How to Teach Spelling the Milestone Way (for FREE!)

I get asked about spelling all the time so here’s my reply for all to see. This was originally an email to one of my customers and I go into a lot of detail, but the essence is like all things Milestone: simple, effective and it only takes minutes a day to implement.

Spelling is one of the trickiest (but also simple – more on that later) things to teach in English because of all the apparent (and sometimes actual) inconsistencies.

With older kids, it’s sometimes helpful to let them know that the reason spelling is so tricky in English is that there were a bunch of stuffy lords in the UK who decided they wanted to embed the history of England into the language. The many spelling variations for the one sound are due to words coming from the various influences of the people groups that interacted with (generally invaded) the UK. In some cases, the variations are just hangovers from a time when ‘invented’ spelling was the totally acceptable norm.

So, as to how to teach it, the “gold standard” in teaching spelling involves simply administering a daily spelling test with immediate (ideally self-) correction and then performing some sort of ‘learning’ step to reinforce the correct spelling for those words that the child was unable to spell correctly on the first attempt. This is how the American spelling bee was born and it is still the best way to develop good spelling.

You might like to search up and watch the talk by Andrew Pudewa called “Spelling and the Brain” on YouTube if you’d like to learn a bit more about this.

But the basic idea is very, very simple. Start with any sort of master list you like – it can be phonetically arranged or not. There’s pros and cons both ways. If you want to know more about this, ask. I have some suggested sources for lists at the end of this post.

Once you have a list you proceed as follows:

1. Start by testing 10-30 words (how many depends on the patience and speed of both you and your student. Aim for around 5-10 mins per day). The testing procedure goes like this: a) Say the next word on the list – say it in a sentence if it’s a homophone – and have your child write it down or spell it out loud or, both. I prefer the kids to write it down because we learn spelling for writing but having them read out what they’ve written is a great reinforcement exercise. b) Read out and/or write down the correct spelling of the word and have your child check their word. They need to correct the word if they’ve misspelled it. Record the words that your child misspells somewhere. c) Repeat steps a) and b) until you run out of words / time.
2. Optionally, (this sometimes speeds things up a bit but it can be hard to get older kids into it and it is not strictly necessary). Have the child do something with the words that they misspelled to help them learn them. This can be anything from writing them out 3 times each (generally not really effective if you’re not watching like a hawk) to performing some sort of visualisation process.
3. On subsequent days, the list will start with any words they missed the day/s before and as many new words as you need to fill in the time/number of words. You should aim to keep the review words to 5 or less. If your student has made 5 mistakes on a test. Stop there and start with the same wordlist tomorrow. Learning 5 things at a time is about the limit for most people.
4. When your child has spelled a word they initially missed correctly two days in a row, it can be retired off the list. You might want to test all words twice to make sure the first time is not a fluke. (This is important for kids whose spelling is particularly poor and erratic).
5. Every now and then (weekly, fortnightly or monthly) do a review. Make up a list that consists of words exclusively drawn from words that the student missed in the past (from the record that you have made while testing them).
6. You should be on the lookout for words that the child uses in their other writing and consistently misspells. These words should be added to their spelling lessons as well. (As a high priority, but only add one or two at a time.)

That’s it. It’s a super simple procedure and it costs you nothing. Programs like IEW, Sequential Spelling, Spelling Power and a bunch of others are all based on variations of this theme. They charge you lots of money for the list and / or some extra guidance (which many people don’t read anyway).

The other style of spelling program (usually labelled “Orton Gillingham”) involves teaching the child lots and lots of rules about how and why words are spelled the way they are. These are sometimes successful but they require a very patient teacher and, for a very analytical and observant child, will often fail because they tend to reveal more about the inconsistencies of English than the consistencies if you’re at all detail oriented. (At least I found it that way.) They do tend to be fascinating to adults which accounts for their popularity, in my opinion. If you’re at all interested in pursuing this approach, I do have several sets of LEM phonics (an Australian OG based program) and I’d be more than happy to pass one along – but it is a rather steep learning curve for both you and the kids.

Now, for word lists… Here’s a website with a list of words you could start with (non-phonetically arranged)

https://www.ozspeller.com

There’s also a basic Australian list of spelling words for years 3-6 in the file below. According to the original author of the document, these words are drawn from a spelling book used in the 1970s in Australian Schools.

For a phonetically arranged list, you could use an old fashioned spelling book (which was how kids were taught to read once upon a time). (They’re mostly from the US – I haven’t found an Australian one online although I do have an antique copy in my library). Webster’s spelling book was particularly popular – and probably the most comprehensive you’ll find. You can download it on this page:

http://donpotter.net/education_pages/spelling_books.html