Building strong spellers

What's your most vivid memory from elementary school??For me, it's from?fifth grade. I was a finalist in our county's spelling bee?and my word was?acquiescence.?I asked for the part of speech and origin of the word. Then I went for it:?a-c-q-u-i-e-s-e-n-c-e. A long pause, and then:?Ding ding! I was out. My hopes of making it to the state bee were dashed.

Truth be told, I had only asked for more information about the word to buy myself some thinking?time. I?had no idea what to do with the information. To study for this spelling bee, I?had attempted to memorize all 4000 words in the Scripps Spelling Bee Study List. Needless to say, that wasn't the best strategy. It's akin to what we tell teachers not to do nowadays:?give students random lists of spelling words to memorize?each week and test them on Friday.

We now know that effective spelling instruction goes beyond rote memorization—it should also include explicit instruction to help students understand patterns, sounds, and meanings, plus many opportunities to apply spelling knowledge in context. When students engage in spelling as a strategic process, they not only become better spellers but also stronger readers and writers.

Let’s take a closer look at the components of effective spelling instruction that help build strong spellers. This What Works Clearinghouse practice guide breaks down spelling into skills to be practiced at different developmental levels:

• Phonemic awareness should be a spelling focus in early elementary, typically through 2nd grade. Research has found that phoneme level awareness, especially phoneme segmenting, supports spelling development. Phoneme segmentation allows children to deconstruct words into their individual sounds, which they can then map to letters and letter combinations when writing.
• Spelling with phonics, which should typically be the focus through 3rd grade, allows students to connect the sounds of spoken words to the graphemes that represent them. Explicit encoding instruction includes the teacher pronouncing the word, describing the target sounds, naming the letters of the spelling units, and writing them for students to see. This targeted modeling is followed by students practicing with teacher support and independent practice and can be used with independent sound-spelling correspondences or complete words. For more encoding activities, be sure to download our free Structured Literacy Lesson Plan Template.
• Spelling with multiple syllables is appropriate for most students starting in 3rd grade. It’s important to remember that while syllabication rules can be helpful, they don’t work 100% of the time. However, incorporating phonological awareness of the number of syllables within a spoken word and an understanding that every syllable has a vowel can help students more accurately spell the words they are writing.
• Spelling with morphemes is beneficial for 2nd through 6th grade students (and beyond!), and is characterized by explicit instruction of the meaningful units within words. Similarly to explicit phonics encoding, explicit morpheme encoding includes modeling, supported practice, and independent practice. In addition to pronouncing the word, describing the target morpheme, and writing the morpheme, modeling should also include the definition of the morpheme and example words that include it. Here’s a list of common English affixes, in case you’d like to ensure your instruction is hitting the most frequent patterns!

The Role of Invented Spelling

For early learners, invented spelling isn’t just endearing—it’s beneficial. Research has found that allowing students to approximate the spelling of words based on their understanding of phonics patterns has many benefits, including:

• Strengthening phonemic awareness skills,
• Increasing the complexity of word choice within writing,
• Improving writing motivation and confidence, and
• Serving as a valuable formative assessment tool for teachers to see what students have mastered as well as areas of unfinished learning.

Spelling and Reading—A Two-Way Street

Spelling instruction doesn’t just improve writing; it strengthens reading skills too. The process of analyzing words, sorting them by patterns, and building new words reinforces foundational literacy skills. As Snow et al. stated in 2005, “Spelling and reading build and rely on the same mental representation of a word. Knowing the spelling of a word makes the representation of it sturdy and accessible for fluent reading.” You can read more about integrating reading and writing instruction here.

By approaching spelling as a bridge between reading and writing, we can help students develop into confident, expressive communicators!

Here are some more resources to explore if you’re looking to up your spelling instruction:

Transitioning from a Word Wall to a Sound Wall

Reviewing Spelling and Reading Rules

What Does It Mean to Know a Word?

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