How can I help my daughter improve her spelling?

Question

My seven year old daughter reads exceptionally well and has no problems in other subjects, but she does have a difficult time spelling. What can I do to help her learn how to spell better? I'm not expecting her to be perfect or anything, but she likes to write a lot of different stories, posters, signs, etc. and her spelling hasn't improved very much since the beginning of the school year. Thanks in advance for any advice.

Answer 1

Make sure she knows some basic rules like:

- i before e except after c and in weird words
- when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking
- "bossy E" at the end of a word makes the other vowel say it's name

Make sure she slows down and sounds out every letter.

Work with her on word families and "chunking" words. Also, Dolch site words.

Then let her use her creative spelling. She'll get there! But allowing them to use "creative spelling" as they are learning gives them confidence and lets them work on the skills of actually putting their thoughts together on paper.

Answer 2

When I was younger, I became a better speller in a few ways. I read my father's college textbooks. When I came to a word I did not know, I spelled it out and moved on. When I saw the word later in life, I had a much easier time spelling. The other thing was a lot of word-based games like the Alphabet Game, Boggle, and Scrabble. I also had some Funbooks and Word Finds to do by myself. Hope these ideas help.

Answer 3

Hmm...Maybe she doesnt want to take the time to really sound out the words? Remember, practice makes perfect! Learning to spell takes patience for the child and the parent. I remember when I was around 8 I had a hard time spelling...When our teacher would give us our words for the spelling test we had to write them out 5 times each for homework. This made our (the class) spelling grades a lot better. My foster mother (who was also a teacher) helped me by helping me practice at home, every word I got right on my spelling tests at school I would get a sticker, and after I got so many stickers I would get a treat or we got to go see a movie or something fun like that. It made me really focus on learning to spell correctly and to take my time and think things through. The better I got at spelling and the older I became the more stickers I had to get to get my prize. I remember once that I really really wanted a pair of rollerblades so I had to earn 200 stickers to get them. That was 8 spelling tests, if I got 100%'s on all 8 of them. I worked so hard for those skates, and I felt so good when I earned them. We had other reward systems for report cards, but I think the spelling reward system made me feel the most accomplished. We stopped the sticker system when I went into the 6th grade, becuase I didnt need it anymore. I still got rewards for good grades though, it made me want to do well in school.

Hope this helped you! It sure helped me!

Answer 4

My seven year old son is the same way. I was concerned until a recent parent teacher conference. She said that as long as a child is phonetically, and is making steady improvement, there is nothing to worry about at this age. Right now they need to get comfortable with the basic skills ( letters and sounds) of reading and writing in order to progress. If you want to give her a nudge, try the Leap Frog line of products. They have been a wonderful advantage. It's all entertaining and it really works!! My son loves it all, it's inexpensive and it works!! I also have added reading with him more often to it all. I have even read newspaper ads to him!! I hope this works for you as well as it has for my son. I think it's great to see that someone has taken such a huge interest in helping their child read and write!!

Answer 5

I do a variety of things with my seven year old. This is what i do sometimes I get his spelling words and i will write his words five times each going really slow so he wins, and he will write them and then i will quiz him every night on his spelling words.
Another thing is my husband and i both have yahoo id's
so i get ethan to spell the words using the keyboard to my husband and vice versa its fun, it teaches him to think and its a new way for him to spell. some other things i do is flash cards,
Hope this helps.

Answer 6

Have her write down her spelling words 10 times a day. Or since she likes to write stories have her write her weekly spelling words in a story and maybe see if the words she will remember from the story that she writes out.

Answer 7

While reading is entertaining spelling can be quite dull try what my parents and Grandparents did, teach her to play scrabble just call it bonding time not a spelling lesson, She'll find it fun, will give the family quality time & will motivate spelling improvements to win the game.

Answer 8

Spelling is barely partly found out. even nevertheless examining and examining facilitates, some everybody isn't meant to be good spellers. i'm a terrible speller who has been very helpful in existence. it is extra important to reiterate the undeniable fact that she desires to proofread and use spell-examine, then actually the right thank you to spell the words. I ought to form each little thing in Microsoft be conscious first, even no rely if that's a hand written word. studying to compensate with procedures is the main necessary skill to earnings.

Answer 9

If your daughter likes music, you could try to spell the word by putting it to a tune (real or made up by you/her). I do this with my daughter and it helps her learn some of the harder words, plus she enjoys it.

Answer 10

My 7 year old is horrible at spelling and his teacher has been sending home word search puzzles for him to do, even though they are not homework I tell him it is homework so he knows it has to be done.