Essential Fundamentals of Spelling Instruction with a Little Help from My Friends

Teacher Question:

I'm looking at finding a spelling program for my school.  What are the elements that should be in a good program?  Should the lists of words be based on phonics/spelling patterns like silent e, later expanded into multisyllable words with the same pattern for upper grades + later study on affixes etc.? Should the spelling words be embedded in stories or articles that the students read as part of their word study? Should there be word and sentence dictation?  Should there be vocabulary related activities such as filling out sentences with missing spelling words that are included in a word bank? How many words per week?

Shanahan responds:

Can you spell “procrastination?”

Lately, I seem to find ways to do almost anything rather than work.

I don’t know if my delaying in this case was due to the sheer number of spelling queries or to the occasional warm spring days we’ve enjoyed lately.

My first reaction to your request was, “this will be easy. I’ve monitored spelling research over the years and have even done some of the early work on the relations between decoding and spelling development.”

I set out to provide a coherent response to your queries more than once, and more than once gave up with a hodgepodge of advice – all of it brilliant I’m sure, but coherent? Not so much.

Then I decided to take a fresh look at recent studies on spelling in the hopes of finding some masterful piece that would waken a new insight about orthography or provide some intelligible overall scheme that would result in a sage response.

There were some cool studies – various qualitative and quantitative analyses of research on spelling interventions – all of it worthwhile and none of it sufficient to get me in gear.

Finally, I tried something different. I wrote to several colleagues whose knowledge of word teaching outstrips my own. I’ve never been one to choose my friends based on a common philosophy, so I was interrogating a diverse sample of experts: Donald Bear, Peter Bowers, Richard Gentry, Steve Graham, and Louisa Moats.

I didn’t hit them with all your questions I just wondered what three major points they would make if someone were setting out to teach spelling or to adopt a new spelling program.

Unlike me, they all answered immediately and generously. Oh, I’m not saying there was no hesitation, a few of them responded and then quickly responded again. That’s one thing I love about people who study words – they care deeply about getting it right.

Some didn’t stay to my three pieces of advice (see what I mean), and all found ways of stretching those limits a bit. Nevertheless, I found a lot of overlap among their answers – and my quick review of recent empirical work. In those commonalities is the wisdom I couldn’t conjure up on my own (though my initial feeble attempts were not far off).

As with any enterprise of this type, the one who combines the responses is necessarily responsible for any resulting deficiencies – and any great insights are due to the individual contributors. In other words, if you don’t like an answer, blame me.

1.        Provide daily explicit, systematic spelling instruction that progresses from grade-to-grade.

Some people have gotten it into their heads that spelling instruction doesn’t matter anymore. One reason for this is the spell-check function provided by computers. Another is the precedence given to reading and writing – those are obviously more important and there is only so much instructional time.

Richard Gentry wisely opened with this one. No one else mentioned it. Given their past research, I think it fair to conclude that they all would agree with it. I guess it wasn’t included since my inquiry seemed to assume this.

Research is very clear that direct explicit instruction of spelling improves spelling ability – especially with the words taught, but also with related words (Graham & Santangelo, 2014; Pan, Rickard, & Bjork, 2021; Peterson-Brown & Kromminga, 2023). According to the research, spelling instruction improves spelling, but it also improves reading and writing ability. So much for the idea of skipping spelling to benefit reading and writing. 

2.        Integrate spelling into word study, phonics, and vocabulary.

Donald Bear offered this point up and in a way it’s echoed in the next two that follow. I could have rolled it into them. I included it because of its structural importance to a teacher’s workday schedule. Instead of treating spelling as just one more doggone thing that must be done each day, this item tells teachers where it fits in the daily routine.

I’ve long argued for a daily 30-45 minutes dedicated to building word knowledge – including any and all kinds of study of words and their parts. Gentry recommended 20-minutes per day of spelling study. However, once you combine spelling, phonics, and morphology it’s easier to think about how word instruction fits into the school day.

3.        Teach explicitly the principles that underlie the spelling lists.

Bear, Gentry, Steve Graham, and Peter Bowers all overtly argue for this one, and Louisa Moats seems to rally around this flag too. While not using these terms, she opposes the whole idea of having kids memorize weekly spelling lists. To put it another way, like the others, she wants the focus to be on teaching the patterns and principles.

Research shows that instruction leads to improvement in the studied words, but with less successful generalization to similar words.

