Spelling with accuracy is an important skill in English and indeed in life. People make judgements about your intelligence and communication skills when they see spelling errors in your writing. This can affect your future prospects. Two good examples of this are public examinations and letters of application for employment. Even when you are responding to questions in examinations based upon other subject areas, examiners are inevitably going to be influenced by a succession of spelling errors. If you were being awarded a mark on the borderline of two grades then perhaps the poor impression the spelling errors made on examiner might prompt them to award you the lower grade instead of the higher one. If you are applying for a job and your letter and application form contains spelling errors then you are communicating a very poor message about your abilities to a future employer. Why would they give you the job – or even ask you to come for interview – if they can select a person with the same grades but who can spell with greater accuracy than you?
This is not to say that there aren’t specific conditions like ‘Dyslexia’ that can cause individual students great difficulty with spelling. If you suspect that your difficulties are more extreme than the same kind of challenges faced by your friends and peers then you should visit the Special Needs department for extra assistance and advice. Most students have a certain degree of spelling difficulty that can improved through regular reading, revision of spelling patterns and working closely with a dictionary. This explains how people generally get better at spelling as they grow older: the more they read, the more they see words spelt correctly and the connection between certain sounds and spelling patterns, the more likely they are to spell a word correctly.
Spelling tests are an old-fashioned but straightforward and effective way of revising spelling patterns as well as learning the spelling of new and useful words. Each year group are set a bank of words to learn each week: Year 7 have 10 words, Year 8 have 15 words and Year 9 have 20 words. Each week the spelling lists have a different defined focus, for example, words all sharing the same spelling or sound pattern. In the interests of revision and to ensure students do not regress in terms of spelling ability (e.g. forgetting spelling patterns through lack of independent usage), spellings are learned in a yearly cycle meaning that ten of the Year 8 spellings are the Year 7 spelling they learned the previous year, plus five further words matching the same pattern of greater difficulty. This holds true for Year 9: fifteen of their words will be Year 8 words from the same week the previous year and based upon the same pattern, enhanced with a further five or even greater difficulty. In this way, spelling patterns are routinely returned to in the hope that if a specific spelling pattern failed to stick in a student’s mind one year, then there is a good chance that it will the next.
Strategy
Spellings are best learned using the following strategy: Look, Say, Cover, Write, Check. It is helpful for a parent to assist with the last two parts of the process and a following spelling test to identify what you have learned. Now look at the list of spellings you will be learning.
LOOK:
Spend some time looking at the list of words, paying particular attention to any spelling or sound patterns (the same letters, in the same order occurring within different words). Look
at the shape of the words, trying to remember them as a picture. Take your time.
SAY:
Say each word out aloud in turn, again paying special attention to the quality of the sound made by any spelling patterns the words share. If the appearance of the letters in the word didn’t help then perhaps the sometimes odd sounds the letter make, individually and in conjunction with other letters, might stick in your memory. Take your time.
COVER:
You need to hide the spelling list from your sight. Give it to your parent helper and ask them to read out the words, one at a time.
WRITE: As your parent helper is reading out the words, write them down by hand on paper. Try your best to remember the shape of the letters and the sounds of particular spelling patterns.
CHECK:
After your parent helper has read through all of the words and you have written them down, have them mark your response with the original list, giving a tick for correct spellings and a cross for incorrect ones.
REPEAT:
It is now important to repeat the process using only the words you misspelled. Repeating the ‘Checking’ part will even help you kinaesthetically (learning through the use of the body – like learning to ride a bike) remember the spelling of each incorrect word. Keep repeating
this process for as long as you can or until you spell all of the words correctly.
TEST:
Now have your parent helper give you a full test on all of the spellings in one go. Once you have completed the test then go through your results together, identifying which words you spelled correctly and which words you spelled incorrectly. Discuss which spellings you got wrong, why you think that was and any strategies you can think of to help you remember
the correct spelling.
RECORD: In your daybook, within the section for the appropriate week, write ‘Spelling Revision and Test’ and the spelling pattern you worked with (e.g. ‘Long Vowel e’). Ask you parent helper to write their initials next to your notation and the number of spellings you got right in your test.
EXTENSION :
There are several things you can do to extend this activity further:
-A brief revision session using the same strategy outlined above followed by another test a day or two later.
-Attempt to use as many of your English spellings as you can in other pieces of homework for other subjects that week, ensuring that the words are spelled correctly.
-Create a colourful poster, with illustrations (if the word contains the word cat then draw a cat over that part of the word, etc) of individual words with which you are experiencing difficulty and pin them up in places you are likely to see them like the ceiling above your bed, the back of the bathroom door, above / beside the screen of a computer, console or television.
