best way to teach spelling
ritushetty posted on Sat, 10/08/2011 - 13:31
Can you please suggest some smart ways to teach spelling to children? I think there are many people who teach this smartly. And i would like to hear about some tried and tested methods. I tried my own way, which was to start with simple words like bat, cat, fat and then wet, met, bed, etc. but it is not working. 
What I did is taught the 5 vowels and their sound and then took simple words like bat, cat. But one thing that I did is I always tried to teach words ending with similar sound together like bat, cat, mat etc together. Similarly bed, fed, wed etc. This way my son could remember the last two letters and then he only had to put the first letter and he would know the spelling. This did work for me.
I have not started with teaching of spellings yet as my child is young but I feel just speaking in day to day life and telling the child what sound each letter stands for will help. Like someday if you are playing with bat you can tell your child for "ba" the letter are b and a. And you can ask him to say how will to spell ta, ra etc etc. My feeling is this could be helpful.
I agree it is always good to start with the vowel sounds. Now for each vowel there are more than one sound in that case give example for each sound. One example I would like specify is the vowel "A" it has sounds as in CAT and another as in CAR. Now you can explain these sounds to your child by showing the shape of your mouth when you speak. When you speak CAT the mouth's shape is like triangle on "A" and in CAR the mouth shape is as an oval at "A".
Like this once you are done with vowels you can get onto sounds with two vowels together like ai etc.
Hope this helps.
There is no best way. Its just that which way clicks for your child. Here are some things I can suggest
- Create spelling puzzles.
- Create some family game in which all of you say the spellings for short duration everyday.
- Introduce your child's name in your conversations and spell simple words used in the conversations.
- Make sure your mouth movements are clear to your child when you speak and accordingly help him spell.
- Keep a day for spell check every week.
These are some of the things I do.
- Create spelling puzzles.
- Create some family game in which all of you say the spellings for short duration everyday.
- Introduce your child's name in your conversations and spell simple words used in the conversations.
- Make sure your mouth movements are clear to your child when you speak and accordingly help him spell.
- Keep a day for spell check every week.
These are some of the things I do.
chainit its good t see how nicely you have put it down in writing.
I have been using some of the things told by you.
The point about mouth movements is so important. I have seen other members mention this very point. Its very very important to keep the mouth movements in mind.