Even good readers may have difficulty spelling but for
students with learning disabilities, mastery of spelling is an even greater
challenge. Students with specific reading disability have significant
difficulties with spelling and typically make much slower progress in spelling
than in reading. Even though disabled spellers progress through the same early
stages of spelling development as normal spellers, they progress at a much
slower rate and may never achieve the highest levels of spelling skill.
Spelling is a linguistic skill which depends upon sensitivity to the sounds of
words (phonology) as well as to letter patterns (orthography) within words. It
is important to note that orthographic memory is different from visual memory
and poor spellers may perform quite well on traditional tests of visual memory
and visual-spatial skills. Studies of poor spellers indicate that impaired
readers make errors related to orthography, phonology, and morphology. The
students who responded best to instruction were those who made fewer errors
related to phonology and morphology. Research indicates no relationship between
IQ and spelling skills.
Spelling instruction should be thoroughly integrated with
word identification instruction rather than a separate process. For students
with persistent reading and spelling difficulties, the sequence of spelling
skills should be the same as for reading. Therefore, the best approach is to
use materials for reading instruction which include spelling skills carefully
coordinated with word identification. If using materials which do not include
spelling, the teacher must carefully coordinate spelling instruction so that it
matches the reading curriculum. Words to be spelled by encoding should be the
same words that the student is taught for decoding. Irregular words for
spelling should be those words which are needed to read the decodable texts
that are used for practice of reading. Assessment of spelling skills can also
be used to guide instruction for individual students. For example, students who
are significantly more advanced in reading than spelling might be working on
roots and prefixes for reading but require additional work in more basic
spelling patterns. Careful and detailed assessments of spelling skills can
provide guidance for the teacher in selecting areas for remedial instruction.
Even with such students (more advanced in reading than spelling), the teacher
should connect the spelling skills to reading. For example, consider a student
who has not yet mastered the doubling rules for spelling but can read these
words correctly. This student could be led to discover the rules that govern
spelling through analysis of the words and then given systematic practice
spelling these words. It is important for teachers (many of whom are intuitive
spellers) to thoroughly understand the rules and patterns which govern spelling
in English.
