should be taught together, as one helps with the other. Traditional Spelling incorporates reading, writing, and dictation of words.Before teaching Spelling as a subject, I first teach how to read by Phonics. I teach the long and short sounds of the vowels first, even before teaching the alphabet if that hasn't yet been learned. Next, I teach the consonants. Then we put the letters together and read 'three-letter words' such as: bed, cat, did, man, hat, fox, Sam, dog, and so on. Taught this way, the words will just tumble out of their mouths. These are the easy words, and spelling them will be natural; but at this stage, it is not so important to use them as Spelling words, but taught how to sound them out.
In the beginning, the names of the alphabet letters are not so important, but the sounds are. This lightens the load and gets the student on the reading road much more quickly.
How to sound out one-vowel-words where the vowel is short is the first Spelling rule in words such as: hop, top, man, can, bat, bun, Ben, did, kid, and so one. The second rule is that if a word has two vowels, the first is long and the second silent as in: cake, boat, lake, soak, goat, bike, hope, and so on.
Next come the phonograms sh, th, ch, ck, and tch. From those first five phonograms I teach the sounds they make, then run them together with other learned letters such as: chick, rich, chop, chip, shut, fish, mash, path, then, the, catch, match, and so on.
Another Spelling rule are words that end in e, o, or y are long, such as: be, me, no, go, sky, try, my, and so on.
Once these first few Spelling Rules are learned, then comes the subject of Spelling as a daily and weekly exercise.
Spelling should ideally be taught in word families; not random words. For every spelling rule, the words that go with that particular rule (family) should be taught as one lesson.
In most schools, Spelling lists contain random words not in families- but words that must be memorized by sight, such as: yellow, bicycle, feather, saw, father, cell, phone, baby, girl, judge, etc.
Or, just as confusing in memorization of words, is teaching words with the same sound, but no rules. For example, the sound of c is taught in words like cat, cap, and cut- that have the k sound and lists that also include the second sound of c that sounds like s, as in cent, cell, city, circus, celery, or even more difficult is a word that contains both sounds of c (k and s), as in accent. Without sound and rule, these words in lists become confusing, lead to misspelled words, and guessing at words. That is today's Spelling in public schools.
In Spelling with Phonics, for the sound of long e we would instead teach that ea says long e. Then we would teach a group of words for this rule such as: each, teach, preach, bleach, eat, meat, seat, etc. Also for long e we could teach ee words as in: jeep, creep, sleep, peep, deep, beep, see, bee, and so on.
When we teach Spelling rules, teach Spelling in families and give exceptions to those rules. Those exceptions, if given, should also be learned right along with the word families.
Here's an example of teaching more long e words to include exceptions, such as that ie says long e, as in: niece, chief, thief, pier, Lassie, Debbie, and so on. Exceptions to the ie rule says long e, would be the words friend and pie.
What is also important to knowing how to correctly pronounce and spell words with sound and rule, are words that look or appear to be similar but have different sounds, as in these three words: though, thought, and through. In the first word, ough says long o, in the second, ough says short o, and in the third word, ough say long u. In each word gh is silent. in Phonics, these are not memorized, but phonetically taught in word families.
Reading and Spelling by sound and rule must be taught- not memorization of words. Memorization of words is the key reason for the staggering amount of Dyslexia, slow reading, guessing at words, and non-comprehension of what was read as being commonplace in our country resulting in illiteracy dating as far back as 1929 when 'Look Say' (or memorization of words) was introduced. Phonics was written about as drudgery.
The old library in many homes no longer exists that included the great novels, history, travelogues, science, and poetry. Reading the Classics is no longer a pastime as it once was. Many adults don't read because it is too frustrating.
An example I learned about was a public high school student encouraged by his mother to read the classic, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. When asked about the progress of his reading a few weeks later, the student stated that he had read up to page 225, but went back to page 99 because he wasn't able to remember or understand what had been read!
It is of the utmost importance, therefore, when teaching the subject of Spelling- first it must be Spelling with Phonics, second, the curriculum must include word families and exceptions to those rules. Otherwise, the student becomes confused instead of becoming a good speller.
Students trained in Spelling by sound and rule (with exceptions) will grow in confidence and competence in their reading and writing, even though progressive reading material grows in complexity.
This is Traditional Spelling.
