Correcting Spelling Mistakes

Even the best speller will occasionally spell words incorrectly. The way you respond to mistakes and help children spell a word correctly can be very effective teaching moments.

Teaching Steps

Ask the child to accurately decode the word they have actually written. For many students just this step can be sufficient for them to identify the point of error and to make the correction.

bater for batter=/bayter/ pant for paint=/pant/ klod for cold=/clod/

Ask the child to identify the sounds in the word and to draw a line or a box for each sound.

batter=/b/-/a/-/t/-/er/ _ _ _ _ paint=/p/-/ai/-/n/-/t/ _ _ _ _ cold=/k/-/o/-/l/-/d/ _ _ _ _

If relevant, have the child identify the different grapheme(s) (letters or letter combinations) that can be used to represent the sounds.

/ay/ – is most commonly represented by ay-tray, ai-rain or a-e cake

Discuss any relevant rules.

batter – the /a/ is a short vowel sound, so double the consonant to keep the vowel short

paint – ‘ay’ is only used at the end of words, ‘a-e’ has only one consonant sound in between, so must be ‘ai’.

cold – use ‘c’ not ‘k’ when the next letter is a, o, u, l or r.

Fill in the sound boxes with the correct letters.

batter= b-a-tt-er paint= p-ai-n-t cold= c-o-l-d

Discuss strategies for remembering any tricky components.

Think: I paint in the rain (because they both use ‘ai’).

Return to the spelling error and have the child make the necessary corrections.

Suffix Errors

Ask the child to identify the base word.

cryed for cried – base word=cry artest for artist=art carfull for careful=care

Ask the child to write the base word.
Identify the suffix and the meaning of the suffix.

cryed=ed (past tense) artest=est (comparing 3+ items) carfull=ful (full of)

Discuss any errors that are relevant at this point.

‘artist’ uses the suffix ‘ist’ which means a person who.

When using ‘full’ as a suffix drop an ‘l’.

Discuss any rules relevant to adding the suffix.

cryed – words ending in ‘y’= change ‘y’ to ‘i’ and add ‘es’ or the suffix

carfull – words ending in ‘e’=’e’ goes away when adding a suffix beginning with a vowel (‘ful’ begins with a consonant so the ‘e’ should be retained).

Add the suffix onto the base word applying the relevant rules.
Return to the spelling error and have the child make the necessary corrections.

Notes:

Provide as much scaffolding as required. If the spelling error is due to a concept that had not yet been taught, then provide this information and make a note to explicitly teach this concept in a future lesson.
Words spelled incorrectly should be included in the child’s list of spelling words to be learned (or re-included if it is a word that has already been covered).
Use a similar process when children ask how to spell a particular word (i.e., help the child establish if there is a base word and any prefixes or suffixes, identify the sounds in the base word, assist in making connections to particular graphemes used in the word and identify relevant rules, add on prefixes/suffixes applying relevant rules).