How do you teach spelling effectively? First, we need to look at spelling skills and what is current common classroom practice. Here are nine key takeaways: 

1. There are lots of influences on our spelling system.  

“It’s just spelled that way”, “it’s just a strange spelling”, “the English language is complicated”. These are many things that people say. Often the reason for this folk explanation is that the English language has had many influences. Predominately being influenced by lots of different languages, such as Anglo-Saxon, Greek, French and Latin. Even our handwriting has influenced our spelling system. In the present day, it is still changing, with approximately 1,000 words added to the English Oxford Dictionary every year. 

2. We need to ditch the ‘visual memory’ myth.  

People often think of spelling as a memory test and that we must take a mental picture of words. Fortunately, this is not the case, so we cannot expect children to memorise words.  

“If children relied on visual memory for spelling, regular words (e.g., stamp, sing, strike) and irregular words that are similar in length and frequency (e.g., sword, said, enough) should be misspelled equally often. But they are not.” Joshi et al. (2008, p. 7) 

3. Phonics is key. It is an important foundation for spelling but not enough on its own.  

“Phonological knowledge, or knowledge about the sounds in language, is an important foundation of spelling. 

In order to learn to spell, children need to become phonologically aware; that is, the ability to hear, identify and manipulate syllables, rhymes and individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words. In order to spell words using their phonological knowledge, children must be able to segment each word into smaller units (syllables, phonemes or onset and rime) and match these units to appropriate letters or letter combinations (graphemes).” Oakley and Fellowes (2016)  

The key takeaway is that phonics is key to spelling: it is an important foundation to spelling. That said, you cannot write effectively with just phonics, just as you cannot read effectively with just phonics.  

4. The English language is morphophonemic. 

Morpho – morphemes used as elements to represent meaning 

Phone – phonemes used as elements to represent pronunciation 

Morphemes are the smallest unit of meaning in a word. For example, the word ‘misplaced’ can be split into three morphemes. The prefix is ‘mis’, ‘place’ is the base word and the suffix is ‘ed’. 

5. It is not just about knowing phonemes and graphemes. We must know which graphemes to use and when to use them.  

If you just give children phonemes, they will not get the full picture of our language. Some words you can spell by sounding them out and can spell them phonetically, but it is not the case for all words and therefore it is not just a one-element approach. We must look at the wider picture of the English language. 

You can spell the words below phonetically, but you will also need to think about which graphemes to use. Orthographic knowledge is key; knowing which grapheme to use when and which grapheme is the most plausible.  

6. It is important to look at spelling through multiple lenses. 

Looking at words through multiple lenses is of utmost importance. We can look at the same word by splitting it into phonemes, syllables or morphemes. 

Phonemes, syllables and morphemes can all have debate and variation – sometimes it is not as simple as having an answer.  

7. There are lots of problems that come with spelling pedagogy. 

It can be really frustrating as a teacher when you think children have grasped spellings, but when you come to mark their writing, you realise they are not applying their knowledge of spelling patterns. Often teachers find issues with spelling in children’s written work is because spelling is not being taught systematically. There are lots of common problems that occur when it comes to spelling pedagogy. 

Memorisation 

Some common memorisation strategies that are commonly used are Look – Say- Cover – Write – Check, mnemonics and rote learning of spellings. With over 171,000 words in common usage vocabulary and over 500,000 words in the Oxford dictionary, we cannot expect children to memorise every word. There are just far too many words. Although you might find the odd mnemonic useful, you wouldn’t be able to use a mnemonic to remember every word. Memorisation cannot be used as the sole way of teaching spelling. It’s not effective.  

Osmosis 

Another misconception is that children will just learn to spell. Some people believe: 

While all this has an impact on spelling and is good practice, it is not an effective way of teaching spelling. 

Testing to Teach

Testing to teach is a common method used in schools. This is where you hand out a list of words, children practise at home, then they are tested on the words at the end of the week. Testing to teach is not an effective way of teaching spelling, as it is not teaching spelling at all.  All that is happening is spelling is being assessed over and over again.  

Phonics Only  

Phonics is a big part of teaching spelling and is an important foundation for spelling, but it is just one element in effective spelling teaching.   

8. Effective spelling instruction incorporates phonics, morphology, etymology and activities that support orthographic mapping. 

“An effective speller draws upon the entire rich linguistic tapestry of a word to spell it correctly. The threads of this tapestry can be identified as phonological knowledge (including phonemic awareness), orthographic knowledge, morphological knowledge (which includes semantic knowledge), etymological knowledge and visual knowledge (Apel et al., 2004a, b; Henry, 1989; Masterson and Apel, 2010).” Adoniou (2014, p. 145) 

To teach spelling effectively, we need to incorporate phonics, morphology, exploration of etymology and activities that support orthographic mapping.

 

The image above shows how these elements build our linguistic knowledge. The more times this process is repeated, the more solidly our visual knowledge is built up.  

These build up our linguistic knowledge so we can commit words to our visual memory. 

9) Research shows that what is happening in the classroom does not align with theories of spelling development.  

A recent study by Esposito, Herbert & Sumner (2023)  found that “Of note, at present, there is a dissociation between theories of spelling development, which highlight the importance of phonology, orthography and morphology (Berninger et al., 2010), and classroom instructional practices, which focus largely on phonics and memorisation approaches.” 

The image above shows the results of their findings of how spelling is being taught in classrooms.

You will notice that Look – Say- Cover – Write – Check was the strategy that was used the most, with mnemonics being second. The table clearly shows that memorisation techniques are being focused on rather than what theories and studies show are effective spelling strategies.

Video Webinar Recording: How to Teach Spelling Effectively – Part One: Spelling Skills 

Watch this free webinar recording for all of the above.  

Click here to read How to Teach Spelling Effectively – Part Two.

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