Spelling for Success Transcript

Hello. My name is Susan C. Anthony and this transcript is of my workshop "Spelling for Success." The handouts for this workshop are available in portable document format on my web site: www.SusanCAnthony.com.

The purpose of this workshop is to share ideas which will help you get past the spelling roadblock so you can concentrate your energy on things that are a lot more fun!

My background

Before we begin, I should tell you a little about me. I grew up in the Colorado Rocky Mountains and attended a small school in a poor rural district. I was a good speller, and got 100% on almost all my tests. I finally had the chance to compete in a real spelling bee in 7th grade. I got 100% on the written test used for qualification. The words were pretty challenging and I was happy to have done so well. When it came time for the spelling bee, we had two practice rounds. I spelled both words correctly. My first contest word was "black". The lights were hot. I was a little nervous, but confident. I’d known how to spell "black" since first grade. "Black," I said. "B - l - a - c - h." The buzzer buzzed. I was shocked. I sat down and whispered to the person next to me. "What happened?" "You used ‘h’ instead of ‘k’," she said. Too bad. It turned out to be my last chance to compete in a real spelling bee.

I moved to Alaska in 1979 and began teaching 6th grade. Spelling at first seemed like one of the easier subjects to teach. I assigned a list each week from the texts and the kids were supposed to do a page of work each day, then take a test Friday. But there were a few problems. The first was that most of the things the kids were instructed to do had more to do with following directions than with learning to spell. Sometimes several different sets of directions were on a single page. The kids were all tangled up trying to figure out what to do. The next problem was that the 6th grade words were big words. The kids almost never used them in their writing. And the biggest problem was, even though they could pass the Friday tests, they’d misspell the very same words in their writing on Monday, along with lots of "easy" words, like "coming", "maybe" and "they."

I attended a four-week writing institute one summer. It was wonderful. I went back with lots of great ideas for teaching writing. We did more writing and the kids’ writing improved. Their spelling did not, however. I had the strong impression that the more they wrote, the more they were practicing their errors!

Finally, in frustration, I set a goal of figuring out the best way to teach spelling. I wanted to solve the problem with spelling so it wouldn’t take so much energy. I wanted to feel good about it, systemize it, get the job done efficiently. With almost anything, there is a point of diminishing returns. For example, exercise. You get the maximum benefit for the time spent when you exercise vigorously for 20 minutes three times a week. You get more benefits if you spend more time, of course, but the time/benefit ratio is a little less favorable. My goal was to get the most benefit for the least time. I had so many other things to do, and spelling wasn’t my favorite.

Today, I’m going to share with you what survived and worked. You can know that your spelling program is effective if the kids’ spelling is good and improving in their writing. No program can be called effective unless there is transfer.

Handouts

The handouts are resources for your use. You can do the program I will be presenting with nothing but the information on these handouts. If you try this approach and like it, there are some resources for purchase that might save you time. I do want to emphasize that you do not need to buy anything in order to have an effective spelling program.

I’ll be talking about the information on the first page of the spelling handout. The directives I found most useful are at the bottom.

The second page has rules, guidelines, and mnemonics that are worth teaching. Some linguists believe that you can learn spelling by learning the rules, but in English, the rules don’t always apply. The rules here are worth memorizing. Some others have so many exceptions that by the time you learn the rule and all the exceptions, you could have memorized the spellings. Guidelines will help your children make educated guesses about whether to use -able or -ible, for example. Mnemonics can be very effective. For example, "tom or row" can help you learn to spell tomorrow. Even though I was a good speller, I spelled this word inconsistently in my journals all the way through college.

The last two pages are the 1000 word core list, divided into lists of 15 words each. I did not attach grade levels to these because the words earlier on the list are much more important and it’s a mistake to jump to the grade your child is in and neglect the words from earlier levels. If you’re starting with a kindergartner, however, try to get him/her to master the first three lists, then in first grade, the 11 lists in Level B, etc. Mastery means they know the words 100% of the time. You can introduce a lot more than the 165 words on each level, and if your kids get them, great. But aim for a high level of mastery on the core words.

