How do I teach a 13yr old how to spell?

Question

I have a 13yr old niece who has just come into my care - her spelling is horrible! Question is: How do I teach a 13yr old how to spell? and where do I start? She spells everything, exactly how it sounds. Example back is bak, stomach is stumak, girl is gil, mountains is montons - please help! Aside from schooling issues (subjects) I have NO other problems with her. She is a great kid - just appears like noone has ever spent any time teaching her.

Answer 1

buy some spelling game software... that should be a fun and learning experience... learning should be fun or else all its going to do is frustrate her...

when she gets a little better with words then dump her onto books... no point of her reading teen books if she can't recognize enough words for her to appreciate the book... she's 13 so children books may discourage or insult her... also try buying her some teen magazines, girls love those...

Answer 2

You are probably correct when you say that "no one (two words) has spent any time teaching her at home. Don't be too disappointed though! She is on the "right track". You said, your niece spells "stomach" as "stumak" and "bark as "bak". She is spelling her words phonically.That's a good start and is not discouraged in creative writing. Many teachers don't want to discourage creative writing by pointing out too many spelling mistakes. (Too many red marks on the child's paper). However, since your niece is 13, some correction needs to be made. Care must be taken that the child is not discouraged from reading and writing. As her guardian, you will have to spend some quality time with her. Read with her every day. Don't just "tell her to read". Sit down with her and read something that is interesting to her. For instance, Try teaching her to do baking. Then she will need to read the receipt. Ask her to find a good receipt. There are lots of ways to stimulate the child's reading/writing skills without calling too much attention to her errors. "Encouragement" is the word.

GOOD LUCK!

Answer 3

My daughter and I have been using Spelling Power now for 2+ years.
She learned to read so rapidly that we pretty much skipped phonics
instruction. She is a fabulous reader, but I was concerned about her
spelling. I bought Spelling Power at the homeschool convention, and it took
me a long, long time to read it. To be honest I was intimidated by the
huge SIZE of the book and the density of the instructions.

I started using it around December '04, and boy is it great!!

The instructions, I realize now, are just detailed to the 'nth'
degree. The program isn't as complicated as you might think at first
from looking at the opening chapters of how to !! It works really
well, takes about 15 minutes a session, and let me tell you, it makes
sense! The words are connected to one another by a phonics rule, and
you run thru them (as many as you reasonably can, not neccessarily the
whole list). In my days in school, spelling words always seemed to be
very randomly thrown together, and if you got them all right in the
pretest on Monday, you still had to take the stinkin' test on Friday.
How annoying, and what a waste of time. If I know how to spell it,
wouldn't my time be better spent learning something I don't know ??

Any words the child gets wrong are studied and you retest the next
session just on those spelled incorrectly. All of the rest are
'horray!" and you move on. The word is 'corrected' immediately after
it is spelled by the child, so if there was any doubt in their mind
how to spell it they know right off.

She really took to it and her spelling is terrific, around the
9th grade 'level' (according to the book) at age 8. Now if only
her handwriting would follow suit... :)

Solid thumbs up for this program. Oh, one final note, it isn't cheap,
$60, but it has words that will last you many, many years, probably
right thru high school and beyond. The difficulty goes way beyond what
I am comfortable spelling off the cuff!

To sum up, I love the following about it:
1. The child is placed according to his abilities in response to a two
step screening test. (not based on age or other arbitrary thing)

2. The words are grouped according to a spelling rule, instead of
being based around a topic. This helps reinforce the spelling rule in
the child's mind.

3. The child only studies words that she misspells, not the ones she
gets right (no wasting time) - yet words are repeated throughout, so
if a kid gets lucky and spells a word right, they'll see it again!!

It looks intimidating because the first 80 or so pages are just small
print details of how the author came up with the program and how to
administer it. I was very overwhelmed by that at first, but once I
finally looked at it, I realized it is just like a regular spelling
test (except for the above positive points). So don't be fooled or
intimidated, the author just likes her subject and wants to discuss
her theories of how best to learn spelling in detail. You don't really
have to read it all :)

Finally, the cost of the book is around $60 although I found mine used
for $25. The program would be good to cover grades 3-12, so consider
it money well spent.

Spelling Power

Answer 4

Well, my first instinct is to say - teach her how to pronounce things differently! My spelling is impeccable because I sound the words out in my head. From the sample spellings you gave sounds like her pronunciation is at the root of the problem here - montons? gil? Perhaps you live in a strongly-accented region... If you could teach her to say "mountaynes," etc, even though it's not really proper, it would help her with her spelling till she got it right.

