When I am working with kids and they ask me how to spell a word, I always say, “What are you hearing?”
Immediately they begin to segment the word into its individual sounds, and this is exactly what I want them to do!
Did you know that we speak in sounds, not in letter names?
When we speak to each other, we are not saying strings of individual letter names. Instead, we are making the natural sounds of our English language and forming words. Infact, we have 44 different sounds in English, that are represented by a range of different spelling patterns.
https://dsf.net.au/resources/online-store/item-details/44-sounds-desktop-flip-chart-a5f8145f
Surprisingly, many people launch into strings of letter names when helping a child learn to spell a word. When a child has been instructed this way, I have to reteach them to listen for sounds. Letter names will not help you figure out the spelling. Instead, it will only confuse a child as they try to memorise this random string of meaningless letter names. Instead, asking them to segment the word and say the sounds aloud will help!
When my own kids were younger, they would ask me how to spell a word and I would always reply with,
“What sounds do you hear?” This would annoy them, because they wanted me to tell them the letter names as that is what their teachers did at school. Instead, I wanted them to realise that they could actually hear all the parts and that there was probably one tricky section that was confusing them. When they got to the tricky part, that is when I would use letter names. We would quickly talk about the tricky spelling pattern and if possible, I would use the opportunity to tell them about another word that used that pattern.
My intention was to teach them essential phonological awareness skills and conceptual knowledge to help them become proficient spellers. After this type of instruction, it was highly likely they would be more successful at remembering how to spell the word from then on.
The skills we really need to teach our kids include:
- Segmenting – the ability to pull apart the individual sounds in words Example: dog = /d/ /o/ /g/
- Blending – the ability to push sounds back together to form a whole word Example: /b/ /yoo/ /t/ /i/ /f/ /oo/ /l/ = beautiful
The conceptual knowledge we really need to teach our kids includes:
- Letters are symbols (spellings) that represent sounds
- Sounds can be represented by 1, 2, 3 or 4 letters
- The same sound can be spelled in more than one way
- Many spellings can represent more than one sound.
So next time your child asks you how to spell a new or tricky word, try this approach:
Child: How do I spell beautiful?
Parent: What are the sounds you are hearing?
Child: /b/
Parent: Great
Child: /yoo/
Parent: Now this is a tricky, crazy spelling pattern that is very uncommon and we use the letters “e”, “a”, “u” (this is where you say the letter names and not the sounds).
Child: /t/
Parent: Great
Child: /i/
Parent: Correct
Child: /f/
Parent: Correct
Child: /oo/
Parent: Now that is the letter “u” like in put and pull (this is where you use the letter name and not the sound).
Child: /l/
Parent: Terrific spelling! So what was the tricky part for you?
Child: the “eau”
Parent: Yes that is tricky for everyone, but all the other letters you could hear and were easy. So well done, and next time just say your sounds and then you can focus on the parts of the word that are tricky for you.
It’s as easy as that, and my kids ( now adults) still laugh about how I would do this….but they do agree that it was the best way to teach them!
Good luck!