Objectives for this session

I’m going to be talking about why spelling is important and why English spelling is inconsistent and difficult to learn. Most important, I’m going to show you specific procedures you can use that worked very well for my students. By May in 4th grade, I had excellent first drafts, with common words spelled correctly and misspellings only on words you’d expect children to have trouble with. I want you to go home encouraged and confident about your ability to teach spelling.

Why spelling is important

You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t think spelling was important, but you have to be able to impress on your kids how important it is! Here are the main reasons:

People judge your intelligence, literacy and character based on your spelling. It’s not fair, but it’s true. Your bosses, college professors, and the public in general do not have much grace when it comes to spelling. Although what people think and write is essentially more important than how they spell, spelling is still important.

It’s like the difference between appearance and character. We all know in our hearts that character is far more important than appearance. We hope we can impress this on our children before they choose husbands and wives! But that doesn’t mean we ignore our appearance. It is right to do the best with what we have, to look as clean and well-groomed as we can. Most Americans worry too much about their appearance. I read that American women buy an average of 1,484 tubes of lipstick, 2,055 jars of skin care products, and 1,324 eyeliners, eyeshadows and mascaras every minute! If only we could get our kids this interested in spelling!

The attitude Americans have about spelling dates back to the English class system. It is one of the few carryovers. At one time in England, only the wealthy could afford to send their children to school to learn to read and spell. It was a mark of good breeding. Those who could not spell were considered lower-class and unintelligent. Remember how the media crucified Dan Quayle for one misspelled word?

It’s ironic that we are blissfully unaware of our own spelling errors, just as we might be unaware that our fly is unzipped or we have spinach in our teeth. You probably wouldn’t let your child go to church with dried egg on his shirt, and you shouldn’t let misspelled words leave your home to be shown to strangers. Tell your kids it’s for the same reason. You love them. You care about what people think about them. You have standards. They’re just learning, and you’re there to help them.

So while we have to keep in mind that spelling is less important than thinking and writing, it is nevertheless important. A few years ago, some vandals broke into a middle school in Middletown, California, about 60 miles north of San Francisco. One eighth-grade teacher had her students write letters to the editor expressing their feelings about the incident. The letters were reprinted in the San Francisco Chronicle and picked up by one of the wire services, but not because of the vandalism incident or the eloquent writing.

Dear Vandales,
I really think that you were stuped to mess our classrooms.. our teachers our upseat and so are the students.

Dear Vanduls,
I hope your happy now that you just cost us thosands of dollars and ruind are new computers. . .

Dear Vandals,
We just got are new cumperters. Yor relly dameg are thing. I am verey mad at you and it herts to see my teacher’s cry. Ther is know punishment that can fix whate hapend.

A little aside. It turns out spelling is an important prerequisite even for some occupations you hope your children never consider. Knight-Ridder published the following article a few years ago:

Israeli robbers discover banks are where the money is

Jerusalem—The movie "Take the Money and Run" is enjoying a revival in Israel these days—but not in theaters. In banks.

Bank robberies have soared to unprecedented levels in recent weeks, even if some of the stickup men are doing their best imitation of bungling bank robber Woody Allen.

In his movie, Allen passes a note to a teller, but the teller can’t read his handwriting. Arguments erupt over the spelling and syntax. Bank managers and customers join in, and the robbery attempt just melts away.

In Israel, this actually happened recently—twice. As tellers struggled to decipher atrocious handwriting, misspellings and slipshod grammar, the robbers, like Allen, slinked away as dismal failures.

Some benefits of good spelling are that it facilitates clear communication. It makes the process of writing easier because there is less need for rewriting. That means there is more time for revising to improve the quality of communication. One reason kids resist writing is because spelling can be such a struggle. They will like writing better if they’re more confident about their spelling.