Whatever the value may be of adding the spellings of specific words to memory, most likely the real power of word knowledge – in spelling, reading, and writing – comes from a deep structural understanding of how words work and that’s what these experts want teachers to emphasize.

As the next item reveals – their point isn’t to foster a simplistic understanding of English orthography.

What I mean by that may best be demonstrated through example. Imagine a lesson focused on the -ane pattern. Perhaps this lesson would have students toiling over a list like this one:

                  -cane

                  -mane

                  -pane

                  -vane

                  -wane

                  -crane

                  -plane

This would be a weak lesson, I think all would agree. Most kids could memorize the items in this list without understanding much of anything. They’d probably score 100% on Friday’s test without breaking a sweat and would not be likely to remember any of these words by Monday.

This could be improved any number of ways. One would be to teach kids about the   -VCe idea – that this pattern will tend to result in the pronunciation of a long vowel with a silent e at the end. That would require restructuring this list:

                  -plane

                  -dome

                  -gene

                  -fine

                  -tune

                  -crate

                  -bike

                  -note

Not only do about 10% of one syllable English words include this pattern, but it’s common in multisyllable words too (e.g., complete, behave, explode). It matters also because this spelling can distinguish word meanings (e.g., plan-plane, fin-fine, not-note). Kids can’t as easily memorize this list because of the varied vowels, so both the words and the underlying principle will more likely be learned.

This better list could be improved even more: perhaps including some of those meaning distinctions or the multisyllable instances of the pattern. I especially like the idea of including some important exceptions (e.g., have, give, come, done). That may seem to undermine the pattern, but we want kids to see both the consistencies and the exceptions. If you want kids to learn a principle, it helps to contrast it with its exceptions. Including the exceptions also mitigates against the mindless memorization of words – forcing kids to think about the spellings.

If lessons don’t lead students to understand how the spelling system works (or doesn’t work), they aren’t worth much.

Of course, these underlying spelling principles can’t be fully exposed or explored in one week’s lessons. They will be best addressed through a series of such lessons – across a school year, across school years – that address patterns, principles, generalizations, contrasts, pronunciations, and meanings.

Also, although instruction should have intentional goals that doesn’t mean teachers must explicitly tell kids the patterns or principles. It can be a good idea to get the students to try to articulate these relations from their analysis of the words. Don’t worry, if they fail to figure it out, you can still tell them.  

4.        Teach the complexity of English spelling.

Gentry, Moats, Bear, and Bowers all argue for an emphasis on the complexity of English spelling. My examples in the previous recommendation eventually got to some of that complexity, but it is a pale (not pail) representation of what this crew of authorities were getting at.

They want to see lessons that link pronunciation, spelling, and meaning.

They want kids to learn how different letters and letter combinations correspond to the same pronunciations (e.g., apron, cake, rain, day, steak, vein, they, eight, ballet, café).
They want kids to come to see how combining morphological elements alters spelling (dropping or keeping silent letters, doubling consonants, changing y’s to i’s, altering prefix pronunciations, etc.).

                  hope –  hoping

                  hope –  hopeful

                  change –  changeable

                  run –  running

                  visit  –  visiting

                  happy –  happiness

                  cry  –  crying

                  happy –  unhappy

                  photograph – photography

                  act  – action

                  active – activity

They want kids to understand how syntax or grammar affect spelling: tense (e.g., like, likes, liked, liking), plurality (e.g., babies, leaves, boxes, man-men, foot-feet), noun/verb/adverb/adjective shifts (e.g., quick-quickly, happy-happily, good-well, decide-decision, active-activity), comparatives/superlatives (e.g., big, bigger, biggest), and possessives (e.g., dog’s, dogs’). I get the impression that at least some of these experts would not just handle this complexity by having kids studying lists of words. No, they would want kids to see how these syntactic spelling shifts work in sentences as well. Peter Bowers even sent me a link to a video of students working with the spelling implications of morphology.

5.        Link spelling with writing.

Steve Graham stressed the importance of selecting words for the spelling curriculum from students’ writing. I know some spelling programs have conducted word frequency studies – looking to find the words kids try to write most often, as well as the ones they tend to mess up on. That makes sense since we are more likely to learn something that we will use.

It pays for teachers to consider errors their students make in writing and to add some of these words into the spelling mix as well.

Louisa Moats stressed the importance of getting the kids to do more than write the words, but to write the words in context. This makes sense a couple of ways. If we are going to stress the variations in spelling that are caused by syntactic requirements, having kids write whole sentences that use these words would show kids how it works. Likewise, an emphasis on sentences forces students to spell words without super focusing only on certain ones. Kids must learn to manage spelling demands even when their attention is divided by the rest of the sentence.

