Silent letters – such as the “e” at the end of garage – are letters that are not pronounced when saying the word out loud, although they may affect the pronunciation of the word. In this example, if the word were spelled garag it would most likely be pronounced just as it’s spelled, GAH-RAG. If you know the ways a final “e” can change the pronunciation, you’ll get a clue about the spelling of the word (see this post for more information). Silent letters can be either vowels or consonants (some other examples are here).

Sometimes knowing two forms of a word will help you learn how to spell both correctly. There is a silent “n” at the end of the verb condemn (kun-DEHM), but that same “n” is pronounced in the noun condemnation (kahn-dehm-NAY-shun). The same pattern occurs with the noun autumn (AW-tuhm) and its adjective autumnal (aw-TUHM-nahl). We encourage you to explore the relationships between words – this is an excellent example of how a little research can not only add still more words to your vocabulary, but also help you learn how to spell and pronounce them correctly.

1. Make commute time into spelling time. Many parents spend lots of time with their children in the car, going from one activity to another. These short car trips are the perfect time to review spelling words, or to quiz children on the words they need to learn. Depending on the length of the journey, you might only have time to go over one or two words, but every little bit of help is valuable. For those long car trips in the summer, think about purchasing a hand-held spelling game for your child. If there’s more than one adult in the car, they can take turns with the spelling review. If there are two or more children, why not try a spelling bee?

2. Create individualized spelling lists to focus on problem words. Whether your child misses a word once, or has constant difficulties remembering how to spell a word, it’s very useful to create a special list of those words that they can use to review. If you’re using the Ultimate Spelling software system, creating these lists is quick and easy, and allows the child to review the words using the games and quizzes. You can also create flash cards to use in review sessions.

3. Find creative ways to learn words. When your child brings home a list of spelling words to study, work with your child to make up a story using as many of them as possible. Have the child write out the story and then read it out loud to you. The creativity required to come up with the story, the images associated with the story, and the practice writing and reading the words will all help your child remember the words and how to spell them.

4. Practice the right way to learn words. It’s best to correct errors in spelling as soon as they’re made. For that reason, instead of having children study a long list of words, then practice writing out that long list, then go back to the original list and correct their mistakes, work on words one at a time. Flash cards are ideal for this. Show the child the word on the flash card and let them study it for a minute. Hide the card, and ask the child to write down the word, or spell it out loud, or both (remember, the more ways they study a word, the easier it is to learn by heart). Correct any errors, then move on to the next word. If the child made a mistake, set the card aside for later review. Older children can do this process for themselves.

5. Review spelling patterns. There are some basic sound/letter combinations that children can learn to help them spell words. For example, you could look at the words night, fright, delight, and sight to practice the I-G-H-T pattern and its sound. It’s useful to point out words like bite and site that have the same sound, but different spelling; this will help children start to group words by letter patterns, which makes learning easier.

One surprising result of the study, which concluded in 2011, was that teachers quickly realized that the way they teach would need to change in order to support this focus on literacy. Groups of instructors started sharing their techniques, and results from different classrooms were compared. Understandably, one of the more difficult aspects of this system is to incorporate the literacy targets into all of the subjects being taught, because classroom time and resources are often limited. Teachers, researchers, and outside organizations combined their energies into finding the best ways to accomplish this goal.

The effort and time put into adapting teaching styles to incorporate vocabulary improvement, spelling skills, and reading comprehension paid off in the end. Testing showed that the majority of students in the literacy-focused curricula scored higher than national averages in all three areas, with an amazing 76% of students scoring at least 13 percentage points higher than average in vocabulary skills.

This and other studies emphasize the importance of a good vocabulary in student success in all areas of study. Without a good vocabulary, and the ability to recognize and correctly spell words, it’s very difficult for children to get the skills they need in reading comprehension, which is necessary for acquiring knowledge in any field.

Cross-posted at The Vocabulary Builder’s Blog.

The book is “What Really Matters in Spelling: Research-Based Strategies and Activities” by Patricia Cunningham. It covers spelling techniques for young children and teenagers, and offers outlines and suggestions for ways to help children learn quickly and easily. Cunningham focuses on word patterns, and uses pattern recognition to help students build their vocabularies as well as their spelling skills. The word lists are sorted by grade level as well as relationship, making it easy for parents to create a weekly spelling schedule that can be worked into the other activities a child has during their break. The suggestions for using “word walls” can be used for other learning activities as well. Cunningham also emphasizes the connection between reading fluency and spelling skill, which is a good reminder to parents to encourage reading as a fun way to spend the holidays, rather than playing video games or watching television.

Because this text builds on many standard classroom techniques for teaching spelling, it’s a good way to make sure that the progress children make on spelling skills in school doesn’t fade away when they’re out of class.