Why spelling is inconsistent and difficult

OK, it’s time for a little spelling test. Please get out a piece of paper and number it from one to 20. Don’t worry. I won’t collect this. There will be no grade. This is just to illustrate why many kids find spelling difficult. If you’re a good speller, you may not understand why it’s so problematic for kids. If you’re a poor speller, you may be a better teacher of spelling because you do understand. The ability to spell is a talent, kind of like musical talent. Some people have it to a much greater degree than others. It’s not correlated closely with general intelligence. It’s related to visual memory, the ability to "snap pictures" and see them in your mind’s eye or on the back of your eyelids. If you have the talent, spelling is easy to learn. If you don’t, it takes longer, but that’s OK. It’s an opportunity to learn persistence and perseverance, important character qualities. Almost everyone can become a competent speller. Not everyone can become an exceptional speller.

Everybody ready for the test?

1. fade
2. braid
3. played
4. freight
5. great
6. go
7. though
8. blow
9. sew
10. cherry
11. very
12. hairy
13. bury
14. scary
15. marry
16. Mary
17. goodbye
18. flate
19. sary
20. vrow

How many people spelled "flate" f - l - a - t - e? Generally, that’s the most popular choice because that’s the most common pattern for that sound. How about "sary" and "vrow"? Usually there are a number of different spellings for those nonsense words. You know of several ways the sounds can be spelled, but which do you need for this word?

That’s the problem your children face. Phonics is important, especially important for reading. But in English sounds are spelled many ways and there’s no way outside memorization that you can know which spelling goes with which word.

English is not a difficult language to learn to speak, which accounts for it being the all-time most popular language in the world. We don’t have grammatical gender, we don’t have formal and familiar pronouns, and the same word can often be used as several parts of speech. There is a core of about 1000 base words which makes up 90% of what we read and say. If speakers of other languages learn those words, they can manage to speak English enough to get by in a short period of time. I used that 1000 core words idea for this spelling program.

Learning to spell in English is another story. Schools in Spain and Germany don’t even have spelling classes. Once you know the phonic code, you can spell! French is a little more difficult because of all the letters on the ends of words, but once you know the grammar, the patterns fit. English, by contrast, tells us history in the spelling of the words. Many of our spellings reflect the way words were pronounced 400-500 years ago.

The roots of English are Germanic, Anglo-Saxon. The word "know" was spelled "cnawan" and the "k" sound was pronounced. "gh" was a guttural sound, like a voiced "h". That sound is still in German, but we no longer use it in English. We keep it in the spellings, however.

St. Augustine brought Latin and Greek to the British Isles. He retained the original "ph" and "rh" from the Greek words. Most other European languages have dropped those spellings. "Photo" is "foto" in Spanish.

The Viking invasions brought Norse, a language very closely related to Anglo-Saxon. The Norse word for a short garment was "skirt"—the Anglo-Saxon word was "shirt." This is the source of other pairs like "speak - speech" and "ake - ache." "Speak" is the verb, "speech" is the noun. At one time, "ake" was the verb and "ache" (pronounced with the "ch") was the noun. Now we have the verb’s pronunciation and the noun’s spelling. This is rooted in history, not common sense.

In the Middle Ages, people spelled the way they spoke. Every hamlet had a different dialect, and you can tell where something was written by how it was spelled. You might remember "My Fair Lady" where the professor could tell where someone in England was from within a few blocks by how he pronounced words!

"Bury" was the pronunciation in Kent, "berry" in West England. "One" was once pronounced the way it was spelled, as in "only." The diversity was not a big problem until printing came around. Printers gradually standardized the language. Various spellings and pronunciations came into competition as to which would be standard. Sometimes compromises were made, as with "bury", where one pronunciation and the other spelling became standard. Does anyone here pronounce "bury" different than I do?

Remember the word "goodbye" in our test? How many spelled it "goodbye"? good-bye? goodby? good-by? Believe it or not, all of those spellings are correct, and different ones will be listed first in different dictionaries. That’s one example of a word that has not yet settled into a single "right" spelling.

