Spelling: teaching and learning spelling - single page view

The primary goal of the MESH Spelling site developers has been to bring together insights from the past 40 years of research into spelling, and to present these in ways that are bite-sized, clear and intelligible to a non-expert. We know that all teachers understand the importance of being able to spell, but we also know that as successive governments have made teacher preparation more and more school-based, teachers have had fewer and fewer opportunities to learn about the cognitive processes that underpin spelling before they enter the classroom.

The information on this site will help those who want to learn more about

• cognitive processes in spelling
• the spelling rules in English
• how to analyse spelling errors
• how to teach spelling
• where to find resources to support that teaching
• research studies that have been shown to improve spelling

The developers have drawn primarily upon research from the UK and USA, and the references list shows some of our main influences.

• Earnhale Junior, Nottingham
• Monkhouse Primary, North Shields
• Pensby Primary, Wirral
• St Columba's RC Primary, Tyne and Wear
• Firbeck Academy, Nottingham

The development team brings together considerable expertise in reading research, research into ICT for learning, early reading development, assessment and supporting learners with special needs:

Colin Harrison is Emeritus Professor of Literacy Studies in Education at the University of Nottingham, Past President of the UK Reading Association and is the only UK citizen since 1984 to have been awarded the International Reading Association's International Citation of Merit. He was a founder editor of the Journal of Research in Reading, and has over 150 publications, mostly in the fields of reading and new technologies. His first major research grant for an online teacher development project was in 1998, and since that time he has led 22 research projects in the new technologies field, in schools and higher education. He currently leads on the Dyslexia component of the MA in Special Educational Needs at the University of Nottingham.

Greg Brooks is Emeritus Professor in the School of Education at the University of Sheffield. He has been President of the UK Reading Association, editor of the Journal of Research in Reading, and is an international expert on both phonics (his doctoral area) and assessment. In 2002 Greg was a founder member of the National Research and Development Centre for adult literacy and numeracy and was Research Director of its Sheffield arm until the consortium was dissolved in 2008. He directed 15 research projects for NRDC, which included reviewing various aspects of the field, especially previous research and the available assessment instruments, and investigating how much progress adult learners make and what enables them to make better progress, particularly in reading. He was a member of the Advisory Group to the Rose review of the teaching of reading, and in 2007 provided tables of phoneme-grapheme and grapheme-phoneme correspondences for Letters and Sounds.

Gill Johnson is Lecturer in Primary Education in the University of Nottingham. She has over fifteen years of experience as a teacher at Key Stages 1 and 2, and has been a SENCO, Literacy Coordinator and Advanced Skills Teacher. She is also an accredited trainer for the THRASS literacy development programme. Her PhD research focused on the role of the teaching assistant in literacy support contexts.

These MESH spelling materials have been devised with two goals in mind: first, to help teachers (and those training to become teachers) gain a deeper insight into how children learn to spell; and second, to provide some practical assistance in supporting that learning.

The text and links are being evaluated for coherence, clarity and usefulness by teachers and senior managers in schools across England, initially by a small group of seven volunteer schools, but then by a much wider population of teachers, senior managers in schools, and teacher educators. One great advantage of a web-based platform is that it is a relatively straightforward matter to update, correct or add material, and our goal is to monitor feedback from users. There are still a number of areas of disagreement in the literacy field, and ultimately the development team has to take editorial responsibility for judging the appropriate scholarly content and pedagogy that should be presented on this site, but our aim is to be responsive to all feedback, and to make the site as valuable as possible for teachers.

Our particular thanks go the seven schools that took part in the first phase of evaluation:

• Pensby Primary CONTACT: KATE BROWN
• Monkhouse Primary CONTACT: CAROL MOULDER
• Willaston CE Primary CONTACT: JULIE CHAMBERS
• St Columba's RC Primary CONTACT: CATHERINE McGRADY
• St Bernadette's Primary CONTACT: CLAIRE MELDRUM
• Ernehale Junior CONTACT: SUSAN SIMMONS
• Firbeck Primary CONTACT: JULIE CHANTREY

