# Teaching > General Teaching >  Spelling

## Motherof8

Anyone have suggestions of things that could help those who have difficulty with spelling and writing? Thank you.

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## kev67

Dessert is like pudding.

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## Buh4Bee

bed- make the word by putting your fists together and holding up your thumbs- you'll see the /b/ and the /d/.

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## Mutatis-Mutandis

Use spellcheck.

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## Motherof8

I don't think spellcheck would help children learn spelling. Thanks for the other suggestions.

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## kev67

There was a poem about spelling and here it is:

_I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough.
Others may stumble but not you,
On hiccough, through, lough and through.
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps.

Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird,
And deadits said like bed, not bead.
For goodnesss sake, dont call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat:
They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.

A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then theres dose and rose and lose
Just look them upand goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart.
Come, come, Ive hardly made a start.

A dreadful language? Man alive,
Id mastered it when I was five.
_

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## kev67

I don't think you have to worry about the pronunciation or spelling of _lough_ too much. A lough is an Irish lake, as in _Lough Neagh_. They also have them in Scotland but are spelt _loch_, as in _Loch Ness_. They're both pronounced _lock_, more or less.

I've always wondered about the spelling _hiccough_. I think it is pronounced _hiccup_.

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## kev67

Parallel has two parallel lines in it.

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## DocHeart

Hey Motherof8,

You've tried games, I take it? Weekly rounds of spelling bee? Kids love games, they get a lot of incentive from them.

Regards,
DH

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## togre

I always self-identified as a poor speller, but have come to regard myself as competent later in life. Nothing can replace practice and time, but here a one or two things I've seem:


--Reading helps spelling. Depending on the age have the child read loud to you, a friend/sibling or even a stuffed animal.

--Write a lot. Depending the age it can be simple cards, captions on pictures, stories, notes or whatever. By using words (and by this I mean, use words and care that they are spelled correctly and have mistakes corrected) it builds up the experience and thought processes that spelling relies upon.

--Encourage them to ask, but don't make it too easy. If they can use a dictionary (hard copy) encourage its use. Don't spell the same word for them twice. Start a "Master list" of words you've spelled for them. That way they can look at it.

--Spell check bad. Seriously. It allows a person to reach the goal (a properly spelled word) without having the correct aptitude (being able to spell the word). That's fine and good when you want things spelled correctly, but it doesn't _teach_ spelling at all. Use methods that make them think. Maybe even use exercises that involve identifying misspelled words.

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## Scheherazade

> Dessert is like pudding.


There are two sugars in dessert.

It is *necessary* to have *one collar* and *two sleeves* for a shirt.

There is *a rat* in *separate*.

We want *two cots* and * two mattresses* in our *accommodation*.

There is *here* in *there*.

There is an *ear* in *hear*.

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## Motherof8

I read a story in a 4th grade reader where an old man told a boy that "there's a rat in separate. Since then I remembered how to spell separate. 

Thanks to all of you for your helpful suggestions. I was always pretty good in spelling but I find most of my children didn't inherit that ability.

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## synodbio

First and foremost, beginning spelling instruction should always emphasize the phonetic nature of spelling. The fact is written English is based on a phonemic alphabet.

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## Scheherazade

> The fact is written English is based on a phonemic alphabet.


Which is riddled with exceptions.

 :Tongue:

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## Lokasenna

I'm reminded of the 'Ode to the Spelling Checker':

Eye halve a spelling checker
It came with my pea sea.
It plainly marks four my revue miss steaks eye kin knot sea.
Eye strike a quay and type a word and weight for it to say
Weather eye yam wrong oar write.
It shows me strait a weigh as soon as a mist ache is maid.
It nose bee fore two long and eye can put the error rite.
Its rare lea ever wrong.
Eye have run this poem threw it,
I am shore your pleased to no.
Its letter perfect awl the way.
My checker told me sew.

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## Hawkman

:FRlol:

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## Eman Resu

Is the student in question familiar with morphemes, word roots, prefixes, suffixes and the physical construction of words in English and their Latin or Greek antecedents? If not, you might begin with the linguistic rudiments. Once a child becomes aware that "tion" "ate" "ing" "ism" "ous" and cetera actually convey meaning to the root word(s), the ability to muster the proper spelling - or to divine the meaning - becomes much less challenging. A child who's aware of the origin "ago / agere" and its relationship to "act," already knows the words "action, actionable, active, activity, actor, actual, actualism, actuarial, actuary, actuate, actuation, actuator, agency, agenda, agent, agile, agility, agitate" and "agitation," prefixially, and "allegation, allege, coagulate, coagulation, fumigate, fumigation, fustigate, intransigent, levigate, litigate, navigate, navigation, navigator, objurgate, reaction, reactivation, reactivate, reactive, reactiveness, reactivity, reactor, redaction, retroactive, variegate" and "variegation," suffixially. Comprehension of linguistic relationships kan maeck speling reely eazy.

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