Spelling is one of the essential areas in learning a language. Teaching spelling to students at a very young age requires patience as it may seem very complex at first. Students should know the importance of correctly spelling the words as a little change in the spelling of a word may change its meaning. Some students find it difficult to learn to spell, and it has to be addressed immediately. This blog will look at ten effective tips for teaching spelling to students.
- Creative activities
Students won’t focus much if they find something boring, especially small kids. Instead of relying on papers and textbooks, try attractive and practical teaching to make learning more interesting for them. Children will be interested to learn spelling through phonemes and graphemes. This involves creating letters from a dough, cutting them, and tracing them, which will be fun for the children to learn faster. Activities like cutting words from magazines and making letters with different materials will keep them engaged, and they attentively learn how to spell.
- Teach morphemes
Morphemes are the smallest units of a word, i.e., they can’t be divided any further. Instead of splitting a word into multiple meaningless small words, try to teach them using morphemes. This makes them learn meaningful root words instead of hardly memorizing them. Understanding morphemes also helps them to learn large words effectively as they how to split them meaningfully. This may take some time, but students will be stronger in their spelling if they learn to use morphemes.
- Ask them to write more.
Practice is the key to mastering anything. More writing time for children enables them to self-correct themselves and understand the importance of spelling. Apart from conducting tests, ask your students to write something on their own. This spelling practice makes them choose words, try out the different spelling, and correct themselves. Writing improves the usage of words and also spelling.
- Encourage them to read more.
Students who struggle with spelling often find it boring and uncomfortable when they are asked to write. However, such students can be given the practice of reading for at least 10 to 15 minutes a day to improve their reading and writing skill. Try to spend time with each student individually who is struggling with spelling to reading aloud the words to improve their vocabulary and spelling.
- Teaching the roots of words (Etymology)
The etymology of a word describes the historic root of the word and where does it come from. The English language has numerous words that have their origin in other languages. For example, the word “jeans” has its origin in the French word called “Gênes .”Students would be amazed to know such interesting facts about the English words, and they tend to remember them effectively.
- Games to teach
Word games like crosswords and up and down puzzles will be fun for the students to play along with their friends and learn spelling at the same time. The motivation to win the game would automatically make them attempt correct spelling. Learning along with friends is always fun for children of young age, then why not try the same to teach spelling?
- Utilize the classroom walls
If you are constantly aiming to teach spelling to your students, remove the unnecessary posters from your classroom walls and make them useful to display word spellings. Display the most useful and common words that are needed for their grade and make them observe the patterns. This makes children learn different words and regular spelling patterns whenever they look at the walls.
- Make them correct their mistakes themselves.
Students have to realize their mistakes for not to repeat them again. Teachers are correcting their students’ mistakes, and the students repeating them, again and again will be exhausting for the teachers. Give them a chance to notice their mistakes and correct themselves. Encourage them to use dictionaries and grammar books to know how to correct their mistakes.
- Dedicating time to focus on spelling
If you dedicate only a few minutes per week for the students to focus on the spelling, they will tend to forget eventually as they proceed with other activities. Teaching spelling should be an integral part of your communicative language teaching. Spelling should be taught along with morphemes, syllables, prefixes, suffixes, and other areas that are related to spelling. This gradually improves the spelling and makes your students so strong in language.
- Different approaches to dysgraphic and dyslexic students
Dysgraphic and dyslexic students will find it difficult to learn spelling patterns and struggle to read and write. Common strategies of classroom teaching will not be enough for them. Using a different approach other to make them remember the words and spelling will help them to learn more. There are plenty of options available nowadays to make learning much easier for students struggling with dysgraphia and dyslexia.
Sum Up
Every student has different interests and different learning paces. Get to know more about your students and try to implement different approaches and teaching skills according to your students’ interests. Teaching how to spell effectively to your students at a very young age will boost their confidence and improve their language skills. Start teaching using Classplus, one of the most successful and leading learning platforms available in India for teachers. It helps you build your own app as per your choice.