The full list of references

• Basic Skills Agency (1996). Writing Skills: a survey of how well people can spell and punctuate. London: Basic Skills Agency.
• Bishop D. V. M, & Adams, C (1990) A prospective study of the relationship between specific language impairment, phonological disorders and reading retardation. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry31, 1027-1050
• Brooks, G. (2013) What works for children and young people with literacy difficulties? The Dyslexia-SpLD Trust
• Brooks, G., Gorman, T.P. and Kendall, L. (1993). Spelling It Out: the spelling abilities of 11- and 15-year-olds. Slough: NFER.
• Burton, M. (2011). Phonetics for Phonics. Leicester: NIACE.
• Burton, M., Davey, J., Lewis, M., Ritchie, L. and Brooks, G. (2008). Improving Reading: phonics and fluency. Practitioner guide. London: National Research and Development Centre for Adult Literacy and Numeracy. www.nrdc.org.uk/?p=254
• Burton, M., Davey, J., Lewis, M., Ritchie, L. and Brooks, G. (2010). Progress for Adult Literacy Learners. London: National Research and Development Centre for Adult Literacy and Numeracy. http://www.nrdc.org.uk/?p=337
• Cassar, M., Treiman, R., Moats, L., Pollo, T. C. and Kessler, B. (2005) How Do the Spellings of Children with Dyslexia Compare with those of Nondyslexic Children?, Reading and Writing, 18.1, pp. 27–49.
• Chédru, F. and Geschwind, N. (1972). 'Writing disturbances in acute confusional states.' Neuropsychologia, 10, 343-53.
• Ehri, L.C. (2005). 'Development of sight word reading: phases and findings.' In Snowling, H.J. and Hulme, C. (eds) The Science of Reading: a handbook. Oxford: Blackwell, pp.135-54.
• Frith, U. (1985). 'Beneath the surface of developmental dyslexia.' In Patterson, K.E., Marshall, J.C. and Coltheart, M. (eds) Surface Dyslexia: neuropsychological and cognitive studies of phonological reading. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, pp.301-30.
• Hulme, C. & Snowling, M. (2009) Developmental Disorders of Language Learning and Cognition, Sussex: Wiley Blackwell.
• Nelson, H.E. (1980). 'Analysis of spelling errors in normal and dyslexic students.' In Frith, U. (ed.) Cognitive Processes in Spelling. London: Academic Press, pp.475-93.
• Peters, M.L. (1970). Success in Spelling: a study of the factors affecting improvement in spelling in the junior school. Cambridge: Cambridge Institute of Education.
• Schonell, F. J. (1936). 'Ability and disability in spelling among educated adults.' British Journal of Educational Psychology, 6, 123-46.
• Spache, G. (1940). 'A critical analysis of various methods of classifying spelling errors.' Journal of Educational Psychology, 31, 111-34.
• Wing, A.M. and Baddeley, A.D. (1980). 'Spelling errors in handwriting: a corpus and a distributional analysis.' In Frith, U. (ed.) Cognitive Processes in Spelling. London: Academic Press, pp.251-85.

A developmental sequence of spelling acquisition and associated errors.

This section describes the typical sequence of development, but individual children may jump a stage, or seem to get stuck in one, or exhibit features of two stages simultaneously, or seem to go through some stages in reverse order. The labels for the stages were coined by Frith (1985).

• The 'logographic' stage (age 5 or 6)
• The 'alphabetic' stage (age 6-7)
• The 'orthographic' stage (from about 8)

Broadly speaking, having a background in another language can have some disadvantages, but many advantages, especially if a child has begun to acquire literacy in another language.

This is a massively researched area, so we shall only make a few key points here:

- Most multilingual learners in the UK have been acquiring English as well as their home language from birth. These learners (often termed 'simultaneous' English learners) may have far fewer difficulties in reading and spelling than 'sequential' language learners, who have come into an English language environment at a later stage in their life.

- The British Council has a useful web site to support those who are teaching English to young learners- including a section with spelling resources.

- Nearly all alphabetic languages derived from a common ancestor, so if a child has begun to learn a different alphabetic language, this could be very helpful.

- One possible disadvantage of coming from a non-English background is that a child may not hear or be able to pronounce every phoneme in English; it is believed that infants acquire the ability to differentiate phonemes in the first year of life, and subsequently find it very difficult to learn ones that they have not heard in infancy.

- An example of this problem would be Japanese learners, who find it hard to hear the difference between 'r' and 'l' in English, but there are many other problems from different language groups, whose users might not hear any difference between 'fought' and 'thought'. Here's a little video that emphasises the importance of combining hearing, seeing and feeling in improving the recognition of speech sounds (click on 'Watch video clip').

- We now know that infant language development, from birth to age 18 months, is multimodal, and brings together speech, hearing, touch and vision in far more complex ways than we used to think.

- English language learners may have hidden literacy talents- if we are able to exploit them:

Case study

I was once in a Y1 classroom with six-year-olds, and the class teacher said to me, 'See if you can get that little girl over there to talk- she's come from Algeria and knows no English. She's only been in England a month, and I can't get her to say a word.' I know a little French, so I asked her to tell me her name, and she beamed, told me her name was Anya, and started to chat away in French. I asked her if she could read or write in French. 'No- not a word,' she said, 'but I can read and write in Arabic.' I said, 'Would you be able to write on the board in Arabic?' and she smiled and nodded.

A little later, I asked the teacher if Anya could show the class that she could speak in French for them, and write in Arabic. The teacher readily agreed. So Anya and I came to the front, and the rest of the class listened intently as a child that they thought was mute answered lots of questions in French while I translated her answers. They learned where she was from and all about her family. Then I asked her if she could write her name and something about her family on the board. The children's mouths dropped open as Anya wrote confidently in Arabic, starting on the right, and translating into French as she wrote. When she stopped writing the class broke into spontaneous applause, and I turned to see Anya's teacher blinking away tears.

About nine months later there was a wonderful coincidence- I was talking to a group of comprehensive school modern language student teachers who had just completed their training about the potential value of a multilingual background, and I told this story. A woman at the back of the class stood up, and called out, 'That was my daughter! I am so grateful to you! You can't imagine what a difference that made to Anya's life in that school. She went from being a silent shadow in the class to being seen as a kind of genius, and her confidence rocketed. Within another month she had loads of friends and was talking to them in English.'

When I first spoke to Anya, my intention had been simply to try to help her to talk a little in English. But what I learned was that giving a child permission to use her multilingual skills could lead to a wonderful learning experience for the whole class, and could make her whole world a happier place.

