended
• A traditional list approach to spelling requires
children to memorise lists of words
• This can be provided by the teacher or through
a spelling scheme.
• Originally the teaching strategy involved only
memorization and testing, but over the years
some major list approaches have also included
worksheets with a variety of activities using the
words in the list.
• Usually there is no particular reason for the
choice of the words.
• At best, the list is based on dated research into
the most commonly used words.
• Michael West’s 1953 Basic word list
• Paul Nation’s University word List
• Paul Nation and Avery Coxhead’s
Academic Word List
• Dolch Basic Word List
• Teachers using a list approach may also
select words from curriculum areas and
from the children’s writing.
• The issue then becomes how the list is
learnt and the appropriateness of the
selected words.
• A rule-based approach involves teaching
particular spelling rules
• Give some examples
• Then children apply these in their writing.
• Generally the rules are memorised.
• While learning particular rules can
sometimes be useful, the exceptions to
the rules become complicated and the
number of rules makes a daunting
learning task.
• Examples of exemption to the rules
 Morphographic/Morphemic
Approach
• A morphograph is the smallest
unit of identifiable meaning in
written English.

• Morphographs include prefixes,

suffixes, and bases or roots.
• Morphographic spelling forms the basis
of many direct instruction programmes
over the years and involves phonemic,
morphemic and whole- word approaches.
• Sound—symbol correspondences based
on morphemic units are taught in
sequence, daily and often to the whole
class.
• Success is often ‘guaranteed’ by the
authors, provided the programme of
scripted lessons is closely followed.
• Following a small set of rules for
combining morphographs can create
many words in the written English
language.

• For example, the word recovered is

made up of the prefix re, the base
cover, and the suffix ed.
• Using the principles that govern
the structure of words, the
morphemic approach to spelling
instruction teaches students the
spellings for morphographs
rather than whole words and the
rules for combining
morphographs to spell whole
words correctly.
 Example…
• Using a morphemic approach,
students can be taught that
when a base ends in the letter e
(e.g., make) and is to be
combined with the /ing/ suffix,
the letter e is always dropped
(make becomes making).
The morphemic approach
to spelling instruction
offers several
advantages.
 First
• Morphographs are generally spelled
the same across different words.

• For example, the morphograph

port is spelled the same in the
words porter, deport, and
important.
 Second
• When the spelling of a morphograph
changes across words, it does so in
predictable ways.

• The morphograph trace is spelled

differently in the words trace and
tracing, but the change is governed
by the rule for dropping the final e.
 Third
• The number of morphographs is far
fewer than the number of words in
the written English language
and
• the number of principles for
combining morphographs is relatively
small.
 Therefore:
Teaching students to spell
morphographs and teaching the
rules for combining morphographs
will allow students to spell a far
larger set of words accurately than
by teaching individual words through
rote memorisation of spelling lists.
There Can be two steps to Spelling
through Morphographs:

– Step one: does not require rules-e.g:

• students might learn to spell the
morphographs: i.e form + al + ly, combined
spell the word formally.

– Step two: requires use of previously

learnt spelling rules
• e.g: hop = hopping but, hope = hoping
This morphemic spelling
approach continues, gradually
increasing in difficulty with
the addition of new spelling
rules and new morphographs
• In summary, phonemic, whole-word,
word list, rule based and morphemic
approaches are useful for teaching the
wide variety of word types in the English
language.
• Together these approaches represent a
comprehensive set of strategies for
teaching children to be accurate spellers.
• Learning to spell is part of a complex
process of language learning
• Integrated approach recommended
• CPs get into groups to discuss how they
can integrate at least 2 of the approaches
to teach a vocabulary list.

• 

• Trainer can give a list if the need arises.

(Dolch Basic 220 word list etc)