Spelling Strategies
Spelling is understanding the individual sounds in a word and matching the written letter (s) with each sound. To spell, a child must first understand the letters in the alphabet and the sound(s) associated with each letter (Johnston, et al., 2015, pg. 101). Children must also have a foundational understanding of how sounds create a word and that spelling involves segmenting a word into its individual sounds (phonemes).
Practicing spelling words using the letters or letter combinations that your child has learned helps to promote reading and writing success. Reading and writing go hand in hand and both promote growth.
Literacy is the ability to read and write. Reading is the process of decoding a message to gather meaning. Writing is the process of encoding or creating a message. Both processes work together and complement each other (Reutzel & Cooter, 2008, pg. 6). As a child learns letters and their sounds, it is also important to teach the child how these letters and sounds are used to create words. Spelling instruction happens in stages and as children grow, they recognize more of the sounds (phonemes) used to create words and the letter(s) that represent those sounds. The strategies described in this blog post are appropriate for children who are very comfortable identifying letters and their sound(s) and they have a basic understanding of how words are made up of sounds (phonemes). The strategies mentioned in this blog post can continue to be used as the child learns to spell more complex words.
Spelling Strategy: Pound-tap-pound
Spoken words are made up of individual units of sound called phonemes and in a written word these sounds are represented by a letter(s). When spelling words, one must be able to break a word down into its individual units of sound (phonemes) and identify the letter(s) that creates that sound. Pound-tap-pound is an active strategy used to break words down into their sounds by using your fingers to signify each sound. This active movement helps the child identify where the sounds are located in the word (beginning, middle, end). This is a great strategy to use with simple 1 syllable words.
How to use the strategy
When implementing the pound-tap-pound strategy, use your fist and fingers to model saying the word and then use your fingers to show how many sounds are in the word.
Steps for pound-tap-pound:
For example, if your child is spelling the word sat. They would take their fist and lightly pound it on top of their open palm and say, “sat.”
Then, they would break the word into its sounds by using their fingers. First, they would lay their pointer finger in their palm and say, “/s/.” Next, they would lay their middle finger alongside their pointer finger and say, “/a/.“ Then, they would lay their fourth finger on their palm to say, “/t/”.
Finally, they would repeat the word sat by lightly pounding their fist into their open palm and saying “sat.”
This is an active strategy and is a great way to show your child how words are made up of sounds and where these sounds are located in the word. After completing the pound-tap-pound exercise, guide your child in writing the letters associated with the sounds. Watch the video above to see how this strategy is used.
Enrich the learning
As mentioned earlier, when learning to spell, a child learns that words are made up of sounds (phonemes) and that those sounds are represented by letters. You can enrich the pound-tap-pound strategy by using an object to reinforce the sounds that the letters create in a word. After using pound-tap-pound, draw blanks to show your child how many sounds are in the word. Guide your child as they add a letter in each blank to spell the word. Then, use an object to point out each letter and its sound. In this blog post, we suggest using an interactive object such as a wand that you can craft at home by using paper, a pencil, scissors, and tape (craft instructions are provided below). For example, after using pound-tap-pound to segment the word sat into its sounds, draw three blanks to represent the number of sounds in the word, sat: /s/-/a/-/t/ (3 sounds). Then, guide your child in spelling the word by identifying the letters associated with the sounds you tapped. After spelling the word, move the wand under each letter and say its sound aloud. Finally, quickly sweep the wand underneath the entire word to blend the sounds together and say the word aloud.
Create your own spelling wand
You and your child can make your own spelling wand by using a pencil, paper, tape, and scissors. First, draw two medium size stars and cut them out. Have your child draw designs or color the stars. Then tape the stars on either side of the top of the pencil. After spelling a word, use the wand to help your child identify each letter’s sound. Then, quickly sweep the wand underneath the word and say the word aloud showing how these sounds blend together to create a word.
Ways to make it fun!
Creating rhyming words can be a fun and sometimes silly way to reinforce simple spelling patterns. If your child is just learning how to spell simple three-letter words, rhyming can help your child understand simple spelling patterns. One example of a simple word pattern is consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words such as cat. Words that rhyme share the same ending sounds. When using rhyming to reinforce spelling patterns, focus on words that share the same ending sounds and letters. For example, the words cat, bat, sat, pat all share the same final letters and sounds. Your child can even create nonsense words that follow the pattern for example zat and yat. Use the pound-tap-pound strategy or a fun element such as the spelling wand to make spelling these rhyming words even more fun!
Use art as a way to help your child learn about spelling words. By using different colors for vowels and consonants, this can help your child see the position of vowels and consonants in words. For example, use the color red for vowels and the color blue for consonants. When spelling consonant-vowel-consonant words such as cat, the child will see that the vowel (written in red) creates the middle sound and the word begins and ends with consonants (written in blue).
References:
Johnston F., Invernizzi, M., Helman, L., Bear, D. R., Templeton, S. (2015) Words Their Way: for Pre-K. Pearson.
Reutzel, D. R. & Cooter, R. B. Jr. (2008). Teaching Children to Read: The teacher makes the difference. Pearson.