Colin Harrison

UK and US spelling differences

1. Using I Before E

Use i before e, except after c, or when sounded as "a" as in "neighbour" and "weigh."

EXAMPLES: believe, chief, piece, and thief; deceive, receive, weigh, and freight

COMMON EXCEPTIONS: efficient, weird, height, neither, ancient, caffeine, foreign

2. Dropping the Final E

Drop the final e before a suffix beginning with a vowel (a, e, i, o, u) but not before a suffix beginning with a consonant.

EXAMPLES:

• ride + ing = riding
• guide + ance = guidance
• hope + ing = hoping
• entire + ly = entirely
• like + ness = likeness
• arrange + ment = arrangement

COMMON EXCEPTIONS: truly, noticeable

3. Changing a Final Y to I

Change a final y to i before a suffix, unless the suffix begins with i.

EXAMPLES:

• defy + ance = defiance
• party + es = parties
• pity + ful = pitiful
• try + es = tries
• try + ing = trying
• copy + ing = copying
• occupy + ing = occupying

COMMON EXCEPTIONS: journeying, memorize

4. Doubling a Final Consonant

Double a final single consonant before a suffix beginning with a vowel when both of these conditions exist:

• (a) a single vowel precedes the consonant;
• (b) the consonant ends an accented syllable or a one-syllable word.

EXAMPLES:

• stop + ing = stopping
• admit + ed = admitted
• occur + ence = occurrence
• stoop + ing = stooping
• benefit + ed = benefited
• delight + ful = delightful

Adapted (with English spellings preferred) from Richard Nordquist's About.com guide

Omission, Insertion, Substitution, Transposition and Grapheme substitution

Author: Greg Brooks, Emeritus Professor of Education, University of Sheffield

Note: Some use is made of phonetic symbols enclosed in forward slashes, e.g. /ə/, which are explained when first used (/ə/ represents the schwa vowel, the first phoneme in about and the last in butter). For more detail on phonetic symbols see Burton (2011). Example words and errors are shown in italics, and graphemes within angle brackets, e.g. <or>.

The five main categories

• Omission: The error consists in the omission of a single letter, e.g. occuring for occurring
• Insertion: The error consists in the insertion of a single letter, e.g. off for of
• Substitution: The error consists in the replacement of a single letter by another single letter, e.g. definate for definite
• Transposition: The error consists in the misordering of two adjacent letters, e.g. lable for label (Occasionally a single letter may have been misplaced by more than one position in a word, e.g. litgh for light - this should still be counted as a transposition.)
• Grapheme substitution: The error is not confined to one letter or the transposition of two letters. Rather, the writer has produced a spelling with a plausible but incorrect spelling choice (grapheme), e.g. their for there, or thort for thought. Some grapheme substitutions involve wrong use of a split vowel digraph, e.g. gole for goal.

A first-level count of the errors in a text or on a test within these five categories will reveal the principal tendencies. For an example based on errors on a spelling test used with adult literacy learners see Burton et al. (2010: 23-25).

An inescapable and notorious feature of the English spelling system is that almost all phonemes have more than one spelling (nearly 300 graphemes are used to represent the roughly 44 phonemes - see again Burton, 2011 for handy lists of the main correspondences and some of the rarer ones that nevertheless occur in common words), and so in many cases it is not possible to lay down rules for which grapheme is the correct spelling of a phoneme in a particular word.

Fourteen subordinate categories

With these categories we begin to move from objective classification to speculation about causes; correspondingly, these minor categories are not mutually exclusive, and when errors are being analysed every error should be logged under all of these headings that are relevant (though there may be none), as well as in one of the main categories.

• Real word: The error is a real word, but not the one intended (but some real words are rare, e.g. ewe, wile - if such errors occur they should be counted in this category, and also listed separately to check whether the writer is being influenced by 'tricky' words)
• Homophone: If pronounced by regular spelling-to-sound rules (grapheme-phoneme correspondences), the error word would sound the same as the intended word. The error may be a real word, e.g. pair for pear, or a nonword, e.g. thort for thought (as a nonword which would sound the same as a real word, thort is an example of what psycholinguists call a 'pseudohomophone'.)
• Non-homophone: The attempted word has the correct number of graphemes to represent the number of phonemes in the target word (this restriction is necessary to avoid counting almost all errors as non-homophones), but if pronounced by regular grapheme-phoneme correspondences would not sound the same as the intended word. Again, errors may be real words, e.g. down for dawn, or nonwords, e.g. bak for bake (this would also be a letter-name error)
• Omission of 'silent' letter(s): Dropping a redundant letter, e.g. night for knight, or frend for friend (both of these are also homophone errors, but only the first is a real word error), or not representing a syllable which is often elided in speech, e.g. libry for library or necessry for necessary (N.B. Omission of a 'silent' letter is not to be confused with wrong deletion of 'magic <e>' below, since in stem words the <e> is not redundant.)
• Non-deletion of 'magic <e>': Retaining stem-final <e> when it should be dropped before a suffix beginning with a vowel letter, e.g. moveing for moving (but ageing for aging now seems regular)
• Wrong deletion of stem-final <e>: Dropping stem-final <e> before a suffix beginning with a vowel letter when it should be retained, e.g. managable for manageable, or servicable for serviceable (more on this and the previous category later)
• Non-replacement of final <y>: Not changing stem-final <y> to <i> before a suffix (other than <-ing>) beginning with a vowel letter (more on this later)
• Non-doubling: Not writing a consonant letter double when it should be, e.g. accomodation for accommodation, or occuring for occurring (more on this later too)
• Wrong doubling: Writing a consonant letter double when it should be single, e.g. off for of, or inn for in (both of which would also be real word errors, but only the latter would be a homophone error)
• Pronunciation effect: The error seems to arise from a non-standard pronunciation, e.g. fought for thought (this would also be a grapheme substitution in the main categories, and a real word error but not a homophone)
• Letter-name error: A letter is used to represent its name in the alphabet rather than its phonic sound, e.g. cr for car, or fl for fell
• Wrong spelling of the schwa vowel /ə/: This is the most frequent phoneme in spoken English, but it has over 30 different spellings (the most frequent is <a>, which accounts for only 35% of its occurrences), so misspellings are frequent. Examples would include docter for doctor, accommadation for accommodation, possable for possible, probible for probable
• Letter confusions: The subset of substitution errors where the letter written is similar in form to the target letter or its mirror-image or rotation, e.g. plag for play, beb for bed, tid for tip
• '<i> before/after <e>': The rule alluded to here is ridiculously unreliable (see more on subordinate categories section), but it may be instructive to collect transposition errors of this sort just to prove the point (for two much more reliable rules for spelling vowel phonemes also see two more reliable rules section).

