Spelling Development

Beginning readers and writers need to have explicit, systematic instruction in learning to blend and segment words. These activities relate to phonics and spelling development.

Phonics

During phonics instruction, students learn to connect speech sounds to the letters or groups of letters that represents the sound. They learn to say the speech sound that relates to letters and letter patterns. They also learn to blend the individual speech sounds together to identify an unknown word.

Many publishers have established a developmental order in which these sounds should be introduced. Lessons give the students practice in matching speech sounds to print and then blending many words that contain those sounds.

It is important to individually assess students for their phonics knowledge. A variety of tools are available for this. After students have been assessed, the teacher can group the students according to their needs, for direct explicit instruction, followed by practice activities.

Decodable Books

Decodable books are systematic in their introduction of words that build on the student's phonics development. Simple sight words are also introduced. Research has shown that students need extensive practice in using the sounds they have recently acquired in phonics lessons. Spelling dictation lessons can also be included that are designed to match the words introduced in a particular decodable book. The student can then reread the book for needed practice.

Spelling

Segmenting is the reciprocal process of blending. Here students need to learn to say a known word, then stretch it out, listening for the separate speech sounds that make up the word. They then need to learn the letters or groups of letters that make up that sound in order the write down the word. Learning to spell is a developmental process. In the beginning children are only able to represent one or two sounds in the word. As they are able to write down half the the sounds, they are usually able to read back their writing, and so are we. This is the phonetic stage of spelling.

Many words in English are not spelled they way they sound. In addition to learning sound/symbol relationships for phonetic spellling, beginning readers must also learn to spell high frequency words that are not able to be blended. (Children do not benefit from misspelling "was" as w-u-z several times).

High Frequency Words

It is beneficial for the classroom to have a "Word Wall" to which high frequency words are added weekly. The children work with five new words each week.

• On Monday, as the teacher introduces each word students clap the letters, say the letters, and write the letters of each word on their paper. The word goes up on the Word Wall.
• During the rest of the week, have students practice the words again introducing each word with a riddle (I am thinking of a word that rhymes with 'come' and begins with /s/)
• On the first day of the next week, the teacher introduces five new high frequency words in the same way. The rest of the week, five words are selected to review, either from the new words or old ones that need to be reviewed.
• Each week have the students select words from the Word Wall that they need to use in their stories. (After a word is introduced on the Word Wall, it must be corrected in their work.)

Using Literature

It is also important to link phonics lessons to quality literature whenever possible. Children need to see the connection between learning sounds and "real" reading. For K-1 students, try this sequence:

• Find a book that includes words that begin with a sound that needs to be addressed
• Read the text with students for understanding and enjoyment
• Have students find words that begin with the target sound. Write them on word cards that can be place in a pocket chart
• Manipulate the words and add other words to creat a tongue twister
• Have students illustrate and display the products (Each student might do this for a tongue twister that involves the sound at the beginning of his/her name.)