Interaction with Students
Accurate spelling isn’t achieved through memorization. It requires abstract linguistic ("orthographic") representations that these students have difficulty developing. Sheer memorization of spellings is a very unproductive use of learning energy. Be judicious in penalizing students for misspellings unless they have had a reasonable opportunity to use human or technological spelling check.
Interventions for spelling difficulty:
- Help student learn to use spell-check effectively.
- Mark misspelled words, but let student make corrections.
- Draw student’s attention to important spelling contrasts (e.g., common heterographic homophones (e.g., there/their;here/hear)
- Punctuation and capitalization conventions can also be very resistant to explici instruction.
These are not the result of carelessness or "lack of effort" in previous learning.
Recommended responses:
- Mark errors and explain principles, but don’t expect a memorization approach to work wonders.
- Suggest strategies for deciding where punctuation should be used, but don’t expect quick resolution.
- Proof written work with student, allowing her/him to find errors with guidance and decide on fixes.