Table of Illustrative errors, with codings

Note: This is not intended as a model for every classroom, but rather an illustration of all the categories described in the other pages of this site.

For simplicity, each example contains only one error.

Key to main categories: O = Omission; I = insertion; S = substitution; T = Transposition; GS = grapheme substitution

For an explanation of the other categories see the Other categories of spelling page.

ret = wrongly retained; om = wrongly omitted; non = consonant wrongly not doubled; wrong = consonant wrongly doubled.

What are the 100 most commonly misspelled words (and how can we remember to spell them correctly?)

A defining feature of dyslexics is that they reverse letters- either at the single letter level ('d' instead of 'b') or at the word level ('saw' for 'was'). Right?

Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!

Sometimes dyslexics do reverse letters in words- but they do so only slightly more frequently (and in some studies just about as often) as normally developing beginning readers. In fact, just about all beginning readers and writers reverse letters in words some of the time. And this is perfectly understandable: to a child a cup is a cup, whether the handle is on the left or the right- so why shouldn't the same principle be applied to letters or words? To make this confusion is perhaps little different from when an adult types 'saw' for 'was' on a keyboard- it's not because they can't spell, but because the letters are typed almost simultaneously, and the fingers get the letters down as a group, rather than as an ordered set. Children have to learn such constraints; they aren't born knowing them. Thus, at the first (logographic) stage of learning how to spell, many children know words as 'wholes', and might spell them forwards or backwards, because they haven't as yet developed a set of alphabetic or orthographic spelling rules.

Having said all this, however, it is important to note that if a child is still consistently reversing letters or groups of letters after age 8 or 9, then this might be a strong indicator of dyslexia, as poor phonological skills make it difficult to learn the links between letters and phonemes.

Age 5-11 spelling curriculum

Here's an Anglicised version of a simple and straightforward curriculum for spelling, derived from the US equivalent of the National Curriculum, that of the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010:

Age 4-5

• Spell simple words phonetically, drawing upon a knowledge of sound-letter relationships

Age 6-7

• Use conventional spelling for words with common spelling patterns, and for frequently occurring irregular words
• Spell untaught words phonetically, drawing upon phonemic awareness and spelling conventions

Age 7-8

• Generalize learned spelling patterns when writing words (eg 'hedge' -> 'badge'; 'light' -> 'flight')
• Use conventional spelling for high-frequency and other learned words, and for adding suffixes to base words (eg 'sit' -> 'sitting'; 'cry' -> 'cries'; 'happy' -> 'happiness')
• Consult reference materials, including beginning dictionaries, as necessary to check and correct spellings

Age 8-10

• Use spelling patterns and generalizations (eg word families, rules such as 'i' before 'e' except after 'c', ending rules, and a developing understanding of the semantic components within words)

NOTE- the new spelling curriculum documents for England are much more detailed than those shown above.

New National Curriculum spelling requirements

New National Curriculum spelling requirements- these apply to England only

The UK government has published in September 2013 a new National Curriculum, most of which will be statutory from September 2013. For English, there is a separate 25-page Spelling Appendix that lays out in detail precisely what sounds and word lists pupils must be taught. The introduction states 'Some of the listed words may be thought of as quite challenging, but the 100 words in each list can easily be taught within the four years of key stage 2 alongside other words that teachers consider appropriate.'

These word lists include 'accidentally', 'knowledge', 'occasionally', 'purpose' and 'possession' for Years 3 and 4, and 'accommodate', 'achieve', 'appreciate', 'conscience', 'exaggerate', 'harass', 'leisure', 'opportunity' and 'pronunciation' for Years 5 and 6. University teachers will be particularly pleased to know that in future students will have known how to spell all these words for seven years before they arrived at university- in fact, the words above all occur on a list of spellings that postgraduate teacher trainees regularly used to misspell, that I compiled some years ago.

