How to Confidently Teach Spelling
Have you thought English spelling is crazy? I did for a long time. Teaching spelling felt difficult. Words to memorize and endless exceptions to the “rules”. What if we could confidently teach spelling? Would it make a difference in how our students feel about it?
Student Comments:
- “I’ll never be good at spelling.”
- “Of course, I misspelled that. Why bother?”
- “I’m just dumb.”
It’s sad how often we hear this kind of thing.
Here’s What Doesn’t Help
Students are often told that English is crazy. It has so many exceptions its spelling rules are like Swiss cheese.
How would you like to learn math with the mindset that it’s unreliable? How would you like to struggle with math and try to learn math from teachers who are telling you math is crazy, random? Since I wasn’t a natural math scholar, that sounds terrifying.
Math was my most challenging subject so this would be terrifying. Like trying to cross one of those rickety bridges from a treasure hunter movie—slippery, full of holes, and likely to leave us dangling over certain doom?
Fortunately, there is a growing number of parents, tutors, and teachers who are learning how much sense English spelling makes. Yep, you heard it here. When you see it for yourself, you’ll be sharing it with your students too.
Here’s an example of how this might work.
Here’s What Does Help Students Believe They Can Spell
Expect there to be a reason
“Why is there a <b> in ‘doubt’?” a 3rd grade student asked recently. She usually comes to tutoring with a question, which I strongly encourage. What she is trying to understand shapes our session. I always have a plan, but her question is given priority because she cares about it.
“Active questions are those that students ask; passive questions are those they answer. In the reflective process, we want them to do both: ask themselves questions and search for the answers.”
Marilee Sprenger, How to Teach so Students Remember, 2005.
Another session with the same student started with her telling me she had 6 words she wanted to understand. ‘Porpoise’ was one. She couldn’t wait to get to school the next day and tell her classmate that it meant “pig fish.” Another one was ‘turquoise’. On Etymonline, we found both words came through French to English and both had been spelled with <eis>, which later shifted to <ois> in English. The Middle French spelling with <qu> replaced a <k> in Middle English spelling. ‘Turquoise’ was originally a stone from a Turkish land.
Understanding Etymology’s Why and Student Confidence
Etymology provides an understanding of the meaning and the spelling. Sometimes it gives us something amusing to share with a peer and it certainly makes the spelling memorable.
This student is gaining traction on the reliability of the spelling system. Her family has remarked on her growing confidence and more hopeful perspective on reading and spelling. Because she is learning the why of spelling, she sees that reading and spelling are learnable skills. And that she is capable!
This isn’t just about “spelling.” Learning how the writing system works impacts their reading as well. They notice the patterns of prefixes, suffixes, and bases making those polysyllabic words familiar for fluency and comprehension.
What about that <b> in ‘doubt’? Some might tell students it’s just one of those crazy spellings. My student expects there to be a reason. Occasionally, the reason is that we don’t know yet. That, however, does not mean the reason doesn’t exist. But this time, the answer is in the etymology.
Use these questions
Our word study follows these questions.
- What does it mean? Use it in a sentence.
- What is its structure? Morphology
- What are its relatives? Etymology
- What are the phonemes and grapheme connections?
Here’s a resource to get you started with structured word inquiry and etymology.
Let’s see what we can learn about that <b> from its story.
Teach Spelling Using Etymology
From Etymonline.com:
doubt (v.) “early 13c., ‘to dread, fear,’ from Old French doter ‘doubt, be doubtful; be afraid,’ from Latin dubitare ‘to doubt, question, hesitate, waver in opinion’ (related to dubius ‘uncertain’), from duo ‘two’ (from PIE root *dwo- ‘two’), with a sense of ‘of two minds, undecided between two things.’ Compare dubious. Etymologically, ‘to have to choose between two things.’The sense of ‘fear’ developed in Old French and was passed on to English. Meaning ‘to be uncertain’ is attested in English from c. 1300. The -b- was restored 14c. by scribes in imitation of Latin. Replaced Old English tweogan (noun twynung), from tweon ‘two,’ on notion of ‘of two minds’ or the choice of two implied in Latin dubitare (compare German Zweifel ‘doubt,’ from zwei ‘two’).”
‘Doubt’ came into English from Old French’s doter, which came from the Latin word dubitare. It’s also connected to Latin’s duo “two minds,” which is what we do when we doubt. “Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t.” “Can I? Can’t I?”
In Etymonline’s second paragraph, we found the answer to her question. Because of the <b> in the Latin verb: dubitare, our Modern English spelling is <doubt> and it’s related to ‘dubious’ which is an etymological relative—sharing a root—but in this case, not a morphological relative because dubious and doubt do not share the same base.
The Phonology of Doubt
The spelling has 3 graphemes, letters that represent the sounds. In this case, <d> <ou> <t> are the graphemes. The <b> is an etymological marker, marking the relationship to it’s Latin ancestor and our modern English word ‘dubious’. What are the phonemes, the voiced sounds represented by graphemes, in this word? /d/ /aʊ/ /t/
Can my student now confidently teach this spelling to her classmates ? Yes, she can.
“Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.”
William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure
Shakespeare is spot on and here’s a free printable.
How quickly do some kids give up on spelling when they hear repeatedly that it’s a slippery, unreliable, paint splatter of letters? Throw an extra <e> here, use a crazy <b> there. Planting doubt does not motivate students. When we confidently teach spelling, it changes everything.