How to teach: English - Chris Curtis 2019
Spelling – three choices
How to teach accuracy
Accuracy is simple thing in the classroom: we all want students to produce accurate pieces of writing. But there needs to be a balancing act for the teacher. The expectation that every inaccuracy is picked up and corrected is a ridiculous notion to many, yet I’ve seen leadership teams insist upon it. Thirty students produce a stadium full of errors daily and it is a constant firefight. If a teacher spent the whole lesson addressing inaccuracies, they’d never get through any content. Therefore, I tend to walk around the class and read work over the student’s shoulder. With a pen, I will circle an error. Then I see if the student self-corrects the error. If they don’t correct it automatically, I talk them through the error. Common errors are discussed with the whole class. Accuracy needs to be a daily habit and routine for all.
To start off with, the English language is full of irregular spellings. When you have a language that is made up of German, Latin, French and various other languages, you have multiple rules and we have incorporated irregular foreign spelling patterns as we’ve assimilated words. Some argue that we’d be in a better place if we enforced a standardised way of spelling, but that would be like trying to wrangle a bag of snakes.
I am a big believer in systematic exposure to spelling. We have a weekly spelling test; students have the list in advance and are expected to systematically learn the words. Each year group has a distinct list. And I highlight any particular spelling errors in students’ work.
Why do students struggle with accuracy? Aside from some who have genuine cognitive wiring issues, we can usually put students into three behavioural camps: the ’haven’t been taught’ group, the ’blindness’ group and the ’lazy’ group. I’ll address dyslexic students later and I obviously exclude them from the above categories. I have two daughters and, like all good teachers, observe how my children learn. One is a great speller, but she can be lazy so will get the occasional word wrong. The other rushes to get her ideas on the page so quickly that there are always several mistakes. When questioned, one can see the mistakes and the other can’t and needs directing to them. One child is lazy with spellings. The other is blind to them. It’s interesting as they are identical twins. Maybe there is something about their home environment … The classroom is where we should be addressing both laziness and blindness. What am I doing as a teacher to address the lazy spellers? What am I doing to address the blind spellers?
There are some students who struggle with spellings and spotting errors because the writing is hard to decode, and I empathise with them. But not every student who cannot spell is dyslexic and it is unfair to dyslexic students if that myth is propagated by teachers. Although everybody is on a spectrum, dyslexia is a complex issue and there is more to it than just spelling. If a parent raises a concern about their child, point them in the direction of the teacher in charge of special educational needs (SEN). Spelling is a small part of dyslexia, but it isn’t the one and only marker. And we need to be careful of pronouncing every child who can’t spell or who mistakes b’s for d’s a dyslexic student. A label can help support a child, but an incorrect label can be a shield to hide behind, stopping the real issue from being fixed.
Accuracy should be the classroom’s air freshener. You might need it more sometimes, especially after Year 9 PE, or you might turn it down occasionally if it risks becoming overpowering, but it is always there. In some form. In some manner. In some way.
1. Spelling — three choices
One solution for spellings puts the emphasis back on the students. Over time, they have slowly learned to ignore it, or they constantly ask teachers how to spell a word even when the dictionary is right next to them on the desk. Instead, this strategy plays an active role in helping them get better and also addresses the error blindness I mentioned before. They take a bit more responsibility for their spellings.
First, the student identifies the word they struggle to spell — this can be done during or after writing. Then, on a scrap bit of paper, the student writes down three possible ways to spell the word.
implys implies implis
The student then looks at the three alternatives and decides which one looks right. More often than not they select the right one. I’ve seen students improve their spelling overnight with this approach. It doesn’t work for students with poor visual memory, however, but it does help some. Often, students think that spelling needs to be an automated or quick process and they don’t like using a dictionary because it slows them down when they want to be seen to keep up with the rest of the class. This approach allows them to do things quickly and save face in the classroom.