The good news is that- whatever you think of the government's spelling lists- the teaching methods suggested for this spelling work are helpful, and would be regarded by most experts as sound. Although the Spelling Appendix does not give lesson plans, there is actually quite a lot of guidance that would set an experienced teacher well on the way with planning. At least the requirements can't be accused of failing to offer detail that would support a teacher who wanted to deliver regular lessons on spelling.

The teaching approaches include:

Year 1 (age 5-6)

• 'revising' reception work (letters, sounds, vowel digraphs, segmenting)
• teaching children to divide words into syllables
• teaching similar words in groups
• teaching some of the simplest spelling rules
• building vocabulary and word analysis at the same time as teaching spelling
• teaching exception words

Year 2 (age 6-7)

• teaching harder phonemes/blends (eg the final sound in 'bridge'/'badge', or 'measure'/'treasure')
• the silent 'k'
• more spelling rules
• more common homophones
• harder exception words

Years 3 and 4 (ages 7-9)

• suffixes and prefixes
• morpheme prefixes (with a fixed meaning, such as 'dis-', 'mis-', 'sub-')
• more homophones

Years 5 and 6 (ages 9-11)

• much of this work is also developing vocabulary
• more work on roots and suffixes (particularly ones that have loads of rule exceptions)
• the use of the hyphen
• the ending '-ough', which can be pronounced 5 ways!
• the -ce/-se words ('practise'/'practice')
• tricky homophones ('led'/'lead')

Early years foundation stage

If you are a foundation stage or KS1 teacher, you already know some of the most important facts about learning to read, write and spell:

• learning to read and spell begins at birth, and the language experiences of a child in the first 12 months are absolutely vital to its subsequent literacy development
• in fact, some experts have argued that a child's literacy is determined some years before birth- as its parents learn (or do not learn) how important their role can be
• for a child to spell well in English, their phonological knowledge and phonemic awareness both need to be good (Not sure how these concepts are different? Great video here)
• phonological awareness starts developing from birth, and we now know that
  • if a child doesn't hear all the speech sounds of English in their first 12 months of life, it's much harder to learn them later
  • talking to an infant, using lots of intonation, repetition ('beddy'byes', 'din-dins', 'ma-ma', 'coochie-coo'), lots of poems, songs and rhymes will ALL help this development
  • linking speech, hearing and seeing is also valuable- so clapping games, pointing, touching fingers and thumb when you say 'quack-quack' (much better than 'duck'!) are all helping development

Dr Seuss was a genius!

In what ways was Dr Seuss a genius?

• In 'The Cat in the Hat' he produced a story that included fun, drama, suspense, and finally an ending that was both complete and yet open-ended, with an unresolved ethical question
• In 'The Cat in the Hat' he was able to incorporate nearly every major principle of developing phonological awareness, phonemic awareness and phonics
  • as well as suspense, drama and tension (will Mother get back before the house is tidied up? - the cat has about 5 seconds to go from total mayhem to tidy)
  • the story makes excellent use of rhyme (developing both phonological and phonemic awareness, and also onset-rime discrimination)
  • the story uses lots of repetition- this is also good for reinforcing word recognition, but also embedding firmer representations of individual letter-sound relationships ('So all we could do was to Sit! Sit! Sit! Sit!'; 'You should not be here. You should not be about. You should not be here When your mother is out!' 'Look at me! Look at me! Look at me NOW! ) Note that the easy word is repeated first, then subsequent words are much more tricky ones- 'should' and a familiar but irregular word 'look', which isn't pronounced with either a short or a long 'o')
  • The story also obeys the important pedagogical rule: 'teach words that are spelled the same way together' ( 'Something went bump! How that bump made us jump!'; 'Then those Things ran about With big bumps, jumps and kicks And with hops and big thumps And all kinds of bad tricks.'; 'Thing Two and Thing One! They ran up! They ran down! On the string of one kit We saw Mother's new gown!')

p.s. Some of the US reviews that castigate this book for not offering 'positive role models' or accusing the mother of 'criminal negligence' (for leaving her children at home alone) are almost as funny as the book itself.

New National Curriculum spelling requirements: Key Stage 1- these apply to England only

The UK government has published in September 2013 a new National Curriculum, most of which will be statutory from September 2013. For English, there is a separate 25-page Spelling Appendix that lays out in detail precisely what sounds and word lists pupils must be taught.

The good news is that the teaching methods suggested for this spelling work are helpful, and would be regarded by most experts as sound. Although the Spelling Appendix does not give lesson plans, there is actually quite a lot of guidance that would set an experienced teacher well on the way with planning. At least the requirements can't be accused of failing to offer detail that would support a teacher who wanted to deliver regular lessons on spelling.

The teaching approaches include:

Year 1 / age 5-6 (see pages 2-6 of the Spelling Appendix)

• 'revising' reception work (letters, sounds, vowel digraphs, segmenting)
• teaching children to divide words into syllables
• teaching similar words in groups
• teaching some of the simplest spelling rules
• building vocabulary and word analysis at the same time as teaching spelling
• teaching exception words

Year 2 / age 6-7 (see pages 7-10 of the Spelling Appendix)

• teaching harder phonemes/blends (eg the final sound in 'bridge'/'badge', or 'measure'/'treasure')
• the silent 'k'
• more spelling rules
• more common homophones
• harder exception words

Learning to 'sound out'

How do children learn to be able to spell a word that they have never written down before?

