Guidelines for developing a spelling program

Cynthia Klein and Robin Millar, in their 1990 book Unscrambling Spelling, set out the following guidelines for developing a relevant and effective spelling program for adult literacy students. You may find them useful if you are new to tutoring spelling.

Most students have never been taught a way of learning to spell; more often they have been given lists of words to go away and learn. Although some students do “catch” spelling in this way, many do not. For any spelling program to be effective, especially when a student has not been able to “catch” spelling, the following aspects must be addressed:

• The program must be meaningful. It should be related to the students’ need to spell and be based on words they use or want to use in their own writing.
• The program must be individualized. It is essential that not only the particular words but also the strategies for learning the words are selected and adapted to fit the students’ own spelling style.
• The program must be multi-sensory. Students must be encouraged to use all their senses – visual, auditory and kinesthetic/motor – to reinforce one another and to enable them to discover and emphasize their strongest mode of learning.
• The program must be structured. Regularity and consistency help students to develop an awareness of word patterns over time and to build a spelling vocabulary that they can use in their writing.
• The program must be limited. Students need time to absorb letter groupings and to make links between similar words. Therefore, not too many different letter patterns should be taught in any one lesson.

For the spelling program to be effective, students must also be regularly producing free writing from which spellings can be selected to be learned on a weekly basis.