How do children learn to spell words?

There are two ways to spell words.

1. Remember the word as a sight word

Some students try to remember how the word looks when learning spelling words. This can work well for students with a good visual memory.

This strategy is also useful for remembering homophones (for example, which and witch) and irregular words (words that are difficult to ‘sound out’, such as sureand choir). However, this strategy is difficult to use for long, complex words, and it doesn’t help students spell unfamiliar words.

2. ‘Sound out’ the word
Most English words can be sounded out if the student knows:

• How to break the word into syllables and sounds
• How letters and sounds are related
• How to apply spelling rules

However, this strategy does not work well for homophones and irregular words.

Efficient spellers are able to use both strategies effectively.

Many students who struggle with spelling have difficulties with phonological awareness skills such as:

• Identifying rhyming words
• Perceiving the difference between similar sounds (for example, mand n)
• Identifying the first sound in a word
• Remembering the sequence of sounds in a word
• Breaking words into syllables.

This means that they have difficulties 'sounding out' spelling words.