The answer is that they 'sound it out'.

But learning to 'sound it out' isn't easy- young learners especially need to be given some strategies and practice in learning to sound out words.

These are the stages in sounding out that children need to learn, as suggested by Richard Gentry:

• Say it slowly. Stretch the word out so that it's easy to hear the sounds. Beginning and ending sounds are easiest to hear but vowel sounds are the easiest to stretch out (and, if pronounced appropriately, any sound that is not stopped (like /m/, /n/, /s/, or any of the five traditional vowel sounds) is very easy to stretch out.
• Hold the sound. Starting with the first sound, hold it and stop. Holding this sound, and sometimes repeating it, helps kids lock it in.
• Find the letter. Think about the letter whose sound matches the sound identified in the word. Introducing kids to all 26 lowercase letters all at once in simple 1-to-1 matching exercises with their most likely sound takes very little time to learn for most students.
• Write it down. Write that letter down immediately. Don't wait until the entire word has been sounded out to write all the letters down. Write a letter for each sound as soon as the sound is identified.

Make spelling tests (and doing spelling corrections) worthwhile

Adapted from Mark Pennington's approach: http://penningtonpublishing.com/blog/category/spelling_vocabulary/

How to make spelling tests and doing spelling corrections worthwhile (age 7-11):

• 1. Administer a weekly test. Let's call this the 'pretest'.
• 2. After completing this diagnostic pretest, display the spelling words and get students to self-correct their spelling errors by circling and then discussing misspelled parts of words. This is an essential part of the learning.
• 3. Have students create their own Personal Spelling List to take home, and have a parent sign the list. Students prioritise their Personal Spelling List in this order:
  • Pretest Errors: include words that were spelled incorrectly on the pretest.
  • Posttest Errors: include words that were spelled incorrectly on last week's posttest.
  • Writing Errors: Add teacher-corrected spelling errors found in their own writing.
  • Supplemental Spelling Lists: Students add on unknown words from non-phonetic outlaw words, commonly confused homonyms, spelling demons, and high frequency lists.
• 4. On the next class day briefly explain the spelling pattern focus of the pretest. Focus on groups of words with a similar spelling pattern. Help students to see similarities with a preliminary word-grouping task.
• 5. Avoid useless crossword puzzles, word searches, and 'writing each word ten times' approaches. Please.
• 6. Students study their Personal Spelling List(s) for the spelling formative posttest. Many teachers elect to give the spelling posttest at the end of the week; others choose to combine two spelling patterns lessons and include these as part of the bi-weekly unit test. I give a bi-weekly test of two Personal Spelling Lists to save class time. There is no law saying that you have to test each Friday.
• 7. To administer the weekly or bi-weekly posttest, direct students to take out a piece of paper, find a partner, and exchange dictation of their Personal Spelling List(s) words (10-20 Minutes weekly or bi-weekly). Students then turn in their posttests for the teacher to mark. I know... you think they'll cheat. In my experience, very few do. Also... this works with second graders (I've done it) on up (to eighth grade).

New National Curriculum Key Stage 2 spelling requirements- these apply to England only

The UK government has published in September 2013 a new National Curriculum, most of which will be statutory from September 2013. For English, there is a separate 25-page Spelling Appendix that lays out in detail precisely what sounds and word lists pupils must be taught. The introduction states 'Some of the listed words may be thought of as quite challenging, but the 100 words in each list can easily be taught within the four years of key stage 2 alongside other words that teachers consider appropriate.'

These word lists include 'accidentally', 'knowledge', 'occasionally', 'purpose' and 'possession' for Years 3 and 4, and 'accommodate', 'achieve', 'appreciate', 'conscience', 'exaggerate', 'harass', 'leisure', 'opportunity' and 'pronunciation' for Years 5 and 6. University teachers will be particularly pleased to know that children will soon know how to spell all these words before they get to secondary school- in fact, they all occur on a list of spellings that postgraduate teacher trainees regularly misspell, that I compiled some years ago.

The good news is that- whatever you think of the government's spelling lists- the teaching methods suggested for this spelling work are helpful, and would be regarded by most experts as sound. Although the Spelling Appendix does not give lesson plans, there is actually quite a lot of guidance that would set an experienced teacher well on the way with planning. At least the requirements can't be accused of failing to offer detail that would support a teacher who wanted to deliver regular lessons on spelling.

First, the KS1 teacher had a rather daunting list of objectives, so it might be wise to know what these are, just in case a little revision is necessary!

Year 2 / age 6-7 (more detail on these can be found in pages 7-10 of the Spelling Appendix)

• teaching harder phonemes/blends (eg the final sound in 'bridge'/'badge', or 'measure'/'treasure')
• the silent 'k'
• more spelling rules
• more common homophones
• harder exception words

For Key Stage 2, the following is an outline of your curriculum

• Years 3 and 4 / ages 7-9 (see pages 11-17 of the Spelling Appendix)
• suffixes and prefixes
• morpheme prefixes (with a fixed meaning, such as 'dis-', 'mis-', 'sub-')
• more homophones
• the dreaded Y3-4 Word List is on page 16

Years 5 and 6 / ages 9-11 (see pages 18-22 of the Spelling Appendix)

• much of this work is also developing vocabulary
• more work on roots and suffixes (particularly ones that have loads of rule exceptions)
• the ending '-ough', which can be pronounced 5 ways!
• the -ce/-se words ('practise'/'practice')
• tricky homophones ('led'/'lead')

Developing readers and writers

The current Appendix on Spelling in the National Curriculum for English in England does not give advice or statutory guidance on spelling for Key Stages 3 and 4.