One of the most common mistakes was using the wrong vowel; in fact, over one-third of the total errors made were due to this type of mistake. It’s easy to understand why so many students confused the vowels in words, since the relationship between sounds and letters is often unclear for English vowels. For the most part, the students used vowels or vowel clusters that represented the correct sound when used in other words, just not the particular word they were spelling. For example, think of word and bird and heard (and say them out loud to test the sounds) – the vowels in combination with the letter r all make the same sound, but all are spelled differently. It’s not surprising when children take the familiar spelling of bird and logically, to them, try to spell the others as wird and hird. One way to help children avoid this error is to practice these different phonemes and the various ways they can be spelled. Once they’ve seen the alternate spellings of a sound, they’ll find it easier to remember.

Another pattern that emerged from the study was the frequent dropping of doubled letters. It’s hard to explain why words like letter and missile use double consonants, because the t and s sounds don’t change. In this case, vowels are easier to understand, because there’s an obvious difference between the sounds of single and double vowels, from the short to the long vowel sounds. The difference between loot and lot is easy to see and hear. Of course, there’s the issue of explaining the word look (in most cases pronounced LEUK and not LOOHK) and why that’s a doubled vowel as well, but again, presenting these words together for consideration will eliminate a lot of confusion.

The next most common mistake, one which many adults continue to make, is confusing spellings of homophones. The study found that the words too/to/two and they’re/their/there occurred at all grade levels. Only regular practice with word groups like this will help children (and adults!) overcome the tendency for errors. Again, once a student sees these groups together and focuses on learning the correct spelling and usage of each, the better they’ll be able to automatically spell them in the future.

Reference: R.L. Cramer, J. F. Cipielewski. Research in Action: A Study of Spelling Errors in 18,599 Written Compositions of Children in Grades 1-8. Spelling Research and Information: An Overview of Current Research and Practices. (1995)

It’s good for students to know which words they got wrong, but it doesn’t address the problem of why they got it wrong, or help them learn the correct spelling. By the time the corrected paper is received, the class has usually moved on to the next lesson. It’s up to the student to take the time to review the words they didn’t get right, and it’s a rare child that will voluntarily do that extra work. In addition, it doesn’t help the student correct the mistake at the most important point: the precise moment when the mistake is being made, so that the mistake doesn’t become habit.

Hearing a word out loud and being required to spell it out is excellent training for learning the association between the sounds that make up the word (the phonemes) and the letters used to create those sounds. Of course, this depends largely on having a person say the word out loud clearly and correctly (which most teachers focus on doing). If children hear normal speech patterns, which often blur or slur the sounds in words, they might think that the sentence “Didja think she should of gone to the liberry first?” has no spelling errors in it. Only by clear enunciation will they hear Did you and should have and library, and only by getting immediate feedback will they learn the correct spellings.

Once you write out a word incorrectly, it’s stored that way in your eyes, your muscle memory, and your mind. However, if you are immediately told that the spelling is wrong, and immediately shown the correct spelling of the word, the memory of the wrong spelling is overwritten by the correct spelling, and that’s the one you’ll remember. That’s why spelling training that provides immediate feedback is so important. On-line tests that combine audio files and instant results give the best possible spelling training, and help develop the link between sounds and spelling in the most efficient way. By using on-line tests, students will be able to take standard dictated spelling tests with more success.

If you’re a parent of a young child, and want to encourage them to develop their spelling skills, take a hint from Lori Anne Madison, and start by encouraging your child to read. Many studies have proven that the more children read, the better they spell. Help your child learn to love reading, first by reading aloud to them and then later reading with them, or helping them pick out a book at the library. The benefits of reading include better spelling skills and more success at school even in classes other than English.

Children like to play games, so make it a game to find new words to learn. As part of learning a new word, draw pictures, tell a story using the word, and practice the word’s spelling. You can also make spelling quizzes into fun activities if you award points and prizes, or have two or more children compete against each other.

Incorporate spelling into as many aspects of the child’s life as you can, and you’ll find that they naturally pick up good spelling skills. And be sure to tune in to the Scripps Spelling Bee and cheer on the competitors – it’s a good way to learn new words, too!

On a more practical level, children will quickly learn new vocabulary through reading, and they won’t even feel like they’re studying. They’ll get practice in figuring out a word’s definition by looking at how it’s used in context, but if they can’t get the meaning right away, be sure that you’re there to help them find the resources that they need to look up words. Each new vocabulary word builds on the previous words learned. These new words will also provide the stimulation children need to think about new ideas.