When the first printing presses came to England in 1477, it was very important that margins be justified. Before printing, monks copied books by hand. The best scribes very carefully spaced the letters so that the right and left margins were straight. They also traditionally copied letter for letter, without regard to pronunciation changes.

Since spelling was not yet standardized, printers doubled letters, added and deleted silent "e’s" and otherwise manipulated the text to make sure the lines were justified. This is a passage from one of those early books, Morte d’Arthur:

What do you notice about this? Notice that "yonder" and "yender" are separated by just two other words. It was not important at the time that spelling be consistent. But the margins are straight! That was important!

In Shakespeare’s time, creative spelling was considered a mark of genius. He spelled his own name differently in each of his surviving signatures. One queen prided herself on the fact that she never spelled words the same way twice! I used to tell some of my students that they were born few centuries too late!

There have been several attempts at reform, but none have succeeded. Old ways die hard. The point of this is to give you and your kids permission to give up on trying to make sense of English spelling. Some of it makes sense. A lot of it does not. But like it or not, we’re stuck with it and we need to learn it the best we can. It grew up organically, no one planned it.

A few years ago, I found this article about Tokyo’s address system, which grew up over the centuries like our spelling system.

Tokyo’s disordered addresses do a number on nerves

TOKYO — Michiko Kurosu lives on a street with no name, just off another street with no name, in a neighborhood where her house and five others are all number 33 and another 10 are all number 22.

Kurosu has lived there for 20 years, so she knows her way around. But when she goes anywhere else, she does what everyone does to cope with this country’s nearly impenetrable address system.

"I never fail to carry a map," she said.

Kurosu’s neighborhood is typical of Japan’s chaotic address scheme, handed down through the centuries and modified by 1960s urban planners. Few streets have names, and most places are described by a landmark, like "near the big dog statue" or "behind the Honda showroom."

In many areas, houses are numbered not consecutively, but in the order in which they were built. Where several houses were built on property once owned by a single landlord, they all have the same number. Many Japanese don’t put a number on their house!

Another reason I wanted to share this history with you is that you can use it with your older students to spice up spelling a little bit. There are lots of books in the library that tell the histories of words and spellings. Kids love knowing tidbits of information that impress others. This might just be the "hook" that catches her interest and gets you past some resistance as you try to teach spelling.

How people learn to spell

An "expert" on spelling recently wrote, "Learning to spell should ultimately be as natural, unconscious, effortless and pleasant as learning to speak." Maybe it should be in her opinion, but it isn’t. Nearly all people learn to speak, but not all people learn to spell. It is not natural and effortless. For most people, it takes work and study. Nearly everyone can become competent, and if your kids aren’t naturally good spellers, competence, not excellence, should be your goal. Society charges teachers with the responsibility of bring students to the point where their use of language does not handicap them. If your child is not a good speller, look for his/her strengths and develop them to a higher degree. But don’t give up on the spelling. If you had a child with a bad leg, you wouldn’t immediately confine him to a wheelchair. You would do everything in your power to help him learn to walk. At a certain point, it might become apparent that no matter how much he tries, he will not ever be able to walk, and you would not withhold the wheelchair. In general, spell checkers and other technological devices should be tools, not crutches. Your children should be able to spell at least the 1000 core words without assistance.

How I figured out what to do

In 1984, I set a goal to learn how to teach spelling effectively and efficiently, in as little time as needed but with real results. I read the research, which validated the use of lists, high-frequency words, overpronunciation, self-correction, and word-sentence-word testing. It may be fun to have "interesting" words on a spelling list, but it’s not especially effective. Kids may enjoy learning to spell the names of dinosaurs, but it may not be worth the time. The whole language movement discouraged teachers from separating words from text and putting them in lists, but research supports it.

In my research, I found a list of words most often misspelled by high school students. Just 6% of the words accounted for 51% of the misspellings! At the top of the list, arranged by frequency of misspelling, was their, too receive, there all right, separate, believe, until, coming and whether, the exact words my 6th graders were constantly misspelling in their writing. This became my first list.

