Teach Spelling
Tips to Help You Teach Spelling
Make sure your students have a firm grasp of the alphabet before you start to teach spelling to them. They need to know all the different ways a certain vowel or consonant can sound before they'll be able to successfully tackle spelling lists and spelling walls.
One of the most basic ways to teach spelling is to create a “word wall” in your classroom (or your home classroom if you are home-schooling). The words used on the wall should be written up in alphabetical order, so that your students can find the words they are looking for more easily.
Words on the wall should be changed often, to challenge your students to add to their vocabulary and their spelling skills. Use the words as much as you can in their daily lessons, so they are exposed to the words more often, and thus learn to spell them more quickly.
Lists of spelling words are a tried and true method to teach spelling, too. You can make sure to use words that they will be encountering in their other classes, so they will have more times to practice the spelling.
Helping students recognize the general spelling rules will help you teach spelling, too. Point out patterns that occur in spelling, and they will more readily catch on. The old once-a-week spelling quiz is becoming somewhat a thing of the past, as many teachers have realized that these tests only reflect the students' short term memory of only words on tests. It should be more important to you to teach spelling in a manner that helps them study old repeated words but also be able to figure out how to spell new words, as they are exposed to them.
There is a new program being used with some success, called “word study”. In this type of program, you teach spelling not by handing out lists of words once a week, but rather by helping your students to learn word patterns. This helps them when they are learning new words, because they've seen similar spelling trends in other words they have learned. American English is probably one of the hardest languages to teach spelling in, because we have so many words that aren't spelled the way they sound, and because we use words to mean so many different things.
Phonics worksheets are a tried and true way to teach spelling to your younger students. You can make up your own phonics sheets, using words that you are currently studying in their other classes, so that the words are seen more often, and students can more easily recognize patterns in the words they use.
Flash cards are still used to teach spelling, but they can be incorporated as a fun game, rather than something that makes your shier students nervous. You can break the students into teams, and use nutritious snacks or an extra recess period as incentive for your students to try their best.
Spelling is an important base on which everything else will be built, so make sure you teach spelling as a useful building block.