I’m sure you’re not surprised that this is a common problem for kids. They get a list of words for the week, copy them out using a strategy such as the ‘Look, Cover, Write, Check’ method, and often must write sentences using these words. Conscientious children generally perform very well in their weekly (or daily) tests, scoring full marks or almost full marks. They think of themselves as good spellers. Even you consider them to be good spellers.
But they’re not.
Spelling tests are short-term memory tests
What they are good at is working hard to memorise something. The challenge only required short-term memory, after which they don’t feel obligated to write, or even look at, the word anymore. The next week they have a whole new list of words to remember, meaning that the previous week’s hard work has been banished to oblivion.
Well, that’s not true actually. The hard work has still borne fruit. Your child has further perfected their skills at short-term memorisation and performing under pressure during a test. This is not to be scoffed at. They deserve to be praised – just not for the reasons you think.
The test didn’t really prove much about their spelling ability.
We know this because, months later, when they are tasked with a piece of creative writing and need to recall some of these spellings, they fail to do so. Their memory betrays them. As far as that word is concerned, it’s as if they never learned it in the first place.
We, as adults, suffer the same problem
We can’t exactly blame them. Can we remember the name of every work colleague we have ever worked with? Or every fact we learned for our degree exams/A-Levels/GCSEs?
I taught in primary schools for nine years. After 4-5 years in the job, I could easily recall the name of every student I ever taught. I thought it was a sign of an uncaring professional to forget the name of any student placed in my care. The first time I couldn’t recall a pupil’s name therefore felt very disconcerting. It was a few years after I had taught her but it still felt like I was betraying her. Needless to say, a few more names have been added to that list since. Why? I haven’t been required to remember the names. Likewise, your child and the words they can no longer spell correctly.
Addressing the issue at home
So, how do we get them to the stage where they can recall these words months later? How do we avoid those remarks in end-of-term reports that say your child “performs well in weekly spelling tests but does not apply what he/she has learned to his/her creative writing”? The only answer is repeated exposure to these words and repeated practice of writing those words. Sorry. Naturally, the best solution is to convince your child to read regularly (which would require another blog post).
The second-best solution is to take weekly photos of the words your child is required to learn, then start compiling a list. Mix the order. Don’t place spellings from the same week together in the list. Find least 30 words – and never choose a word that you know for sure that your child can spell.
The next step requires a little bit of thought and work on your part. What do you think the common errors are that children (or even adults) make when spelling this word? For example, let’s say one of the words is ‘definitely’. A common misspelling of this word is ‘definately’. Write 4-5 variations of the word, including the correct spelling. It’s probably best to do all this on computer!
Have a look at an example of one the pages I use with kids at Catapult.
Once you have done this for 30 words, make three or four variations of this page, in which you mix up the order of the spelling options (you don’t want your child to remember the correct spelling by simply remembering ‘it was the second one’). Next, give your child five minutes to circle the correct spelling of each word. Be strict with the time limit. Keep repeating this activity at least once per week until they score full marks.
Repeat ad nauseam
Your work is not done…
In the meantime, you have been compiling a list of 30 more words from their school spellings and creating another similar challenge. Go through the whole process again.
Your work is still not done…
At this point, it’s a good idea to go back to the first challenge. You’ll be surprised at how many your child has forgotten! It won’t be as many as the first time around but it is still unlikely they’ll get full marks.
Then repeat the second test, write a third test, and so on, and so on.
You’ll obviously have to employ the single key skill required in parenting: negotiation (also known as bribery).
Fixing the mistakes
Whenever your child makes inevitable mistakes, it is your collective duty to come up with a way to make the spelling memorable. The most well-known example in schools is the spelling of ‘because’ (big elephants can always understand small elephants). Of course, it’s practically impossible to think of an acronym for every word – I’ve only ever managed one with my students: ‘column’ (crush one lemon up my nose) so this is where ‘stupid stories’ come in handy. The dafter the story, the more likely it is to be memorable. Your child may come up with a story that makes no sense to you (or sounds a little too childish). Who cares! If it works, it works.
The ’i before e’ rule
Most of us are probably aware now that the ‘rule’ we were taught at school concerning the letters i and e makes little sense: i before e except after c. We come across so many exceptions to the rule (weird, foreign, abseil) that they outnumber the ones that do keep the ‘rule’.
But it is actually a perfectly good rule with very few exceptions. The problem is that it’s incomplete. It should really be this: i before e except after c… but only when the sound is ‘ee’. Consider the words in which the rule works (e.g. believe, chief, ceiling, receive). In each of these words, the letters i and e combine to make the ‘long e’ sound. Words like weird, foreign and abseil do not have the ‘long e’ sound (likewise words like neighbour and height).
The common words that are exceptions to the rule are really just seize, caffeine and protein. You might argue that words such as legacies, species and policies also break the rule but kids are wise enough to instinctively spot what happens with plural endings (or in a word like ‘glacier’ the i and e are not combined, the e belongs to the -er ending so it is just the letter i that makes the ‘long e’ sound).
Other common spelling patterns
As you go through each mistake that your child makes, try to spot common spelling patterns in English. Although our language is very inconsistent it still does have quite a lot of patterns that can become memorable.
For example, the suffix -ful comes from the word ‘full’ which could help us recognise that (in British English at least) double L becomes single L when words are combined (full+fill=fulfil; skill+full=skilful).
The letter c, when followed by an e, i or y, sounds like the letter s. When followed by other letters, it sounds like a k. This helps us with the spelling of ‘successful’. Because the second c is followed by an e, it has to sound like an s. The first c, however, maintains its k sound. In other words, the double c starts to sound like the letter x (k+s). However, in a word like ‘account’ the double c will sound like the letter k because of the letter o that comes after the second c.
You may need to read that previous paragraph more than once but it’ll be worth it!
That said, there are many unusual spellings in English. Why does ‘people’ have the letter e and o together? Why can -ous be added to ‘danger’ to make ‘dangerous’ but ‘disasterous’ is not a correct spelling?
We also have many spelling problems because of a vowel sound known as schwa. This is fairly well-known in teaching circles as the effect of not stressing a syllable within a word. In my name, Trevor, my final two letters are in the unstressed part of my name, causing it to sound like -er (hence my name gets regularly spelled as ‘Trever’ by students). You will notice this effect in commonly misspelled words like ‘suddenly’, ‘begin’, ‘decide’, ‘separate’.
Our only way to combat this is to draw attention to it and explain the cause of it. Talking about the difficulty of English spellings is important. But talk positively about it, even if its features seem somewhat overwhelming. The best time to learn languages is during childhood, which means your child is in a better position than you to take these things on board.