Speleen: Wen Doo Wee Beegin? Progressing from Phonetic to Standard Spelling

Montessori Life, Spring 2004 by Woods, Carol

The ability to read with fluency is a signal to begin moving from invented to standard spelling. This instantaneous decoding indicates seminal awareness of patterns, since it shows the child is retaining orthographic chunks of words for easy retrieval. Spelling instruction will bring those patterns to a conscious level, and it will capitalize on and reinforce reading.

A common misconception is that spelling lessons are unnecessary because spelling will refine naturally from continued practice in reading and writing. Although children do notice recurring patterns, research indicates that direct teaching of spelling significantly improves performance in both spelling and reading. Children who learn to analyze speech sounds through lessons on standard spelling progress faster than those who are expected to learn subliminally from their reading (Moats, Birsh).

Thus we can help the child develop good spelling knowledge by adopting an individualized approach to teaching spelling. We can begin to guide him from invented to correct spelling as soon as he shows readiness through his reading. For many children, fluent reading develops during the kindergarten year. Since these children are still in the first plane of development, they will benefit from carefully structured lessons that accommodate their maturity level.

The Lessons: The Structure of English

Typically, spelling is taught through weekly lists, with end-of-the-week tests on the words. The words may be part of a pre-packaged program or they may be topical, relating to the students' reading or units of study. They may be selected randomly or from lists of homophones. Whatever principle is used in generating and organizing the lists, the standard method for learning the words is through memorization. Often, students are able to remember the words for the test, but will not spell them correctly in their spontaneous writing because they have not internalized the patterns.

Children can internalize much of standard English spelling when they learn about the structure of our language. English orthography is approximately 87% predictable - it contains many recurring patterns (Birsh). Spelling lessons that highlight specific patterns, including examination and analysis of each pattern, will build the child's orthographic memory (Birsh, Moats).

The complexity of English orthography impacts the design of spelling lessons. Spelling requires segmenting a word into its sounds, then finding a symbolic representation for each sound. Our language is highly complex, containing multiple spellings for the same sound and multiple pronunciations for the same spelling pattern. This complexity creates challenges in choosing the correct representation. Furthermore, spelling is a more demanding skill than reading. Reading does not require attending to every letter in order to decode a word correctly, but spelling "requires explicit and exact recall of orthographic sequences" (Moats, p. 90). Children can learn many of these sequences through spelling lessons that build a stairway from simple to complex concepts, with each lesson highlighting a specific orthographic pattern.