However, it's worth knowing that all teachers will be required to have taught children to spell the words in two rather challenging word lists before they get to secondary school. Here they are (in downloadable jpg files): Word list for Y3-Y4; Word list for Y5-Y6.

It is essential to make time for some work on spelling, particularly during Years 7 and 8, both in English and in other curriculum areas.

Some important principles to bear in mind:

• If children don't read, they won't learn to spell: knowing whether to use 'bear' or 'bare' (rather than 'bair') comes from reading
• Many children are still learning spelling rules during their secondary schooling, so teaching spelling remains important
• Teaching words that have the same spelling pattern together is less confusing for pupils than having them do exercises that mix them up
• Getting children to do spelling corrections is worthwhile- but there are better ways than simply asking them to write down corrections five times:
  • get students to self-correct their spelling errors by circling and then discussing misspelled parts of words. This is a valuable part of the learning
  • have students create their own Personal Spelling List to take home, and have a parent sign the list. Get pupils to focus on-
    • words that were spelled incorrectly
    • words that were spelled incorrectly previously
    • important new words, including proper names (to avoid 'Bunsin Berner', 'Cherchil', and 'Romio and Juleiet')

Do ask the pupils to make a list of spelling errors that their spell-checker software missed. Remember- Spell checker software is NOT always reliable.

Working with those who have a serious delay in spelling

Let's begin, not with spelling, but with some principles. These will be familiar to most teachers, but they are too important to omit:

• Acquaint yourself with the underpinning knowledge for any strategy, so that you are confident in the classroom.
• Inspire your learners with your enthusiasm and conviction - not your prejudices.
• Keep your learners informed, consult them as democratic partners and let them exercise choice.
• Take it slowly. Build it up step by step. Don't move on just because you are afraid of boring your learners. Lots of repetition/consolidation may be needed.
• Facilitate and cherish peer support.
• Involve your assistants and volunteers - but ensure they understand the principles of any strategy, particularly if working with lower level learners.
• Use humour in your teaching.

• a useful overview of software is here: http://www.netvibes.com/dyslexia#Writing
• and some clear and straightforward advice for parents and teachers on dyslexia from Professor Maggie Snowling is here

Source: Burton, M., Davey, J., Lewis, M., Ritchie, L. and Brooks, G. (2008). Improving Reading: phonics and fluency. Practitioner guide. London: National Research and Development Centre for Adult Literacy and Numeracy. Available at: http://www.nrdc.org.uk/?p=254

A whole-school spelling policy

Primary schools

• For primary schools, it makes sense to start with the Spelling Appendix of the National Curriculum, and then to plan as a school how to share out some of the Key Stage 2 work into wider curricular areas, particularly in Years 5 and 6.
• The 'Weekly Spelling Lists' of the popular Lancashire-based 'Topical Resources' group show how this can be done. The activity booklets (you can peek at sample pages for free) are not just spelling lists: they start from the 100 high-frequency words in the Letters and Sounds Appendix (Primary National Strategy, 2007), but then have activity booklets that go through to Year 6, with a wide range of materials, including photocopiable record sheets, vocabulary development work, games, dictionary work and personal spelling logs. There are also suggestions for cross-curricular applications and extension tasks for the quicker learners. It would be a fairly straightforward job to derive most of a whole-school spelling policy from these materials.
• The other key element of any whole-school policy is consistency and implementation across every class and year group:
  • Are the head teacher(s), Literacy Coordinator and SENCO all involved in writing and supporting the whole-school spelling policy?
  • Is there an agreed approach within every year group?
  • Is there a coherent policy on progression in spelling from Y1-Y6?
  • Is there a consistent policy on how many spelling errors are noted, and how they are discussed, corrected, and followed up?
  • Is there an agreed policy on how personal spelling logs are used?
  • Is there agreement on what ICT resources might best support the spelling policy?
  • Is there an agreed policy on where spelling fits in with overall writing development?
  • Is there agreement on the role Learning Assistants and parents/carers might play in supporting the school’s spelling policy?
  • Is there a school policy for record-keeping on children's progress on learning the spellings in the new Y3-Y4 and Y5-Y6 spelling lists?

Secondary schools

For secondary schools, a number of key principles are the similar to those for a primary school:

• Are the head teacher(s), appropriate Heads of Department, Literacy Coordinator and SENCO all involved in writing and supporting the whole-school spelling policy?
• Is there an agreed approach within every year group?
• Is there a coherent policy on progression in spelling from Y1-Y6?
• Is there a consistent policy on how many spelling errors are noted, and how they are discussed, corrected, and followed up?
• Is there an agreed policy on how personal spelling logs are used?
• Is there agreement on what ICT resources might best support the spelling policy
• Is there an agreed policy on where spelling fits in with overall writing development?
• Is there agreement on the role Learning Assistants and parents/carers might play in supporting the school's spelling policy?
• Is there a school policy for record-keeping on children's progress in spelling?