The following quote is what led me to the "Creative - Critical Bridge" on your handout. It gave me a model on which to build my entire language arts program:

Creative thinking leads to the birth of new ideas, while critical thinking tests ideas for flaws and defects. Both are necessary . . . yet they are incompatible—creative thinking interferes with critical thinking and vice versa. To think creatively, we must let our thoughts run free. The more spontaneous the process, the more ideas will be born. . . . A steady stream of ideas furnishes the raw material. Then critical judgment selects and refines the best ideas. . . though we must engage in the two types of thinking separately, we need both.

I teach creative writing using the writing process, which is the subject of another of my workshops. In this session, we’ll focus on the "critical" side of the bridge: spelling, capitalization, punctuation, etc. But the key is the bridge. If you separate the creative and critical aspects of language and don’t build a bridge, there will be no transfer. Dictation, editing and personal words from writing are what make this work.

Five Steps to Mastery of a Spelling Word

You’ve probably already noticed that getting a word right on a spelling test doesn’t mean a child "knows" the word! That’s just the first of five steps.

1. Correct on a weekly test.
2. Correct on mixed review test.
3. Correct in dictation.
4. Correct in final draft. The child recognizes a misspelling and can find and fix it.
5. Correct in first draft. The word is mastered, second nature.

The process of learning has to do with forging neuronal pathways in the brain. In Alaska, we have lots of brush. If I want to go from point A to point B through brush, I might hack out a path with a machete. That’s like getting to the weekly test. If you just move on to new words every week, the path with grow right back over. Review and dictation widens the path and eventually paves it. The object is a Roman road, at least for the 1000 words. A kindergartner named Penelope would likely be able to spell it, even though it’s not an easy word. That’s the level of mastery you’re aiming for. Actually, I had a student named Brian once who spelled it B-r-a-i-n. He was surprised when I corrected him! He really didn’t know it was wrong!

Most programs drop words after step 1. You should not. Talk to your kids about these five steps. Build in systematic review. Perhaps include a few words from last week’s test in this week’s test. Let children know the core words will keep coming around and around until they’re never misspelled in writing, until they’re mastered.

I’ll show you dictation in a minute. For now, let me emphasize that if you do nothing new as a result of this workshop except start using dictation, you will see better results than you’ve been getting. It is the key. Without it, my ideas and suggestions may not be a lot more effective than what you’re already using. It took me years to figure out how important it was. Take my word for it. It’s vital to the success of any spelling program.

Step 4, correct in final draft, depends a lot on the amount of talent your children have. This is what’s tested on standardized tests, the ability to recognize correct and incorrect spellings. Some people never get very good at this. They will need to be responsible for making sure an editor checks their work before it goes out, even as adults.

Step 5, correct in first draft and at all times, is what you should aim for with the 1000 words. That’s why there’s only 1000, because the idea is not just to keep giving kids newer and harder lists, but to teach them to spell, where it counts, in their writing. Some kids might master the 1000 words by the end of 3rd grade. That’s great! You can teach any words they want to learn with this same system, but you’ll know you have basic spelling covered. Other kids will not master the 1000 words by the end of 6th grade. Keep studying. If they get all 1000 by the end of high school, they’ll be ahead of many adults!

The 1000 Words

As I mentioned before, 90% of text in English is just 1000 base words. These are not the exact words on my list, because the counts were done on adult-level reading material and because they’re base words (be is the base word for is, are, was, were, am, been, etc.). Words like "society" and "circumstance" are high on that list, but rarely used by children. I considered every list I could find: the Dolch list, the Ayers list, the list of words most often misspelled by high school students, and several more. Any word on three or more of those lists is on my list. I also kept track of words misspelled by my students until I began to see patterns. If I had lots of time and money, I’d review thousands of student compositions at all age levels and get the perfect list. This isn’t the perfect list, but it’s a good place to start. If you don’t like a word, leave it off. If you want to teach a word that’s not on the list, feel free. You don’t want to study this list exclusively—it’s the core, the foundation. The teaching methods I’ll show you in a minute will work for any words.