While they’re using their new vocabulary to read increasingly complicated books, children learn the skills of writing well, just by observing how words are used by the authors of the texts they’re reading. They’ll unconsciously absorb the principles of good writing, and will naturally apply those principles to their own writing. They’ll also be absorbing the correct spellings of the words they see, and memorizing the shapes of the words, which will help them remember the way they’re spelled. It’s well known that the more times someone sees an image, the better able they are to remember that image exactly. The same principle holds for spelling – if a child sees a word spelled correctly multiple times, they’ll automatically memorize it.

Perhaps the best thing about introducing children to books and reading as something fun is that they’ll continue to see it as fun, and be more willing to spend time at it. Think about the difference between telling a child to spend an hour reviewing vocabulary and spelling lists, and inviting them to spend an hour reading. Which do you think they’ll want to do? If at first they’re reluctant to read on their own, try to spend time reading with them. Research has shown that children whose parents and teachers read out loud to them generally read more on their own as well. And if a child doesn’t want to read things they think might be “boring” then pick a book about their favorite hobby, or a graphic novel, or even a comic book. Once you show children that reading is fun, they’ll start to choose books on their own.

Cross-posted at The Vocabulary Builder’s Blog.

Patterns in English involve both sight and sound (i.e. both spelling and pronunciation), as researcher and child psychologist Rebecca Treiman noted in 2003. Teaching children to be aware of these patterns helps them integrate and understand the relationships between the way words are spelled and the way they’re pronounced. Even though there are circumstances that are very hard to explain to children – the group of words including rough, through, and plough, for example, which look like they should be pronounced the same but aren’t – there are others that children can learn to identify and memorize to help them learn a large percentage of English vocabulary words.

As Trieman noted, there are certain patterns that generally hold true that shape this relationship between spelling and pronunciation. She gives several examples:

The letter cluster ea is often used to indicate the “short e” sound when followed by a d at the end of a word (examples: head, dead, thread), but if the final consonant is m, the ea spelling represents the “long e” sound (beam, gleam).

When a word has one vowel before the final consonant, it’s more likely that the final consonant will be doubled (thrill, mall, well, cull). When there is a vowel cluster, there will usually be a final single consonant (school, beat, spout).

There are certain letter patterns that don’t occur in English, and children learn to instinctively recognize them. For example, repeated consonants won’t start a word (there is no word like gglass, and the letter pair wh starts many words, but never finishes them.

The conclusion that Trieman and other researchers have come to is that it’s important for children to learn and recognize the patterns that letters make in English, and just as important that they learn to associate those patterns with different pronunciations.

Reference: Washington University in St. Louis Newsroom, April 2003

“Just leave the space on the spelling test blank when you don’t know the word, and fill it in later if you have time.”

“When you can’t spell a word, write it out according to the way it sounds, using the letters that seem to fit the best.”

“If you don’t know how to spell a word, use a different one that has the same meaning.”

“Make something up that looks right – what’s important is that you fill in every blank on the test.”

“Look it up in the dictionary, or ask someone else how to spell the word.”

Which of these statements is good advice depends on the situation. If your child’s taking a spelling test, it probably is better to leave a space and move on to the next word, coming back to the trouble spot later if they can. It’s important that they fill in all of the words they know how to spell correctly, saving the hard ones for last. This just makes sense – if a child really knows 18 out of the 20 words on a test, but spends most of their time trying to figure out a word in the early part of the test that they don’t know, they’ll leave blanks for words they do know, and get a much lower grade. It’s usually better to get two blanks “wrong” and 18 right, than to only fill in 10 words before running out of time.

The second statement can be good advice as well. If your child understands phonics – that is, the relationship between letters and the sounds they represent (alone or in combination) – then they’ll probably have a fairly good ability to guess logical letters. However, the fourth statement, though it seems similar, isn’t very good advice. By making up their own spellings to words, children might confuse themselves about how a word is spelled, and start focusing on their own made-up words instead of the ones that are correctly spelled. It’s a good idea to apply the rules of phonics to spelling unfamiliar words, but not a good idea to write down random letters without really thinking about the logic behind your choices.

If your child is answering an essay question instead of completing a spelling test, the advice to use a word with similar meaning is good. In this situation, communicating ideas, information, and meaning is what’s important, as much as how the words are spelled. Choosing to use the word explain and spelling that word correctly will usually be more effective than using the word elucidate and spelling it incorrectly. There will be time to expand vocabulary skills once a firm foundation has been built on spelling skills.

Finally, it’s always a good idea to encourage children to not be afraid to ask questions, or to ask for help. Of course, this usually isn’t encouraged during spelling tests, but teachers may be open to giving some spelling help during other types of tests, and you can be there to help them while they’re doing homework. It’s best to encourage them to look up words on their own, rather than just giving them the answers, though. If children get used to using resources like a dictionary, they’ll get into the good study habit of actively looking for answers.