Key issues involved in the primary school teaching and learning of spelling - Essay Example

Key Issues of Primary education spelling Spelling is a reproduction of word shapes stored in the mind into letterforms. It is relating speech through sequences of letters to capture language sounds. Visual spelling relates speech and writing to provide speech, rules of spelling start in writing to letter sequences of pronunciation. It is recording remembered letter sequences, word shapes or heard sounds in graphic form. Spelling is relating medium of sound into graphic substance. This paper discusses the learning, teaching, understanding and spelling development in primary education.

Complex changes continue to abolish existing economic framings, social, cultural; and arrival of new local, intermediary and global levels. The inevitable global finance, culture, shifts of new information in industry and extreme transport speed has transformed many things. For a century, education has stayed put and met the needs of its society as part of the change. Spelling is a linguistic bit of practice issuing control, authority and conformity with sharp focus. It represents resources used to make meaning.

System in spelling seems to be a subject of constraints convention, and yet one creating creativity in children (Torbe 34).Natural learning method is an instructional approach to spelling that arrests spelling development contrary to ineffective methods. Constrains of literacy usually result when there is spelling development is compromised. Acquiring spelling knowledge, for instance reinforces children’s morphemic, phonemic and orthographic knowledge (Phonics 56). Proficient spelling applies invented mnemonics helping to memorize irregular and difficult words such as ARITHMETIC – A Red Indian Thought He Might Eat Treacle In Church); patterns sharing in terms of language (for example, through songs, rhymes, poems and puns); checking of work and drafting and redrafting; a look remembrance write check system for learning individual words; encouraging handwriting, which is fluent, avoiding letter by letter spelling of words, for example, a child spells Keep as k-e-ep, instead of k-ee-p to stress phonic units (Gentry 93).

Morphemes as a unit within words help children progress from meaning to structure. Etymology as a strategy advocates the teaching of origins, roots and word structure. Internalizing visual characteristic of words extensively makes one become a good speller in written language. For instance, experience teaches an individual that house is written through this sequence of letters. The high degree and rapid speed that a competent speller translates a word is the graphic knowledge (Gentry 93).Encoding unfamiliar words has some children use sounds and letters to connect phonological knowledge.

The child builds on vocabulary of known spelling, improving confidence in writing development. The child prepares to take risks, though it limits the capability of the child words as a writer. Margaret Peters in (Spelling or Taught) argues that spelling is not taught in a reading, but rather for children who are not conversant with the system. She maintains that letter patterns and serial probability of English letters help achieve spelling development. Margaret expressed that turning point for children’s’ spelling development depends on translation of sounds to symbols and embracing English visual dimensions in spelling system (Westwood 56).

According to Gentry, children’s development involve five stages; phonetic where words a spelled the sounds e.g. ATE = eighty, EGL=eagle, Precommunicative. Letters of the alphabet are without letter-sound correspondence. Example: RTAT=eighty; OPSPO=eagle. Transitional has apparent visual memory of spelling patterns. The spellings have conventions of English orthography of vowel digraph patterns, vowels in syllables and well spelled inflectional endings. Semiphonetic has some sounds represented in letters.

Example; A =eighty; E=eagle (Sterlin & Cliff 15).Works CitedGentry R. (1987) Spel… is a four letter word, Leamington Spa: Scholastic. London: Routledge (first published 2001) Ch. 13. Print Phonics: Practice, Research and Policy. London: UKLA / PCP. PrintSterling C. M, Cliff R. Psychology, Spelling and Education. Clevedon: Philadelphia, 2007. Print.Torbe M. Teaching and Learning Spelling. New York: Cassell P L C, 1996. PrintWestwood P. S. Spelling: Approaches to Teaching and Assessment. Camberwell, Victoria: ACER Press, 2005. Print.