Kindergartners or first-graders can just start at the beginning. If your kids are older, begin by mixing up the words on level B and testing them for 10-15 minutes a day. (Tests in PDF format, 27 KB.) Keep an individualized list of any misspelled words. Once you have five or more, make that your first list. When the kids start missing quite a few, you can start to use my lists as they're written. I should mention that there is no "right" number of words to introduce per week. If your kids are frustrated and hate spelling, shorten the lists. When they start seeing progress and feeling good about it, you can gradually lengthen the lists. My lists have 15 words because I wrote a book and didn’t want to waste paper or have to charge more. There’s nothing special about the number 15.

I’m just going to show you two activities. I used to use a lot more, but they all took preparation time and didn’t give enough back to warrant the extra time. I recommend these activities not because they’re fun, but because they’re effective and you get a lot back for the time you put into them. I quit trying to make spelling fun. The kids who are naturally good spellers think anything having to do with spelling is fun. The kids who have trouble don’t even like the games. I tell kids this is just something we have to do, like dishes. It’s not inherently fun, so the idea is to get it done as painlessly and quickly as possible, to leave more time for things that really are fun!

Daily Practice Activity

To prepare, write the five to fifteen words for your first list using your best handwriting and reproduce that list four times, one for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Friday is the test. Then go through the following directives. Once you get used to this, it becomes routine and rhythmic. That’s the idea. Be sure kids point to each letter of the word with their pencil when they spell and read.

1. Point to the first word. Spell and read it. (At this point, introduce any mnemonic tricks, point out the root and prefix, suffix, etc.)
2. Trace, spell and read the word.
3. Cover the model. Write the word and read it.
4. Check from the model.
5. Check and correct the word you wrote.
6. Close your eyes. Spell the word and say it.

That’s it! Same for each word on the list. This method has several advantages:

1. It takes a minimum of preparation, and can be totally individualized. You can do the same activity with kids at several levels if they speak quietly enough not to bother the others.
2. It involves all senses and modalities. Kids see the word, hear it spelled, write it, and say it. The involvement keeps the kids awake and focused.
3. It takes only a few seconds per word, but gives six direct practices, only two of which are written (writing is more time-consuming).
4. The directions are always the same. The only new information is the new word. If you have very responsible kids, they should be able to do this on their own. In most of my classes, I had to lead the activity or some would stray and not be productive. I made audio tapes of lessons and dictation sentences which will save you a lot of time if you like this approach but find yourself stretched too far or with too many kids at different levels to do it all yourself. (Order tapes.)
5. Immediate self-correction is a powerful aid to learning.

Personal Words

To get the most from this approach, you should collect "personal words"—words the kids miss in their writing, especially words that have been on previous lists but also words the child is using in writing that are not on the 1000 word list. Add 2-5 personal words to each spelling list and treat them just like the words on the list. "Recycle" the words back into the spelling list as often as needed until they’re mastered. For any memory work, the key is spaced repetition. For me, personal words were a Godsend. I finally knew what to do when kids misspelled a word I thought they should know. I no longer lost my patience, got frustrated, or felt angry. I just recycled the word. I told kids not to worry, it might take a long time to learn that word but that’s OK. Especially if they’ve written it wrong for a long time and "mastered" it incorrectly, it will take a long time. Not to worry. We’ll keep studying it until you learn it, and when you do, we’ll celebrate!

Daily Dictation

Remember, dictation is the key to transfer, and correct spelling in writing is all that counts in the end. Make up sentences using words from the previous week’s list, and all previous lists. Include homophones such as their, they’re, there as often as possible. It may take up to a year to master them, with daily work! The directives for dictation are on the bottom of page 1 of your handout.

