Presenter: Paul Woodfall With thanks to Johanna Sterling, Kerry Malster and Karen Ryan for their...

Presenter: Paul Woodfall

With thanks to Johanna Sterling, Kerry Malster and Karen Ryan for their ideas

Spilling.. Spelin.. Spieling?

What is a ghoti?

Enough Ghoti used to be caught by men

cooked by women

eaten by most of the population here

before junk food came into our lives …

Yes - the answer is “fish”

Confusing?

There are reassuring patterns

How many ways How many ways can we spell the can we spell the

soundsound

/ɪ/ /ɪ/ ??

i as in fishi as in fish

i as in kitcheni as in kitchen

Brown: 2005

61%61%

There are reassuring patterns

How many ways How many ways can we spell the can we spell the

soundsound

/aɪ/??

i_e as in likei_e as in like

ie as in pie ie as in pie

yy as in try as in try

Brown: 2005

95%95%

Fun Activities to Motivate:

Visual

Word Wall

Find words within a word - e.g. believe, frightened

Create words out of a word

Fun Activities to Motivate:

Visual

Word Wall

Find words within a word - e.g. believe, frightened

Create words out of a word

Fun Activities to Motivate

Visual

Board races

Noticing the shape of a word/part of a word

Look, Say, Cover, Write, Check

Noticing the shape of words

Look, Say, Cover, Write, Check

Look/Say cover

Write Check

Write check

Revise later

Copy and say the word

No

What’s difficult?

How to remember Word shape

receipt

7ei and silent p

i before e except after c

No pay, no receipt

Fun Activities to Motivate

Auditory

Phoneme discrimination activities

Ball game

Slow spell

Blockbusters

w

u

f

i

e

p

v

c

t

d

k

n

s

h

b

y

o

l

m

r

Fun Activities to Motivate

Kinaesthetic

Feel the spelling – air, hands, backs

Alphabetti word scramble

Whole body spelling

Highlighting tricky parts of words moulding, highlighting, over-writing

Fun Activities to Motivate

Cognitive

Noticing

Test Teach Test e.g. with spelling test followed by matching to rules and re-testing later

Noticing activityHow observant are you?

What time did the sun set yesterday?

How many sides are there usually on a pencil?

On traffic lights, what colour do you see after

green? Red or yellow?

What shape is a stop sign?

Can you describe the front door of this building?

Test Teach Test example

welcome

swimming

studying

watches

hoping

receive

knives

After the test, students check

and correct their own spelling by

matching with a rule from the

worksheet on common spelling

patterns.

E.g. 1. above matches with

spelling pattern k.

There are reassuring patterns

/e/ (ten) is “e” 84% /ʊ/ (good) is “u” 64%

/ʌ/ (mud) is “u” 63%

There are reassuring patterns

/æ/ (cat) is only “a” 100% of the time

/ɔɪ/ (boy) “oi” / “oy” 100%

/aʊ/ (cow) “ou” / “ow” 99%

/ɑː/ (car) “ar” / “a” 94%

There are reassuring patterns

/əʊ/ (hope) “o” / “o_e” / “oe” / “ow” 93%

/ɒ/ (hot) is “o” 92%

/ɜː/ (bird) “er” / “ir” / “ur” / “or” / 89%

/iː/ (sheep) “e” / “e_e” / “ee” / “ea” 89%

References

•Brown, A. 2005. Sounds, Symbols and Spellings. McGraw Hill

•Hancock, M. 1995. Pronunciation Games. CUP

•Sterling, J. 2011. Teaching Spelling to English Language

Learners. Self-published, available online at Amazon or contact:

johanna.stirling@gmail.com

Swan & Smith B. 2001. Learner English.CUP

http://www.e-lang.co.uk/mackichan/call/pron/type.html