Learning to Spell
By Jessica Schoenfeld and Katlyn Greenwood
A Quick Peek
The five stages of development
Developmental difficulties of English language learners
Teaching strategies
How to assess spelling
If struggle continues
Stages of Development
Stage 1: Emergent spelling- 3 to 5 years old
Make marks on the page to represent letters
They are able to understand directionality
Learn that letters represent sounds
They use both upper and lower case letters in a word
Stage 2: Letter name- alphabetic spellers- 5 to 7 years old
Learn theres a link between letters and sounds
Choose only prominent letters to spell words
Stages of Development Cont.
Stage 3: Within- word pattern spelling- 7 to 9 years old
Able to spell most one syllable short vowel words
Learn to spell long- vowel words
Learn about complex consonant sounds
Stage 4: Syllables and affixes spelling- 3rd to 4th grade
Adding inflectional endings to nouns and verbs (-s, -es, -ed, -ing)
Adding comparative and superlative endings to adjectives (-er, -est)
Learn about prefixes and suffixes
Stages of Development Cont.
Stage 5: Derivational relations spelling- 11 to 12 years old
Learn that words with related meanings often have related spellings
Learn greek and latin root words
By the end of this stage they know what morphemes are
Teachers need to thoroughly explain this concept for students to understand why
some letters are silent in the abbreviated version of the word
Ex: sign is short for signature, therefore the g in sign is silent
English Learning Students
As english learning students go through the stages there are different
things that need to be explained.
Stage 1: This stage is difficult if their home language isnt alphabetical,
also if the direction is different
Stage 2: Depending on their home language they may have difficulties
with the long and short vowel and consonant sounds
Stage 3: R- controlled vowels are difficult because they are found in so
many words
English Learning Students Cont.
Stage 4: Have to learn to pronounce accented and unaccented syllables
Stage 5: Related words in english are signaled by similar spelling which
may be difficult
Teaching Strategies
A complete spelling program includes:
Teaching spelling strategies
Segmenting the word and sounding it out
Spelling unknown words by analogy to familiar words
Applying affixes to root words
Proofreading to find spelling errors
Checking spelling in the dictionaries
Developmentally appropriate instruction
Differentiating instruction
Teaching Strategies Continued...
Daily reading and writing opportunities
Children who are good readers tend to be good spellers too
As they read, children visualize words
Teaching high-frequency words
Common, frequently occurring words that children need to be able to spell
automatically
Children move from spelling phonetically to using morphological information and
spelling rules
Ways to Teach Spelling
Minilessons: Differentiating instruction to small groups depending on
the skill needing review on such as phonics, spelling rules,
phonograms, etc.
Word Walls: Two types
1. Important words from books students are reading
2. High-frequency words- Words are hung on the wall in the classroom
Word-Study Activities: Making words, word ladders, word sorts,
dictionary use
Weekly Spelling Tests
How to Assess Spelling
Pick a writing sample
Identify the common spelling errors
Tally the errors
Make a spelling analysis chart
Identify instructional priorities
If Children Continue to Struggle
High frequency problems
High frequency words: Children rely on phonics and a lot of high
frequency words do not go by phonics rules
Phonics: Remain dependent on the first phonic skill they learned so
they do not develop past that
Ex: soap as SOP
Handwriting: Child does not write legibly or they go too fast and
forget letters
