How does public school teach spelling? How do you teach spelling?

[GoVanGogh]

It's not that I want to replicate how they teach spelling, but I'm looking for ideas and/or inspiration. :tongue_smilie:

 

DS is a self-taught (early) reader. He is now almost 9 years old. He is a very advanced reader with solid understanding of phonics. But he can't spell at all. I have tried Sequential Spelling, The Natural Speller and Spell to Write and Read - plus Evan-Moor workbooks.

At the end of our last school term, I pulled out our Abeka Handbook for Reading and I have been going back through each and every lesson, but doing it as a spelling lesson instead of reading. He gets spelling, knows the rules, but can't put that knowledge into practice.

 

Neighbor boy (six months younger than DS, but same grade) was over yesterday after school and he asked me to drill him for his spelling test later this week. Granted the words were simple 3-5 letter words, but I was shocked at how quickly he could spell.

I know not to compare and that all children have different areas of gifts/interests. And spelling doesn't seem to be a gift or interest my DS possesses. :tongue_smilie: But it did leave me wondering -- How does public school teach spelling? Do they have any magic tricks up their sleeves that might help us???

And - more importantly - how do you teach spelling? Any wonderful tips to pass along?

Thanks in advance!

[johnandtinagilbert]

public schools here teach memorization methods for spelling words.

 

I use OG methods that teach phonics rules thoroughly and their application, with very little memorization of sight words. It makes a difference between "memorizng" and "knowing" the spelling rules, and actually applying them. I had to remediate all the phonics rules and sounds with my son in middle school b/c he couldn't spell. Now that we went back that far, he's spelling better.

[Guest]

When you find out the secret, let me know. Out of all the spelling programs we tried through our journey, not one has helped. Great, they can spout the AAS rules, use them? Not a lick. I think some kids are born with it and some aren't.

 

The best thing I did was have them keep a personal dictionary of every word they misspelled one year. Those were full books. Wish I still had them. The only other program they liked (memorize and spit it out) was EvanMoor's Building Spelling Skills Daily Practice books. maybe it was the nice white slightly stiff paper....

[delaney]

I hate spelling b/c as a natural speller I don't get why people can't spell! My younger DD is like me and absorbs words but older DD struggles with words. I attribute this to her resistance to reading in the past. I am trying her on word families and keeping a log of words that she gets wrong in her writing that don't follow a rule. I figure I will keep doing this until the rule breakers start to show up correctly and then pull them off her list-kwim? I also teach her tricks for the harder words. Like Wednesday. I tell them to say it Wed-nes-day in their heads. Or tomorrow(tom-or-row). Silly little tricks that I just picked up when I saw them as a kid.

[Mom0012]

My sister's kids are in public school and she's told me that the school sends home a new spelling list on Monday. The kids have a sheet of activities (writing sentences with the words in them, writing each word 5 times, finding the words in a magazine and cutting them out, making the words with playdough, typing them on the computer, etc.) they can choose from for homework to learn the words. Then they have a test on Friday.

 

This seems similar to how I remember doing spelling in school, but I don't remember being given a list of activities to do, just that I needed to memorize the words in time for the test on Friday.

 

Lisa

[Guest TheBugsMom]

Sometimes memorizing is what needs to be done because some phonics rules don't help, memorizing and going with what looks right. An example is last week my dd had a spelling list of ur, ir, and er words. Abeka's handbook does not give rules as to when these should be uses so dd and I worked on what looked correct. I would write a word using all three ways and asked her what looked correct.

 

We do spelling this way:

Day 1: Introduce word and phonics rules they follow, then she writes them.

Day 2: We go over words again and phonics rules. Then she writes some of her words in sentences.

Day 3: She types words on the computer. I find this helps because she is saying the letters as she hunts for the keys. Writes some more sentences with spelling words.

Day 4: I put the spelling list next to the white board with a flap of paper over it. DD lifts flap says word then closes flap and writes, she then looks at the word to see if she wrote it correctly. She finishes her sentences.

Day 5: At breakfast I give her an oral spelling review, then later she takes the written test.

I watch her as she takes the test and if I see her writing the word wrong I ask her to give me the spelling rule for the sound she hears. I try to get her to correct her work before she completes the word. If she still does not get it, I tell her to skip the word and we write that one down in another part of her spelling notebook then go to Abeka's handbook to see the phonics rule that applied to the word and we review the page. If it was a sight word she missed we highlight it in green on her list of misspelled words and she writes it 3x. I always pull a word or two from this misspelled word list for each test and we go over this list each week using the oral spell method.

 

When ever we do an oral 'quiz' on the spelling, if she is having trouble I tell her to write it out and see if her word spelling looks correct.

[MerryAtHope]

When you find out the secret, let me know. Out of all the spelling programs we tried through our journey, not one has helped. Great, they can spout the AAS rules, use them? Not a lick. I think some kids are born with it and some aren't.

 

The best thing I did was have them keep a personal dictionary of every word they misspelled one year. Those were full books. Wish I still had them. The only other program they liked (memorize and spit it out) was EvanMoor's Building Spelling Skills Daily Practice books. maybe it was the nice white slightly stiff paper....

 

A personal dictionary really is a good idea. As for rules, some kids really need to be shown the next step to learn to consistently apply them. Here are some ideas for you--even if you no longer use AAS, you might be able to glean some ideas to help them progress in applying what they know to their writing.

 

Merry :-)

[Mosaicmind]

The ps here use SWO. The kids get the spelling words for the week sent home on the Friday before and a pretest is given on Monday. They do the lesson in the book during the week and then have a final test on Friday, if they didn't score a 100 on the pretest.

 

Our ps also use Wordly Wise and Singapore math

[regentrude]

In ps my kids got a weekly spelling list. There would be exercises with those words every day, a pretest on Thursday, a spelling test on Friday.

 

DS used these:

http://www.spellingconnectionsonline.com

(You can select a grade, there are word lists for each week)

 

My kids hated spelling practice; they are natural spellers because they are visual learners who read a lot. Same for me, I "see" if a word is spelled incorrectly, it just looks weird.

[cjshima]

I've only been homeschooling for 2 years, my kids were in public school before that. One thing they did at the school was word sorts. When they received the list of words at the beginning of the week, they had to sort them into categories of similar spelled words. However, at no time did I see them learn any particular spelling rules, just memorization.

 

I am using Barton (OG method) with my daughter because she is dyslexic and it thoroughly covers the spelling rules. She is good at remembering the rules (I keep the spelling rules page in front of her when she is working), so she spells better than her 7th grade brother. He is an advanced learner, but has only relied on memorization to learn spelling, so even though he can easily score 100% on his spelling tests, his everyday spelling is awful! I'm thinking about using the Barton with him, just so he can learn the rules (although I don't know if that will help him).

 

I'm starting level 4 in Barton with my daughter, and one thing they utilize at that level is a Franklin Spelling Ace. If the child is unsure about the spelling of a word, he can use that to check it.

[kimo]

We've been using Sound Beginnings for phonics and spelling. It isn't colorful and interesting, but effective.