Let’s say your 12-year-old, 6th grade child spelled the following words:
- bref (brief)
- susess (success)
- edcccate (educate)
- resolt (result)
- kicten (kitchen
Then he wrote the following story to a picture prompt
“Once a o pon a time there was a kid that was a million air and he whated to buy a house. He look at so many house and finally found a house. but it needed a lot of work So the kid hierd lots of people to help him but after thay were all done the house went back to it whent back to the way it was.
Or let’s say you have an 8-year-old in second grade who writes:
“I hrd a son. It was funne. My dad was beyen funne was he dats Wen he was in the cr Wan we wr gown to the prck.”
(Translated as best I can- “I heard a song. It was funny. My dad was being funny when he danced when he was in the car. When we were going to the park.”)
When parents raised concerns, they were told, “Spelling doesn’t matter. He can always use spell check.”
In the early grades about 70% of the kids who are given typical exposure to words through a variety of reading and spelling activities progress smoothly. These kids read, spell and write pretty well, and then they do more of it.
Effectively, the rich getting richer.
For those on the struggling side, they need to have sounds taught much more explicitly with a great deal of practice following the instruction.
It’s a long, slow process.
A study where teacher practices were observed, revealed that less than 4% of the language arts instructional block time is devoted to spelling or spelling related activities.
For the 70% mentioned above who learn to spell and write by osmosis, that’s fine. They acquire these skills intuitively, and by third grade they are spelling adequately.
For the struggling children, much more patient, direct instruction is imperative.
Spell check is a helpful tool, but it is not a substitute for the challenging work needed to build fundamental literacy skills and confidence.
Copyright, 2025: Dr. Richard Selznick,http://www.shutdownlearner.com