Spelling for Beginners

[Music] have you ever watched the sign being changed at a neighborhood theater without correctly spelled words we have no way of knowing what the sign says when the letters are placed in their proper order we can read the words five cartoons today correctly spelled words tell people things they want or need to know and when we spell words correctly we tell others what we want them to know that's so important for us to learn how to be good spellers would you like to know how we can become better [Music] spellers here are four spelling helpers who I think can lead us or anyone to better spelling the first big helper the look helper tells us that we must look carefully at each word we want to spell another helper is the listen helper he reminds us to listen carefully to the way a word sounds here's the say helper he tells us to say the spelling word to say it out loud carefully this big helper is the right helper who tells us to write every word we want to learn to spell you can see that that look and write are our two big helpers now let's say the name of all of our helpers together ready look listen St all right Jerry suppose you come to the board for a minute Jerry I'd like you to spell the word hit for me now Look at the word now you say the word hit hit now comes the important step write the word that's right let's all listen as I say it again hit the letters H and I together give us the same sound in hit as the H and I in hill and him thank you Jerry there are some words words like hit which we can often spell just by listening to them but to spell most words we need our other helpers let me show you what I mean let's all spell the word to just write the word at your desk all right how many spell this word and how many spell this word to or this word to you see some words sound exactly alike but have different meanings and different spellings so listening to a word is only one way to help us spell a word we must always look at the words we want to learn to spell let's try another word the word broke there now that you've listened to the word and looked at it Judy suppose you write it for us no it doesn't look quite right does it you forgot the advice of our third spelling helper what does he tell us to do to say the word all right Judy say the word you've spelled b that isn't WR it should be broke b r o k now write the word Judy bir Oak yes saying the word helps us remember how the word looks especially words like broke which have a silent letter such as this e words in which the letters just seem to get mixed up are only one kind of word that may give us trouble for example we know that the letters S and H together have the same sound in words like shut or show but there are other words that also have the sound of sh in them such as sure and sugar but we don't spell them with an sh only an S so sounds in words may play tricks on it that's why we need the advice of all our spelling helpers for each word we want to spell but especially we need to follow the advice of look and write and even so there are many words that can still give us trouble for example there are words spelled with silent letters that we don't hear when we say the words the T in the word listen is a silent letter so are the K and E in the word knife when we listen or say the word knife we hear only the letters n i and f the letters K and E are silent to learn to spell words with silent letters we must be sure to follow the advice of our look helper remember to look at words like knife before you write them in the next few weeks after our lesson on the spelling helpers our class spent much time practicing their spelling one way we practiced was by writing and correcting words after the boys and girls had written the words I would spell the words correctly for them out loud some days we spelled with Partners each pair of Partners would test one another on Words that were giving them trouble after one partner had written his words the other partner spelled the words correctly out loud so that the words could be corrected As Time passed we practiced using our spelling helpers in many ways when one way was to practice in teams each team spelled words by adding on to the letters such as o and a these two letters together often have an o sound one team added a b which gave a b sound and then a t for boat a c gave them a CO for coat and then they spelled goat Loaf and soak of course we knew through using our look helper that some words which have an o sound words like whole old Mo though and even this word so which has no o in it have different spellings of this o sound we gotten more practice with our spelling helpers by making posters for our class bulletin board writing letters and writing stories so we were practicing ways to better spelling and to help us spell we'd follow the good advice of our spelling helpers can you spell their names look listen say right yes we found these helpers led us to better spelling you can be a better speller too