6.        Make spelling interesting, make spelling fun.

Admittedly, most responses focused on the curriculum – the what that we need to teach, not necessarily the how. Nevertheless, both Bowers and Graham stated major instructional principles, and the others found ways to couch their curriculum-focused principles in lots of practical teaching advice.

Peter Bowers loves etymology and believes it is valuable when it comes to teaching kids about words. I’m always a bit of a skeptic on these things. I believe kids can learn what they need to about words without the historical source material. That’s true, but Pete’s bigger point that should not be lost here is his desire to arouse kids’ curiosity (something inherent in the work of all these valued colleagues).

Kids may not need to know the reason an odd spelling pattern or contrast came about, but knowing it may make the information stickier. As Peter put it: “Students with poor phonological awareness and weak orthographic memories especially need every possible advantage to bind words into automaticity.” Louisa Moats gave me an example of using etymology to explain the odd pronunciation of the first vowel in oven, and showed how it could be linked to love, dove, does, done.

Even more important than improving remembering, this approach may get kids wondering about words in a way that could have wonderful long-term learning implications.

Steve Graham came right out and said, “make spelling fun.” He even sent me a study (Graham, Harris, & Fink-Chorzempa, 2003) in which, along with explicit instruction, the kids worked in pairs, played spelling games, and graphed their success week-to-week. Part of the success was due to the kids’ enjoyment.

Donald Bear encouraged games as well, along with word hunts, and timed word sorts.

Richard Gentry stressed the importance of emphasizing complexity while keeping the tasks from being overly hard. He recommended a weekly list of 20 words, with the kids already knowing about 10 of these. This makes sense in so many ways: it gives kids a sense of having a leg up on the week’s work, it gives them an opportunity to link what they know with the new stuff and provides valuable review.

My job is to sum things up. It seems to me that my colleagues are saying, look for programs that teach kids to think about and understand words – how they work, what they mean. Engage kids in activities that get them to think deeply about words – to pronounce them, to decode them, to spell them, to interpret them, to use them in a variety of ways. Encourage interest and engagement. Spelling is about understanding and knowing language, not about memorizing lists of words.    

I have smart friends, huh?

References

 Bear, D., Invernizzi, M., Templeton, S., & Johnston, F. (2023). Word study for phonics, spelling, and vocabulary instruction (7th ed.). New York: Pearson

Bowers, P. N., Kirby, J. R., & Deacon, S. H. (2010). The Effects of Morphological Instruction on Literacy Skills: A Systematic Review of the Literature: A Systematic Review of the Literature. Review of Educational Research, 80(2), 144-179.

Colenbrander, D., von Hagen, A., Kohnen, S., Wegener, S., Ko, K., Beyersmann, E., Behzadnia, A., Parrila, R., & Castles, A. (2024). The effects of morphological instruction on literacy outcomes for children in English?speaking countries: A systematic review and meta?analysis. Educational Psychology Review, 36, 119.

Galuschka, K., Görgen, R., Kalmar, J., Haberstroh, S., Schmalz, X., & Schulte-Körne, G. (2020) Effectiveness of spelling interventions for learners with dyslexia: A meta-analysis and systematic review. Educational Psychologist, 55(1), 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.2019.1659794

Gentry, J. R., & Ouellette, G. (2019). Brain words: How the science of reading informs teaching. Stenhouse Publishers.

Graham, S., Harris, K. R., & Chorzempa, B. F. (2002). Contribution of spelling instruction to the spelling, writing, and reading of poor spellers. Journal of Educational Psychology, 94(4), 669-686.

Graham, S., & Santangelo, T. (2014). Does spelling instruction make students better spellers, readers, and writers? A meta-analytic review. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 27(9), 1703-1743.

International Literacy Association. (2019). Teaching and assessing spelling. Newark, DE: Author.

Moats, L. C. (2005). How spelling supports reading and why it is more regular and predictable than you think. American Educator, 12-22, 42-43.

Pan, S. C., Rickard, T. C., & Bjork, R. A. (2021). Does spelling still matter—and if so, how should it be taught? Perspectives from contemporary and historical research. Educational Psychology Review, 33, 1523-1552.

Petersen?Brown, S., & Kromminga, K. R. (2023). Systematic review and meta?analysis of the implementation and effectiveness of spelling instruction and intervention. Psychology in the Schools, 61, 3315-3338.