Learning how to spell every word correctly can be a daunting task. Many times, students feel overwhelmed when it comes time to go back and correct spelling mistakes in their written work. This is why we, as future teachers, need to be sure that we approach spelling in a way that is not intimidating, We need to be sure that they know WHY they need to be able to spell correctly. The main reason that Wilde gives, is that students need to make sure that the person who is reading their work is easily able to understand the meaning, instead of going through and being confused because there are a lot of spelling mistakes. Wilde gives five strategies to help students learn spelling.

1. Placeholder spelling:  Writing down how YOU think the word sounds, even if you don't know how to spell it. For example, if the word was "breakfast:, a student might write "brekfest".

2.Human resources:  Asking another person how to spell a word.

3.Using textual resources: Go to a written text for the correct spelling, such as a dictionary.

4: Creating a print-rich environment: Classrooms need to have a lot of different texts and references. Such as "wall charts with words commonly used in writing",, charts of vocabulary words, thesaurus, different dictionaries, ect.

5.Generation, Monitoring, and Revision:  Students write down words, even if they don't know how to spell them, then they look back and see if the word looks like it is spelled correctly, and then they are able to go back and revise the words if they are misspelled.


I think that all of these strategies are helpful ideas, and ones that I will be sure to use in my classroom.