Spelling

Last year, while reading Volume 1 of the Original Homeschooling series, I found very detailed instructions regarding spelling. It appears that Charlotte Mason’s approach to spelling is not often taught in the Charlotte Mason circles.

After reading Charlotte Mason’s ideas on spelling, I realized how I had been truly doing my children (the two that are not natural spellers) a disservice.

You see, I had been allowing them to write stories with their horrid spelling for years. They would spell phonetically, which I thought was fine. I didn’t correct their spelling, but encouraged their writing knowing that nit-picking their spelling would crush the writer in them. (Incidentally, they do love to write – but with their current spelling, I can’t bear to see their writing). I had done this with my daughter also, but she became a good speller anyway.

Charlotte’s Teaching on Spelling

A child learns spelling through copywork – but not incidentally. They learn by making a concerted effort to learn to spell during copywork. The mind learns the correct spelling by studying the word with the goal of imprinting the word upon the mind. The way a child spells the word when they write it, seeing it in their mind, will be the way they remember that as the spelling (my boys have memorized the wrong spelling for many words).

In copywork, the child should never copy each letter of a word in turn. They are to see the entire word, memorize its spelling, then copy the word without looking. If it is a difficult word, they should try to spell it outloud with their eyes closed and see if it is correct before writing it.

If the child copied it wrong, the teacher is to immediately cover the word. Charlotte Mason suggested some sort of typing tape, I think a white sticker would do. She was vehement about the fact that a child should never be allowed to gaze upon a word that was misspelled (a common problem with spelling programs). The child who is allowed to see a misspelled word is in danger of imprinting the misspelling upon their mind. (Ack! Wish I had read this years and years ago!)

This is where my previous method of allowing my children to write story after story with atrocious spelling missed the mark. My boys continuously wrote the word “they” as “thay” and the like; it’s been like walking through deep mud trying to deprogram them from all these misspellings.

Now, I do believe some children can misspell words in early elementary and not be in danger of always misspelling the word. Those children are natural spellers. They usually learned to read without a reading program and memorized how words were spelled as they read them. Children that had a more difficult time learning to read, will probably need a bit more monitoring with their spelling.

Charlotte Mason suggests this method during copywork to teach spelling:

Before a child copies a difficult word, they must memorize its spelling, studying it. Encourage them to close their eyes and see if they can see the word in their head; with their eyes closed, spell it out loud. If they get it correct, they are ready. They should always copy the entire word without looking back at the passage.

When dictating (they should always begin dictating something they have previously copied), mom should go over every word they may have trouble spelling. Help them to see it in their mind. Allow them to practice writing those words correctly before embarking upon the dictation. Write the difficult words on the board very large so they can imprint the correct spelling on their mind. Once every word is well known, they can then do the dictation.

Oh me, oh my, I wish I could express to you how amazingly well this procedure works with poor spellers. My boys (8 and 10) can spell words like Almighty, shelter, refuge and shadow with ease, while they still misspell words like “where” (whar) and there (thar). I truly don’t know how long it will take to completely deprogram the wrong spellings, but Charlotte Mason was right to be so strenuous in her writings on this.