Does a child have to know spelling rules?

[CTVKath]

Do I need to teach my daughter spelling rules in order for her to really know spelling?

My just-turned-9yo daughter is about 1/4th of the way through Spellwell's 3rd grade spelling and is doing fine. By "fine", she almost always gets 100 on her Monday pretest, does each day's work, and gets 100 on the Friday test. I don't push her forward because I don't want her to skip any of the lists. There are no rules listed but each week's words follow a pattern. For example, this week they make the "ch" sound with either "tch" or "ch". 

Until today, I've been satisfied and had no worry. Also today my sister-in-law, who teaches 2nd grade in a private Christian school and has a masters in education, grilled me on spelling and said that my daughter has got to learn the spelling rules and that if she doesn't know them (for example when to use "ch" and when to use "tch") that she isn't learning spelling. She also said I should be testing her on nonsense spelling words related to the rule - for example dictating "gretch" - to make sure she knows the rules.

Do I need to teach her the rules? She seems to be a natural speller and I don't want to bog her down with what she doesn't need. I was never taught the rules and never had a problem with spelling. I also learned with random weekly lists of 15 words that weren't related and did fine. My daughter's weekly lists are related to a sound and I really like that. 

Thanks. I will change curriculum if necessary but would prefer to continue with what is working. (If it truly works because if it doesn't teach the rules.)

[Emba]

I'm not an expert and I've only homeschool 3 years, so take this for what it is worth. ☺ The only spelling rule i have a conscious grasp of is the one about i before e except after c, and I spell pretty well. If she is a natural speller, her grasp of it is probably a subconscious grasp of the rules, which will continue to develop as she gets more experience with more words, and specific difficult spellings. I wouldn't worry about it.

 

FTR, DR is not exactly a natural speller. I teach her spelling, and various curricula have mentioned rules to greater and lesser degrees, but she never seems to internalize them. She learns individual words and doesn't generalize the rules well. But she's not a terrible speller.

[sweet2ndchance]

IMHO, if you wanted her to be bored to tears because you were teaching her what is obvious to her and drilling it into her head the way they do in institutional school, you could send her to institutional school. A Master's in education means your SIL knows how to teach the masses, not your child in particular. If your daughter can spell well (and it sounds like she does) and you are happy with her progress (and it sounds like you are) then take what your SIL says with a grain of salt. I assume you aren't telling her how to to do her job, when she has walked a mile in your shoes, teaching YOUR daughter in a one on one situation and not in a classroom, then she can have an opinion worth listening to. 

Does she need to be taught explicit spelling rules? Doesn't sound like it. It sounds like she has an innate grasp of them. Could she benefit from learning spelling rules? Maybe, maybe not. It might be helpful or it might bore her to tears or over complicate things that she already understands without being explicitly taught. If things are going smoothly, she's learning and making age-appropriate progress, why rock the boat? FTR, I am a proponent of teaching spelling rules, but I also know first hand there are kiddos who just don't need them to be able to spell well. They are able to figure out the rules on their own just by being exposed to words and there is nothing wrong with that. If she were struggling at all, I would say teach her some rules but it doesn't sound like she is at all.

[alisha]

It sounds like your daughter is doing fine. Keep doing what's working. Rules are great, but that's only 1 way to learn to spell.

Also, is your daughter able to spell the words a month later with no review or preview or anything? If so, then she's getting it down and I wouldn't worry at all. 

[umsami]

If she's spelling well without them, then probably not.  It's nice to know a few (like i before e as stated above)....but is it required? Nope.

My first and third children are natural spellers.  My second and fourth struggle more.  Did not do a lot of formal spelling work, but did do Latin/Greek roots with first and third.  With the other two, we're trying Sequential Spelling this year. 

[8filltheheart]

Spelling rules do have limited usefulness, but note the wording.  Spelling rules' usefulness is limited. English has so many exceptions and so many digraphs that make the same sound that it requires memorization to know how to spell correctly.

Take her example of ch vs tch. Yes, it is helpful to know bc most single syllable, short vowel sounds words end in tch while vowel digraphs and consonants are followed by a final ch. BUT, then they need to learn much, such, rich, which, sandwich, ostrich, detach, attach. 

I have dyslexic kids who know every single rule (as do I bc I really thought at one point that it would help my kids spell.) Then, they got past cat and hat and had to memorize that fruit is spelled with ui while moon is oo and glue with ue and new with ew. Rules will only get you so far. They help. But the help is limited.

Edited August 28, 2018 by 8FillTheHeart

[Ellie]

1 hour ago, 8FillTheHeart said:

Spelling rules do have limited usefulness, but note the wording.  Spelling rules' usefulness is limited. English has so many exceptions and so many digraphs that make the same sound that it requires memorization to know how to spell correctly.

Take her example of ch vs tch. Yes, it is helpful to know bc most single syllable, short vowel sounds words end in tch while vowel digraphs and consonants are followed by a final ch. BUT, then they need to learn much, such, rich, which, sandwich, ostrich, detach, attach. 

