FTTR—the second best method of teaching spelling     026

The best method of teaching your child spelling is to proceed as follows. Take a primary school dictionary and each day tear out one page. Run this page through a cross-cut paper shredder, carefully collect the pieces and soak them overnight in water. In the morning drain the water and add the paper shreds to a mixture of fruit or vegetables, and then put the whole lot through a food blender. Serve the mixture to your child for breakfast or dinner. It is not a good idea to send it to school for lunch because some children share their lunch with their friends and we do want your child to get the full benefit. If you carry out this method regularly your child will receive about 40 words per day—remember each page is double sided—and in one year, the entire dictionary, about 12,000 words. Your child will absorb the words into the blood and hence to the brain.

Many of the words your child may already be able to spell but this shredding-blending method is so effective this will not matter. However, if your child, or you, or possibly your family doctor, has any reservations at all—and it would be hard to imagine there could be any doubts—then I advise that you use the second best method, FTTR, which stands for Find-Test-Teach-Revise. This method is a lot more trouble.

Now there are a number of difficulties in teaching spelling at school. Children are different in their spelling ability and different in the words they may already know. This means that often children are learning spelling lists in which there are some words they can already spell. Then there is the difficulty of adequate revision of words which children did not learn successfully, and again, children will be different.

So it follows that the most effective spelling scheme is one designed for an individual child and taught to that child. With my students I use the FTTR method. In describing this spelling method I assume that your son or daughter is able to read well using phonics. Actually learning to read is highest priority for your child’s education. On this website I write extensively about the importance of using phonics in the teaching of reading, at Parents/Is your child pretending to read?

Once a week test your child—perhaps over one or two days—using various sources or lists of spelling words, until they get about 8 to 12 words wrong This is your child’s personal spelling list for the week. There are five places where you need to look to find the words which your child needs to be tested on.

First, there are the words within your child’s writing that he or she misspelt. Choose only the age appropriate words, not the very hard words. You have to look into your child’s workbooks, dig these words out, and make a list of them. This list could also include mistakes which your child has made in the spelling program at school.

Second, there are the words that your child needs to spell because he or she is studying that topic at school, for example ‘wheat’, ‘dairying’ or ‘sheep’. This list can also include words which your child would like to learn.

Third, words taken from lists of very common words in English. Surprisingly, only about 100 words make up nearly one half of all simple English texts, words such as ‘about’, ‘there’, ‘have’ and ‘which’.

Fourth, lists of words which children usually have difficulty in spelling—sometimes called ‘spelling demons’—words such as ‘again’, ‘beginning’, ‘enough’, ‘here’, ‘lose’ and ‘straight’.

Fifth, grade level spelling words, arranged phonetically, for example, ‘mother- brother-father’ or ‘sorry-funny-sunny’ or ‘creep-asleep-sleep’. All school spelling lists should include some words grouped phonetically.

Wow, this seems like a lot of work, but once you get yourself organised and started the whole process should only take 20 to 30 minutes a week. You will need to obtain the spelling lists from the Internet or from commercially available spelling books. So, buy your child an A4 exercise book, and let’s get started.

In the back of the book test your child, as explained above, until you have an error list of about 8 to 15 words, depending upon your child’s age, aptitude and motivation. Now turn to the front of the exercise book and divide the page into two columns. The left hand column should be about two inches wide. Draw about five horizontal lines across the page, evenly spaced, so altogether you should have about 10 small boxes and 10 large boxes.

Each horizontal pair of boxes deals with just one spelling word. In the smaller left hand box your child copies the word out four or five times. Now be careful here; your child must study the structure of the word, cover it up and try to write it correctly. This process is repeated for each copying of the word. In the large box to the right your child tries to build words, using the dictionary if necessary So if the core word were ‘play’ the word building could consist of ‘plays’, ‘played’, ‘playing’ etc. Then, in the same box, the core word should be written in a short sentence which shows the meaning, for example, ‘I play with my friends.’ All this can be done by the child without you, in other words this is spelling homework from mum or dad.

At the end of the week give your child a spelling lesson. Correct the work which has been done and set any follow-up. Proceed thus for about one month. Now, we need to start something extra. As part of each week’s spelling lesson, from now on, go to the front of the exercise book and test your child on the words he or she has been learning for you, just the core words, not the word building. At least half these words, after a period of one month, should have been successfully learned. You can cross them off forever. Any words that are wrong are placed into the current week’s spelling list. In time these words will come up again. So once a word goes into your child’s spelling list it stays there until it can be remembered.

Spelling is an area where parents can make a real difference at home because spelling is best taught individually. You may decide to only implement part of the above spelling program, using, for example, only words from one or two sources. The important thing is to get started. Remember that once you have started most of the work is done by your child.

If you follow this spelling scheme regularly, and your child tries hard, and at school as well, you should see a significant improvement in spelling after about six months. This improvement can be scientifically measured if you can access what are called standardised spelling tests consisting of a number of parallel versions. But I think you have had enough on spelling for the moment. So please give all this some serious consideration, and then try it, otherwise you may need to buy a cross-cut paper shredder!

All content copyright—Mark Thackray—Australian Educational Services