Teaching Rules--Silent Consonants

I have often been told that English is the most difficult language to learn.  Being a native English speaker, this is difficult for me to understand.  However, when you look at it through the eyes of a 9 or 10 year-old, I can see what people mean.  There are so many rules, and even if a student knows a rule, there are exceptions to every rule.  There are homophones, homographs, prefixes, suffixes and root words.  And there are a lot of words that you just have to memorize because they don't have any rules to help you. 

Even so, it is important to teach students as many rules as possible to help them learn patterns so they can be successful spellers.  This week I will be teaching about silent consonants.  To do this, I will create six different groups of cards with six different silent consonant patterns. 

kn (silent k)        st (silent t)       mb (silent b)    lk (silent l)     wr (silent w)
knight                      listen                        thumb                        talk                    wrong             
knit                         soften                       lamb                          calf                    wrinkle             knock                     whistle                     climb                          walk                  wrestle                      knoll                       often                        comb                          half                   wrist                

ght (silent gh)
thought
drought
right
night

Each person at a table will get one of the words in the pattern.  Students will be told to identify the pattern or rule in their group.  Each group will then compose a sentence that explains the common pattern of the words.  The group will write this complete sentence on a poster, and write their sample words I gave them on the poster underneath the sentence.  Each group will also add other words to the poster that fit the rule. 

Students will then go around to the different posters to examine the rules.  They will have about 2  minutes at each poster/table, and while they are there, they need to add as many words they can think of that fit the rule too (each team will have a different color marker so we can tell which team added what words).  Everyone will be encouraged to participate. 

*This "Card Sorts" activity was adapted from Rebecca Bowers Sipe's book, They Still Can't Spell?

Here is a fun electronic game students can play to practice this skill:  Silent Invaders

Franklin Children's Dictionary & Spell Corrector

A few years ago, I was frustrated with figuring out how to get students to spell words correctly in their writing on their own.  Telling students to look words up in their Quick Word books or the dictionary just wasn't feasible for students who didn't know how to spell the first 2 or 3 letters of the word. Plus, the person that usually ended up correcting their spelling was a parent.  I spoke about my concern with the special educaiton teacher at our school, and she introduced me to the Franklin Children's Dictionary and Spell Checker.  She said she used it with great success with the students with whom she was working and gave me a catalog so I could order a couple of them for my own classes.  They immediately became a big hit with my four classes of 5th grade English, and sometimes it would take a week or two before all the students had access to this incredible tool.  As a result, a couple students purchased their own and would bring them to school to share them with all of the classes.  Only having students for an hour a day at my previous school, just having a few of these did make it difficult to finish writing projects in a timely manner.

Although there are many great aspects about this electronic device, what appealed to me most was that it had a sound function.  So any student can press the speak button, and it will speak not only each word it thinks you may have intended to spell, but it will also speak the definition of the word.  This is especially helpful for my struggling students who may not be able to read the definition on their own and need the auditory piece to support the visuals.  It also helps students know if they are spelling the word they intended to spell.  For example, often times a student will write "were" when they actually meant "where".  The Speller will say "were", and I can ask the student if that is the word he/she really wanted to use in a piece of writing.

The video below will give you more information about the Franklin Children's Dictionary and Spell Corrector, but for some reason it doesn't highlight the sound function.  Also, Franklin has recently updated this device to include something to help students with their handwriting.    The most important parts about this technological tool is that students are excited to use it to correct their spelling in their writing, and it gives them the confidence to be able to spell the words correctly on their own without having someone correct their words for them. 

It's important to note that I don't allow students to use the Franklin Speller until they have written a first draft of something.  Otherwise, they would become more focused on the Franklin Speller than they are on recording their thoughts.  I want them to focus on the content, and I tell them they can always go back and fix the spelling later.  Once a first draft has been completed, students are asked to circle words that look wrong so that they can double check the spelling of those words.  Then I ask parents to circle words that are spelled wrong, but I also ask them not to correct the spelling for them.  That way students can correct these words on their own by using the Franklin Speller.  As a last resort, I will circle words that appear to be spelled wrong.  Because I only have 4 of these devices in my classroom, students usually have to wait in line to use it.  It's my dream to have one Franklin Speller for every 4 students in my new classroom (and those of my colleagues).  See the video below, or pick one up for yourself, and you will understand why.

What causes students to stare at a blank page?

As I have engaged in the Edina Public Schools Writing Cohort for the past two years, I know there are various reasons why students don't like to write.  Some students don't know what to write about while others have a difficult time with the physical act of writing.  In the past, I have offered suggestions to students and parents to write about topics that they love.  We have created heart maps and writing history brochures so students have an array of topics to choose from.  I have also encouraged struggling writers to record their thoughts with a tape recorder before writing them down so that they are able to have a starting point for retrieving the content that they have going through their minds. 

But up until this year, I never considered the idea that the inability to spell could be a major stumbling block for many of our students.  How do I know this to be the case?  I asked them.  After watching a small handful of students stare at a blank page for the first couple weeks in my new classroom, I wondered if it was developmental.  Could it just be that a 3rd grader wasn't prepared for higher expectations?  It was possible.  However, I wasn't just seeing this with my 3rd graders.  I was observing it with a couple of my 4th graders too.  So I spoke to each of these students individuallly to try to understand why it was so challenging to get their thoughts down on paper.  Each one said they didn't know how to spell the words that they wanted to write, and they worried that they would get in trouble for not spelling the words correctly.  I assured them that my main concern was that they were able to get their thoughts down on paper.  The thinking behind it was most important to me, rather than correct grammar and spelling.  Those things can always be fixed, I told them, but the content was the one thing that mattered most. 

I have noticed that the blank pages exist less often now.  However, there are times when I will ask a student to read me what he/she has written, that child has a difficult time reading it because they don't know what words they were trying to spell in their writing.  I've also noticed that some students don't take the time to think about how to spell a word correctly, and they want a quick answer from me.  My reply is always, "How do you think you spell it?"  95% of the time, the student will spell the word correctly for me.  This tells me that not only do students need to be encouraged to take their time to think about how to spell a word, but they also need to be told they are capable of doing it themselves.  Building confidence in a student is essential to his/her success as a learner, and it's my job to explore the best ways to do this.

This is just the beginning of my investigations, and if anyone has ideas or thoughts they'd like to share, please do.  My main goal in creating this blog is to become a better teacher of spelling for all of my students, and I strongly believe that collaboration is one of the best ways to learn.  So please...if you have a thought to share, no matter how brief or lengthy, join me as a fellow spelling sleuth as I try to determine strategies that will best meet the needs of my varied learners.