I have dyslexic kids who know every single rule (as do I bc I really thought at one point that it would help my kids spell.) Then, they got past cat and hat and had to memorize that fruit is spelled with ui while moon is oo and glue with ue and new with ew. Rules will only get you so far. They help. But the help is limited.

But when you use something like Spalding, the children don't get confused with fruit and moon, because they learn the words that use those phonograms, not the different ways that a sound might be spelled; and they know the reason that "glue" has an "e" on the end, and which phonogram is used in "new" because of the way it is pronounced (not the same as fruit or moon). They don't learn "digraphs;" they learn that "tch" is used after a single vowel that doesn't say its name, not a rule about when "ch" is used. They don't memorize new words; they analyze them to discover which phonograms are used, and why they are used if there's a reason.

And English doesn't have that many exceptions; it has words which come from different languages. :-)

[8filltheheart]

1 minute ago, Ellie said:

But when you use something like Spalding, the children don't get confused with fruit and moon, because they learn the words that use those phonograms, not the different ways that a sound might be spelled; and they know the reason that "glue" has an "e" on the end, and which phonogram is used in "new" because of the way it is pronounced (not the same as fruit or moon). They don't learn "digraphs;" they learn that "tch" is used after a single vowel that doesn't say its name, not a rule about when "ch" is used. They don't memorize new words; they analyze them to discover which phonograms are used, and why they are used if there's a reason.

And English doesn't have that many exceptions; it has words which come from different languages. ?

Wrong. Kids do get confused. I used Spalding with my first 2 dyslexics. My oldest is my worst speller bc I didn't ditch it for something else. My 2nd at least go the benefit of a different approach. Still a horrible speller, though. My 3rd never used Spalding and thankfully her spelling is better than her brothers.  It is ridiculous to assert they don't have to memorize correct spelling. You cannot analyze your way to correct phonogram selection. Correct spelling has to be remembered.

[sweet2ndchance]

While I do love Spalding and went to a Spalding elementary school back in the 80s and can spell very well because of it, I have to agree with 8FillsTheHeart. Spalding is helpful for lots of kids, but not all kids. It is not the be all, end all of phonics and spelling curriculum.

Spalding still relies on the child memorizing which phonogram should be used in which word in many cases. Yes, they are told in spelling dictation which one to use and there are 29 spelling rules that help relieve a good portion of the ambiguity but there is no rule that tells a child that it is "fruit" and not "froot". They simply must remember which phonogram was dictated for that word but if they have not had that word dictated yet, they must guess and they may or may not get it right. It is not as if the word fruit is an uncommon word for a first grader or even a kindergartener to want or need to spell. While the word fruit may not technically be an exception, it does follow the rules, it also has to be memorized at least to the point of memorizing which phonogram to use.

All of the words that 8FillsTheHeart listed break the "Use 'tch' after a single short vowel" It is such, not sutch; much not mutch, and so on. Again these are not obscure words, they are words that every young learners will come across everyday if they are reading or being read to from age appropriate literature. Spelling the word, which as witch is absolutely phonetically correct even according to Spalding rules, but it changes the meaning of the word completely. It simply has to be memorized the which is spelled with 2 letter /w/ and /ch/ /k /sh/ instead of 3 letter /ch/ even though the vowel is making its short sound. If the child hasn't had that word dictated yet, I would never in my wildest dreams expect them to get all that right.

I love Spalding and its phonograms and rules. I have taught them to all my kids in one way or another. But I don't believe it is any sort of magic cure all of the spelling woes of all children. Not by a long shot. I imagine the child in question in this thread would be bore to tears and learn to hate spelling if she were forced to learn the Spalding way at this point. I imagine she already knows the rules even if she doesn't verbalize them they way Spalding does. She can see the patterns in English without them being explicitly layed out for her. 

[Rachel]

I have a natural speller, when I realized he knew all the words on the list I was using without practice, I quit doing spelling doing him. Does he know all the rules, no. He has a nearly photographic memory of how words are spelled though. Can he be stumped by random words, definitely but it’s easy to correct in the moment. 

My daughter is anything but a natural speller, she needs to know the rules. 

[HomeAgain]

I find it easy to use the program we do and add in phonics rules as necessary/as they come up.  DS is a mostly natural speller.  He only has to understand how the word is created and he can remember how to spell it.  When we did a heavy rules-based program (AAS) it bogged him down and confused him.  Now we do a repetition-based program (Dictation DbD) and I casually mention the rules as we go. But for him, the same ability in spelling connects to his ease of decoding in general.  He is good with languages.

If your program works, great.  If you need to add something to it, that can be done without scrapping the whole program.

Edited August 28, 2018 by HomeAgain

[CTVKath]

Thank you all for your kind responses. It really does help. I will set aside yesterday's conversation with SIL including the stress and fear it caused. Her perspective and goals are different from mine and she's got to teach a class of kids with varying spelling abilities. I am satisfied with our current spelling program and I am satisfied with how my daughter is doing. It just seems like the rules would slow her down and get in her way. If she has difficulties in the future, we can always stop and learn rules at that point.

Thank you again.