1. The sentence is, Who’s coming?
2. Say Who’s coming?
3. Write Who’s coming?
4. Students silently write the sentence.
5. Ask if there is anything special they need to remember in the sentence, such as the apostrophe in who’s, the question mark, or any mnemonic, punctuation mark, capitalization or other memory aid you’ve taught them.
6. Teacher writes the sentence correctly on the board.
7. Students check and correct their sentences. Congratulate them if they find and fix a mistake.

This method has several advantages:

1. The activity takes only 10 minutes or so a day.
2. Students never see an intentionally misspelled word.
3. Students are not asked to think creatively and critically at the same time. Dictation is training in writing correctly. It eventually becomes second nature and carries over into regular writing.
4. Immediate self-correction encourages students and aids learning.
5. Five days’ work is on the same piece of paper, which I collect at the end of the week. If you give grades, you can get three grades from this paper: spelling (5 percentage points deducted for each misspelled word), language (5 percentage points deducted for each mistake in capitalization, homophones, punctuation or form), and handwriting.
6. It’s safe and fair to uphold much higher standards in dictation than in creative writing. I correct dictation sentences with a red pen, something I never do with student writing. These are my sentences, not creative sentences dear to a child’s heart. I know there is nothing in the sentences that has not been taught. Kids have an opportunity and the responsibility to self-correct almost immediately, before I see their mistakes.
7. Daily is what makes this powerful. Day after day after day for a few minutes each day.
8. You can use dictation to gradually teach and reinforce homophones, capitalization rules, punctuation rules, paragraphing, letter form, prefixes, suffixes, and grammar as well as spelling. Incorporate them into your sentences. Include lots of examples at first, then fade and introduce something new. If you notice in kids’ writing that they still make mistakes on something you’ve taught, introduce it again and incorporate it into your dictation sentences with more frequency. Dictation is like a vehicle. Your car or van can carry groceries, kids, books, or plants, depending on what you need. Dictation gives you a systematic way to teach the critical language objectives, one tiny step at a time, as well as a way to review and reinforce language skills as long as necessary for mastery to occur.
9. Listening and writing extends auditory memory and is good preparation for note-taking.
10. Some people have reported that kids are less resistant to writing after they get used to doing dictation. They feel more confident and are physically more accustomed to putting pen to paper.

Schedule

Here’s how I scheduled the block of time I used for the critical side of the bridge:

• 10 minutes to practice handwriting (making the letters) until they know this.
• 10 minutes daily practice
• 5 minute lesson (capitalization, homophones, punctuation, etc. Some days there is no lesson)
• 10 minutes daily dictation

I strongly encourage you to give this system a try, and stick with it for at least a year. If kids have been practicing words wrong for years, they have a Roman road going the wrong way. You not only need to create a new path to the correct spelling, but try to block off the well-paved neuronal pathway to the wrong spelling. It takes 35-75 practices to get a new pathway through on a spelling word a child doesn’t know. If a child has mastered a wrong spelling, it may take 2000 or more practices to correct it. But don’t worry, just keep recycling it and practicing it for as long as it takes.

Don’t get discouraged if you don’t see immediate results. The first year I did this, I was amazed that my 6th graders still weren’t consistently putting periods on their sentences after months of talking about it and practicing it daily in dictation. I stuck with this system because I’d tried others and knew for sure they didn’t work. But at a certain point, the period problem just disappeared. It was almost a transformational change.

That’s how learning often happens. You teach something and teach it and teach it and it doesn’t seem like you’re making much progress. Then suddenly, there’s a shift and it’s learned. I compare it to melting ice. We have a lot of ice in Alaska. Ice at -30°F and ice at +30°F look pretty much the same on the outside. But things happen that you can’t see. As the ice warms up, the molecules start jiggling faster and faster. When the temperature hits 32°, suddenly there’s a transformational change. Once you see that happen with spelling, it increases your confidence, and your kids’ confidence. Hang in there. Keep on keeping on. It doesn’t hurt kids to overpractice words. It does hurt not to practice them enough.

I hope you’re leaving with some ideas that will make a wonderful difference. Success in the tough area of spelling is sweet. It might encourage you and your kids to try something even more challenging!