How to Correct Spelling Mistakes

It is important to have a strategy for correcting your student's spelling mistakes during the lesson and outside of the lesson.

During the Lesson

If your student misspells a word during a lesson, there are three things you should do:

1. Ask the student to slowly read exactly what he has written down. Often the student will see his own error and be able to fix it. 

2. Take a look at the cause of the spelling mistake.
   Does the student pronounce the word incorrectly?
   Is he unclear on a particular concept or rule?
   Do you need to re-teach something?
   Did he segment the word correctly?
   
   If you need to review a phonogram or a rule, do it now. 

3. Have the student spell the word again, first with the letter tiles and then on paper. 

Customizing your student's instruction in this way will help him grow in spelling ability more quickly. 

Outside of the Spelling Lesson 

When your student misspells a word outside of the lesson, such as when he is doing his own personal writing or completing assignments for another class, only hold him responsible for writing the word correctly if it includes concepts you have already taught.  If the word (or words with a similar pattern) has been taught, ask the student to segment the word. As he segments the word he should write down the letter or letters for each sound.

Some students benefit from drawing a blank line for each sound, and then going back and filling in the blanks with letters. For example, if the word is sprang, you would have him draw a blank line for each sound he hears as he segments the word. In our example, he would end up with five lines on the paper. Then he would go back and fill in each blank.

If a student asks how to write a word which he has not yet learned, I recommend that you do tell him the spelling. There is a lot written on inventive spelling, where the teacher encourages the student to write out a word however he sees fit, but I don't agree with that method. Why not? There are several very good reasons:

1. First, you don't want the student to get the incorrect spelling imprinted on his brain! It will take more "unlearning" later to teach the correct way to write the word. 

2. Many students who use inventive spelling know that the incorrectly spelled word looks wrong, but since that is what they are instructed to do, they move on. This is not what we want our students to do! We want them to be able to recognize incorrect spelling in their own writing, and rewrite the word correctly. It is counterproductive to teach students to do just the opposite of what we want them to do.

I also suggest that you don't tell beginning students to "look it up" in a dictionary. This frustrating experience could easily turn them off writing. You have to know how to spell a word before you can look it up!

So, bottom line, if the student has not yet been taught how to spell a word, tell him how to spell it.

The manner in which you correct mistakes can have a big impact on your student's progress.