Tips to Help Homeschoolers Learn to Spell
Spelling is a skill necessary for good quality writing. The ability to spell is a natural outcome of recognizing letters and their sounds, and recollecting the sequence in which they appear. Learning to spell is about understanding the principles of spelling. It is also important to reinforce these concepts through oral and written practice with new words. Games and puzzles help you motivate your home-schooler to perfect his spelling much better than simply memorizing word lists.
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Break the Words
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An essential skill that good spellers possess is the ability to break words into their syllables -- the separate sounds that constitute the word. Have your child say the word out loud, splitting it into as many sounds as necessary, and tap the desk at each break. For example, the word "ordinary" can be split as "or-di-na-ry." Similarly, get your home-schooler to learn about common prefixes and suffixes. For example, explain that with the prefix "dis" in front of a word starting with "s," the letter "s" appears twice, as in "dissimilar."
Play Word Games
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Encourage your child to look carefully at unfamiliar words, and try spelling new words. A good way to do this is to play word games such as Scrabble and Boggle. Along with the words the child already knows, introduce one or two new words, and explain their meaning. The next time you play the game, remind your child to use the new words. Use word scrambles, and word search puzzles to polish spelling skills. Another game you can use is to write a long word such as "authoritarian" and get your child to rearrange the alphabets to form smaller words such as "riot," "iota," "tutor" and "author."
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Practice Writing
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Get your home-schooler to practice using the new words she learns as often as possible. Make her spell the word on an index card, with the definition below. Get her to create sentences using this word, to reinforce the meaning of the word. This helps your child avoid common spelling errors that arise with homophones such as "fair" and "fare," "break" and "brake." Have your child practice writing out long and difficult words to improve memory.
Read More
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Your child can learn spellings more effortlessly when he discovers new words by himself. Expose your home-schooler to new words through reading various forms of writing such as books, newspapers, brochures, posters and signboards. To reinforce memory of these words, encourage him to look up the meanings of the new words and prepare index cards with the spelling and definitions, spelling the word aloud as he does this. Have him scout for this word in newspaper articles, magazines, textbooks, and product inserts.
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