Teaching Spelling to Older Students

Many parents and teachers are looking for the answer to the question How do I teach spelling to my older student?

Students who are in need of remedial work need to start at the beginning. Gaps need to be filled in and a strong foundation built.

That said, we need to take into consideration that older students most likely feel sensitive about going back to the beginning. We need to approach the teaching session with kindness and special understanding. They have been let down by previous teaching methods and are usually wondering if they ever will be able to spell (or read).

Using Level One with an Older Student

• Make sure that the student isn't spelling the words by sight alone. Older students may have learned to spell a good number of words through the sight method, but it is important that she can spell words one sound at a time. Don't skip the first several lessons even if they seem easy. Make sure the student can segment words.

• If any of my students balk at spelling words they already know, or say "That's too easy!", I light-heartedly tell them to see how fast they can get through the list. If they know the words, it should go quickly and painlessly. Amazing how this works! It is like a challenge and they want to prove to me that they can do it.

• If you ABSOLUTELY KNOW that the student already knows the words, you can skip the dictation of those individual words and concentrate instead on the Key Cards (rule cards), Phonogram Cards, Sound Cards, and phrase dictation. That way, you aren't asking the student to do "first grade work," but she is still learning the concepts she needs. If she doesn’t get these concepts now, in Level One and Two, she will have gaps when she gets to the higher levels.

• Set goals with your older student. Time her for the Phonogram Cards and Sound Cards. Have her try to beat her own best time. She will soon see her own progress.

• The older student may only need to use the letter tiles to spell a few of the words on a list, and can move more quickly into spelling on paper. On the other hand, some students make better progress when they DO spell every word with the tiles first. Your call.

• One of my tutoring students balked at "baby words" until I gave her a pretty notebook, some stickers, a gel pen, and whiteout. I told her that I understood that she knows a lot of the words already (I estimated that she knew about half of them), but she should have a permanent record of them. She was to record them in this notebook. She loved the idea and did her best to record the words neatly. We went through each Step, never skipping a single concept, and she recorded every spelling word in the notebook. She decorated the pages with borders. The whiteout was there in case she made a mistake. I normally recommend using pencil for spelling lessons, but in this case we used ink to an advantage.

Time spent building a strong foundation is time well spent. We are doing our older students a great service by finding a way to work around their pride and beginning at the beginning.