Methodologies to teach spellings

Methodologies to teach spellings

This blog talks about the methodologies to teach spellings. Spellings are a vital part of writing. These methods make the process of learning spellings easy.

Methodologies to teach spellings are as follows –

Fernald Tracing 

It follows a multi sensory approach. It teaches spellings to students involving four senses. These are visual, auditory, kinaesthetic and tactile (VAKT).

• Take a tray filled with sand. Grains, salt or zip lock filled with shaving foam may also be taken. You may also take sandpaper.

• First, place a word in front of the child (visual input).

• Second, say the word out loud (auditory input).

• Third, get the child to trace the letters in the words (kinaesthetic and tactile).

Now repeat this process till the time child can trace the word without the strip of paper.

Simultaneous Oral Spelling 

This method involves the following steps –

• First, the teacher says the word and asks the child to repeat it.

• Then the teacher writes the word, saying each letter out loud. The teacher says the word out loud after writing. Ask the child to do the same. The child should also say the letters out loud. He should say the word out loud after writing it.

• Repeat the above 6 – 7 times.

• Take away the paper and ask child to write the word.

Clap and punch

It involves asking the child to clap for the consonant and punch for the vowel. It involves kinaesthetic and tactile senses. This also gives them a mental note of the number of consonants and vowels in the word. It is very effective to teach non-phonetic sight words.

Look Say Cover Write Method

This method involves the following steps. For example, the word is tough.

• Make the child look at the word. He visually takes a picture of how the word looks.

• The teacher will then say the spelling out loud.

• The teacher will then cover the word. The child cannot see but he can remember the auditory inputs.

• Now the word is given with one letter missing:  ___ o u g h

• The child has to fill in that blank. On looking at the word, he will realize the first letter missing is t.

• Having done this, the process is repeated once again. The word is presented as t _ u g h. The child has to fill in o.

• In this way, each letter has to be filled in the blank.

• The last step will have all the blanks empty. The child will look at the word, say the spelling, cover and write tough.

Visual Imagery

Children with dyslexia tend to see each word as an image. This method uses the visual depiction of the word to teach spelling. For example, the word might denote strength. Draw two arms for the word might. The child will remember this word by the arms drawn.

Similarly, draw eyes for the word sight. The child will then remember that word by the image of the eyes. 

Chunking

Chunking is the process of breaking up a given word into individual building blocks. This makes it easier to spell the word. Encourage the child to sound out the individual syllable in the word. Then have them spell those sounds one at a time before putting them all together.

For example, Saturday can be broken down into Sat ur day.

Mnemonics 

Mnemonics are memory aids. They can be phrases, visuals, rhymes, or anything else that helps students recall a spelling pattern. For example: Because – big elephants can always understand smaller elephants. Encourage children to come up with their own mnemonic to remember the spelling of a word.

Set a tune 

Get creative with your child and set a tune to learn the spelling of a word. The tune of rhymes such as twinkle twinkle little star can also be used to learn the spelling.

For more ideas, check out our other blogs.