20 teaching ideas for spelling
Easy peasy. Point out that the most ‘difficult’ subject-specific words are often the
easiest to learn. Students can be put off by the length of some words and quickly
gain confidence when they see them broken down, e.g. con-tin-ent, trans-portation. Give students words cut up to put back together.
Happy families. Show how learning to spell one word can help you to spell lots
more because words are linked and patterns are repeated, e.g. pack, packet,
package; effect, effective, efficacy.
Fun and games. Make learning different spelling strategies more fun by using
games, quizzes and challenges as quick lesson starters and endings. Try a
variation on pass the parcel with hidden spelling questions, or make origami
fortune tellers with tricky spellings inside.
Word race. Start each lesson with a one minute word race. Create 15 word
cards and 15 definition cards (or whatever number is appropriate to your class
size). Give out cards to your class, and ask them find their matching pair. For
added challenge, use synonyms instead of definitions.
Dynamic displays. Encourage students to contribute to word walls, make their
own spelling bunting or create poster dangles (with key words, tricky spellings, or
homophones etc.) as part of a whole class literacy strategy.
Words within words. Also known as word chunking, encourage students to find
as many words as they can in one word i.e. themselves (he, hems, them, elves
etc.). Extend it to discuss prefixes / stems / suffixes.
A whole new world. For a fun, geographical twist on spellings, make your own
Geogreetings: http://www.geogreeting.com/main.html. Using letter shapes found
in buildings around the world, it takes visualising spellings to another dimension!
For a variation on this theme, try www.iconscrabble.com.
Hard spell. For a starter or just for a fun five minutes, play the BBC’s Hard Spell
interactive game in teams.
Don’t sound out. When students ask for the spellings of words, try not to spell
them out loud. If you write a spelling so that students can see it, they can begin
to learn the shape of the word.
Look-say-cover-say-write-say-check. Students look at a word, say the word to
themselves or aloud if this helps, then cover the word up. They must then try to
visualise it, say it again and write it. The next stage is to proofread the word to
see if it looks right before finally checking against the original.
© www.teachit.co.uk 2012
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20 teaching ideas for spelling
Dictionary or synonym race. Make dictionary or synonym work more
interesting with online alternatives. Try http://www.visuwords.com/ for an
interactive thesaurus, or Wolfram Alpha
(http://www.wolframalpha.com/examples/WordsAndLinguistics.html) to explore
the properties of words and create word puzzles.
Quiz stars. Play word quizzes like Boggle, Countdown and Anagram regularly in
class. Add relevance and extra challenge by encouraging competing groups to
make as many new words as possible from the letters of subject key words.
Log it. Encourage students to spot the words that they always get wrong and
keep a list – use this as a target to help them to improve.
Tried and trusted. Share some common spelling tips, and practise each tip with
new words to see which ones work for different students:
a. Break down into syllables b. Look for patterns c. Find words within words
d. Look, cover, write, check e. Spellspeak (say it as it sounds) etc.
S.P.E.L.L.I.N.G.S. Encourage students to devise mnemonics and other memory
aids to learn particularly long or challenging words. Discuss and share favourite
or useful mnemonics (e.g. because - big elephants can always understand small
elephants) and create new ones for tricky key words.
Word webs. Create word-cluster posters, to link common roots e.g. equi/equa, to
find interesting synonyms for key words, or to group words within the same family
e.g. effect, effective, effectiveness, efficacy etc.
Picture it. Create calligram posters of difficult spellings, where the meaning of a
word is visually represented by the letters.
Play Hangman. Try to encourage prediction based on spelling rules, rather than
just random guessing. You could use Teachit’s interactive version to add your
own word list, or get back to basics on the whiteboard or in teams.
Talk like the queen. Clearly enunciating all vowels and letter strings in words
can really help students to avoid missing out key sounds that might cause spelling
confusion or errors.
Linking homophones. Play a game of homophone dominoes, using Teachit’s
Domino template (154512), or make homophone paperchains for your classroom
walls. Alternatively, play a game of homophone snap (you might want to use
Teachit’s resource Homophone Snap! 21723 which includes an interactive
version too).
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