The other thing that really helps spelling is reading. Have her read read read - find out what's interesting to her and get TONS of books on the subject. The more we read, the more we soak up information about how to spell, construct sentences, write - it's an imitation process, just as we learned how to speak when we were very little.

Answer 5

Spelling can be taught in a number of different ways. The most obvious is to expose the child to more text with lots of vocabulary, that way they will see the words more often. A fun way is to play word games and double check the words in a dictionary. Another idea is to have the child make her own dictionary. Get her a notebook or something that she'll like to use, starting on one side she can put school words in it, like words that she needs to know how to spell and on the other end of the book she can put life words and any word that she reads in magazines or sees on posters can be written in to the life words. Since these words have more meaningful attachements, she should be able to pull the dictionary out when needed and write the words correctly

Answer 6

There is a great set of paperback books for vocabulary and spelling called "Wordly Wise". Have her do one lesson every week, and work with her through them. These books are pretty inexpensive, and there are several levels. If she is a really bad speller, start with the first book!

Also, constant reading will help a lot, and keeping a journal where she can remain up on her writing skills but yet with low pressure.

Answer 7

well i am about to be 13 and what i think might help is maybe you could give spelling tests on words then grade them. so have her sit down and tell her th words. after you grade it go over the spelling test with her telling her the words she got wrong and ones she got right. then when she gets a good grade or gets most or all of the words right reward her by taking her out to eat or buying her something she likes. hope that helps.

Answer 8

1. You need to find out what sounds the niece cannot identify. Chances are she can identify the sounds of each separate letter, and long and short vowels. Can she spell 3 and 4 letter words such as "can, make, tame"?

2. If so, move on to words that have two consonants in a row, but they should still be able to be sounded out. For instance, words with "tr, br, sl" etc are all in this group.

Specifically, get a small dry erase board and make a loooong list of words and only work 10-15 minutes each night. Do not let her see your list of words. Say a word and have her spell it. If she writes it incorrectly, correct her IMMEDIATELY and have her make the word right and look at the word for a few seconds. The words on your list that she gets right the first time get crossed off. The words that are not crossed off she gets the next night, and if she gets them correct, cross them off. If she is hesitating, just dictate the letters of the word because even if she gets the word right, she is just guessing.

3. Next you begin the 'special sounds.' These are 2 or more letters that, when put together, cannot be sounded out because they make a different sound together. The ones I can think of off the top of my head are 'ou, ow, oi,oy, ar, ir, ur, ure, are, ear, igh, eau, ly, th, ch, sh, ing, ink, ank, ang,ong, wr, wh, wor' - I am sure that list is not comprehensive but it will take you a long way. As you work on words with special sounds [and I am betting this is where her major errors are] the words you give her should still be rather short.

4. When she gets the short words with special sounds down, she will be spelling at about a 3rd or 4th grade level, and you can start using longer words, but with similar patterns in each group. It will help you if you can get some word lists to go by. There might be such a thing available online, but maybe not. There certainly will be books like this in any bookstore, or you can order from an educational publisher, or you can go to a used hs book store and get any ol' spelling book no matter what condition it is in because you aren't going to let her see the word lists anyway. You might also contact her school to see if the teachers in younger classes can let you copy their spelling lists that have words grouped like this. Another way to teach spelling once they know the sounds is to start simple and work your way up. For instance, have the student write these words in succession: 'an, pan, plan, plant, planting, plantation.' There are books that do this but they can be rather expensive, and I tried to teach this way but could not because I just couldn't come up with enough words. I do try to refer to root words when I do spelling with my kids because it does help. For instance, if the word I say is 'completion,' then I might say, "Think of the word 'complete,' then change it to 'completion.'"

The key here will be to do just a bit every day. You will be tempted to do about 1.5 hrs/wk all at one time rather than a few minutes/day, but your niece will learn the most if you do it incrementally.

Good luck, and hooray for you for being willing to help her in this way!

Answer 9

ACE (School of Tomorrow) has a GREAT spelling course called Word Building. It is a required course in all A.C.E. schools, and this is why many private school students do better in spelling than their public counterparts. Order her the Word Building books.

Answer 10

Reading. Lots of reading.

Writing out the words.

Also, for something more creative and fun, use the letter tiles from a Scrabble game, spell out the words for her, then have her use the tiles to spell out the words properly.


Hope this helps.

Answer 11

Review of a good phonics program would be the place to start. You do not need one of the fancy expensive programs. Something simple like ABeka's Handbook for Reading gives all the rules and information for a good base and they also have a remedial book meant to be used with older students.

Just get a GOOD list of the rules along with word lists. Then it is all about applying them and practicing.