We have always had lush gardens, in large part because my husband is a landscape architect and loves to spend time outside tending plants. We moved this past year, and so we are starting new gardens from bare ground. Yesterday I was out in the garden, looking at a perennial aster, checking for new buds, and was surprised that the plant hadn't grown much. He told me this about perennials: "The first year they sleep; the second year they creep; the third year they leap." So I won't expect much from the asters this first year... but I will remember my husband's story about them.  Why?

He painted a picture for me.
A short fifteen words, summing up an idea from the world of growing plants. When a picture is painted for us, it is easier for our minds to grasp and recall a fact. So it goes when teaching spelling to your students.

Our minds are wired to hold onto stories.
Think of a toddler sitting on his mother's lap, listening with rapt attention to the sound of her voice. Think of how children love to hear stories. Think of campers sitting around the campfire, relating the stories of the day. Jesus, the great Teacher, taught largely through stories. We are made to hang on to stories and the pictures they paint for us.

Use this fact to your spelling student's advantage.
The next time you have an abstract concept to teach, try using the power of a story. Suddenly everything becomes clearer, more memorable, more interesting.

Even something as potentially "dry" as syllable types can be taught through story.  There are six types of syllables, and kids should have a clear understanding of each in order to spell well. But, admittedly, this is not one of the more exciting aspects of learning English spelling – normally. Usually teachers make this into a boring topic, one to be avoided. Indeed, most spelling programs leave this topic out entirely. But through the power of stories, my students actually find identifying syllable types an enjoyable part of the spelling lesson, and they reap the benefits of the process. You can use this technique to help you explain abstract concepts in just about any subject.

Here is the formula for teaching syllables:

_______ are like ______.

Let me show you how you can use this formula. One of the syllable types taught in Level Two of the All About Spelling™ method is the vowel team syllable type. In this syllable type, two vowels make one sound (for example, ai as in rain, ea as in wheat, oy as in oyster). We’ll mentally plug the phrase vowel team syllables into the first part of our formula:

Vowel team syllables are like _________.

To complete the sentence, there are many possible answers. I chose "a team of horses," two horses that work together. So now we have the sentence:

Vowel team syllables are like a team of horses.
All that is left is to expand on this illustration with a sentence or two.

When I teach the concept of vowel team syllables to my spelling students, I first explain that a team of horses means two or more horses working together. I show a small picture of a team of horses pulling a wagon. If I am working with a very young student, or if the student is wiggly and I need to capture his attention, I talk about it a bit more – has the student ever petted a horse, what can be pulled in a wagon, and so on. The horses work together as a team.

Then I show a vowel team, such as ee. I explain that the two vowels work together to make one sound.

Next, using the letter tiles, I build some words. The student identifies which of the words has the vowel team syllable type and labels them with a Syllable Tag. The student is successful in spotting the correct syllable because of the picture that was painted for him earlier.

With practice, you can become adept at coming up with illustrations "on the fly."  After years of teaching students how to spell, the process of coming up with illustrations for difficult concepts has become second nature to me. After you've had practice, you don’t have to wrack your brain for stories; they just flow. And the benefit to the student is so great that it encourages the teacher to continue refining the process. You will see that, too, when you put this technique to work in your spelling lessons.