Spelling

Learning to Spell

Children learn to spell in fairly predictable steps that build on one another (Ehri 1986, 1994; Gill, 1992; Henderson, 1990). Two types of memory are involved in learning to spell:

Visual Memory – Also described as “orthographic” memory, visual memory is related to the ability to remember how words look when written. The ability to visualize a word is vital for learning to spell, especially in the case of sight words, which do not follow a common spelling pattern and often cannot be “sounded out.”

Spelling Memory – A child’s memory for predictable sequences of letters, spelling memory is enhanced by awareness of phonemes (or speech sounds). A child’s spelling memory is developed by his growing knowledge of how words are both spoken and written.

At more advanced levels, spelling memory draws on a child’s knowledge of word structure, the meaning of individual parts of a word, a word’s relationship to other words, and so on. A child’s understanding of new words is built systematically on the child’s knowledge of other words. This is the cycle of success that teachers love to see.

There are two types of spelling knowledge to develop: Phonetic and Morphemic.