What kind of detail should go into a whole-school spelling policy? Here is a useful example, from Heathfield Primary School.

Spelling Policy

Spelling - a whole school policy

John Buchan Middle School

It should be recognised that whatever the subject, whoever is teaching, the basic principles apply to all.

The teacher's job is not to correct mistakes the pupils have already made, but to help them not to make that mistake next time. Equally parents, pupils and teachers should be aware that spelling is a secretarial skill and is not related to how clever a person is.

The school's marking policy requires spellings that are incorrect to be indicated by the insertion of 'sp' this however requires further explanation.

Marking spelling

• Don't mark every miscue or misspelling - Choose three or four at the most and pick the ones that most need correcting - that is, words that the learner ought to be able to spell out at this stage.
• The marker should always be sympathetic to what the writer is trying to communicate, the writer's errors (whilst important) should be second to the content.
• Do not insert letters into a misspelt word. It can confuse the writer. Instead you could
• Write the correct form in the margin
• Write the correct form into the writer's personal dictionary (in the school diary)

Teaching and correcting spelling

• Take it for granted that when you are introducing new words (photosynthesis, Eucharist or Macbeth) you will spend some time looking at the words and talking about their spelling.
• Recognise that there are different ways of learning to spell
• Encourage pupils to have a go for themselves in their jotter. Point out letter strings and words within words.

Spelling strategies

To continue learning, constructing and checking spellings, pupils should be able to:

• Recognise and record personal errors, corrections, investigations, conventions, exceptions and new vocabulary
• Sound out words phonemically and by syllables
• Draw on analogies to known words, roots, derivations, word families, morphology and familiar spelling patterns
• Identify words which pose a particular challenge and learn them by using mnemonics, multi-sensory re-inforcement and memorising critical features
• Use the quartiles of a dictionary and find words beyond the initial letter
• Make effective use of a spell checker, recognising where it might not be sufficient or appropriate

The TES online community has over 2.6 million users, and over 4,800 classroom resources classified under 'spelling', some of which have been downloaded 50,000 times.

Follow this link to look at ten of the most highly rated TES spelling resources.

Video clips, lesson plans and worksheets from the BBC

- Online whole-class spelling games from the BBC, with worksheets

- A US site with loads of free spelling resources

- How might you develop a weekly spelling lesson? (US teacher video)

- and here are some lesson plan templates to go with the video

- An interesting multisensory approach to teaching spelling

- electronic read-along books

Is Read-Cover-Write-Check a good strategy?

Pupils with special needs - Writing/spelling support software

Software for building vocabulary A dictionary crossed with an octopus!

Concrete poems - Wordle

Make art from any wordlist

There are dozens of programs available to support writing and spelling, many of which have been devised with the goal of supporting those who are dyslexic, or who have failed to make normal progress.

Below are links to some of the better known. But be aware: it's unwise to assume that any one program will help all learners: often it's a teacher's understanding of how a particular program works that makes it successful. However, all those listed below have been evaluated positively (and often used extensively) by teachers on the MA in Special Educational Needs at the University of Nottingham.

• For ages 4-11 Many teachers really rate Clicker software for helping beginner or tentative writers. Look at this brief video. The website CALL Scotland also has links to software that can support reading and writing.
• Reading-while-listening (with or without a computer) can help readers of any age develop fluency, and increase enjoyment. This in turn will help improve word recognition and spelling. MyStudyBar is a suite of (free) software tools that work from the desktop to help dyslexic readers and writers
• Both Windows and Apple computers now offer free text-to-speech software. The Apple app is incredibly simple: just highlight text and press Command-T, and it is read to you.
• Co-Writer is very clever software that helps slow writers by offering predictions of the next word they might be wanting to write: teachers can customise with specialist vocabulary, too.
• Ginger software also make a neat program that corrects spelling and grammar, and can read text aloud in a US or UK accent.
• A US site with many free resources that can help beginning readers or those with a learning delay is http://www.starfall.com/

The only schemes reviewed (see below) are ones that are readily available and that have been quantitatively evaluated in the UK and shown in at least one study to double pupils' normal rate of progress. For tests which provide reading or spelling ages this means a ratio gain of at least 2.0, that is, average monthly progress of at least two months of reading/spelling age per month between pre- and post-test. For tests which provide standardised scores this means an effect size of at least 0.5. For more detail see Greg Brooks's book via the weblink. http://www.interventionsforliteracy.org.uk/

Y1-Y3 (age 6-8) The Complete Spelling Programme (Read Write Company Ltd) Spellings are planned for each school year and structured into daily word groups. Children learn how to process both regular and high-frequency irregular words. The programme has three levels, allowing all ability groups to learn together.

Y2-Y6 (age 7-11) Cued Spelling. This is a paired programme devised by Keith Topping and colleagues at the University of Dundee. It involves either parent and child or two children working together - in the latter case the roles of tutor and tutee may be fixed, or be reversed from time to time.

Y3-Y8 (age 8-13) The THRASS programme (Teaching Handwriting, Reading and Spelling Skills) THRASS is a structured multi-sensory literacy programme. It increases understanding of the structure of English with its focus on 44 phonemes: 20 vowel sounds and 24 consonant sounds. The THRASS picture chart is a widely-used support for helping pupils make informed speech-sound/spelling decisions.