Although reading and spelling seem to go hand in hand, most
children fully grasp reading long before they're spelling well. This is normal,
and is not in any way an indication that your child will be a poor speller
later on.
12 ways
to help your child on that journey to good spelling.
- Don't correct spelling in creative writing such as stories and poems, at least on first drafts. The worst thing to do right now is to make kids embarrassed or frustrated in their writing, which can lead them to stop writing at all.
- Print out word searches, crosswords and other word-related activities, especially dealing with your children's interests.
- Encourage your children to use spell check. While some see it as a crutch, this is an excellent way to instantly see what words you've been misspelling. This is harder for very young children who are just learning to spell, as their words may be spelled so wrong that spell check may not be able to guess the right words. This is a great tool for older spellers, though.
- Play word games like Scrabble, Boggle and Bananagrams.
- Try index card stories. Together with your child, write up a whole slew of words (nouns, verbs, articles, adjectives, etc.) on index cards, one on each. Then make up poems or stories with the cards. As your child needs filler words, spell them out for her to write on new cards.
- Write badly spelled letters for your child to correct. Write "I made 10 spelling errors in this letter. Can you find them all?". Let them use a red pen to correct.
- Use closed captioning. Turn the closed captioning on shows your kids are watching for a sneaky way to reinforce spellings.
- Dictate. If your child is not spelling well, don't put him on the spot to spell yet. Put him in charge of writing up lists (shopping lists, birthday wishes, things to do this weekend, etc.) and just spell them out. The more you do this, the more your child will pick up about spelling rules and remember the spelling of individual words.
- Do projects that involve words. Lapbooks, collages, ransom note stories (where the child cuts out words from a magazine, glues them onto a paper and then writes in the filler words to make a story) and other home schooling projects that involve words will all help reinforce spelling.
- Play hangman.
- Read, read, read. The more children read, the more they start to soak up spelling words -- even when we swear they're not. Remember that picture books often have more sophisticated vocabulary than early reader books, so don't push kids to replace picture books with more "educational" ones.
- Keep lots of words in your child's environment. My daughter spelled "aggravating" the other day and said she picked up the spelling from a web site she's a member of that has a "how aggravating" section. I still remember learning how to spell the words "vitamin" and "homogenized" from milk cartons when I was little.
Also see 20
Fun ways to practice spelling words for lots of fun ways to practice
certain lists of words:
(source:
http://www.examiner.com/article/12-ways-to-improve-your-child-s-spelling)
