Learning Style and The Spelling Game

I was a natural speller, but my sons were not. I never understood why I could ace my school spelling tests without studying, or why some folks can spell easily and some can’t, until I struggled with my own kids’ inability to spell. My older son loved to make up tales. When he was five, he told me he was going to write a story. I was secretly thrilled. He stood in front of me, pencil and paper poised in the air, and asked, “What comes after the W in once?’

“Well, actually it’s spelled like this,” I wrote the word ONCE in chalk on the blackboard. He took one look and threw away his paper and pencil. As he fled the room, muttering something like “never again,” I regretted ever showing him how to spell the word. It was a long time (over a year) before he was willing to put a story down on paper, and then only if I took dictation, and only if I caught him in the right moment.

It might be first thing in the morning, when he wanted to tell me his dream, or midafternoon when he’d talk about a character he had drawn, or after a visit to a friend’s when he was bursting with news. I would run over to the computer and type whatever he had just said, and then urge him on by saying, “Tell me more,” or “What happened next?” In this way his stories took form, inspiring illustrations and easy bookmaking, a self-publishing experience that gave him pride of authorship. When teaching young writers (including pre-writers), I have used this same approach, offering students a scribe when needed, and finishing with a mini-project that showcases their work.

Student often come to me as reluctant writers, especially if they have been in a traditional school. Their resistance might stem from over-correction or being compared to other writers or students. My five-year-old young son didn’t need external comparison. As soon as he realized that once wasn't not spelled phonetically, he sensed the futility of creating written work that might not be understood. Even at age five, he wanted his work to look good, and he wanted it right away, not after years of effort studying grammar and spelling.

The core of writing is not mechanics. When we value a writer, we are not thinking about the grammar or spelling or how neat the handwriting is. That is all at the surface, yet we long to look deeper, to discern the soul of the author, and to be moved by their words. What we care most about is the story! Every professional writer uses an editor and a proof-reader (often more than one). After an author pours their heart into their work, they get help with the mechanics.

The innate need and desire for expression takes priority over mastering the rules of English. We must encourage our children and students (and also ourselves) to write freely without feeling hindered by the rules. There’s a reason why the first draft is called a “rough draft” – it’s supposed to be messy and unfinished, with the single goal of capturing an idea. Develop the love of writing first and find ways to tap the creative flow of ideas. When focusing on mechanics like spelling and grammar, which are the boring parts, I suggest keeping practice to a bare minimum, maybe 5 to 10 minutes a few times a week.

When my younger son was in school, he kept failing his weekly spelling exams. On Monday he came home with a list of words that he was expected to know by Friday. Every day he wrote out the words and corrected his own errors. And every Friday he failed the test. I started wondering why it was so much harder for him to spell than it was for me.

Individual Learning Style

Everyone has a dominant learning style or type of intelligence. My primary learning pathway is visual. As a child I had an almost photographic memory. After reading a page, I could imagine the page in my mind, including the details of what the paper and the book looked and felt like. I was an avid reader, with a head full of words and pages. When my 8th grade class performed A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I memorized everyone’s part while we were still in rehearsal. Spelling was easy for me because I was taking a mental photograph of every word.

But my sons were not visual learners. Using an at-home self-test from the book Discover Your Child’s Learning Style by Mariemma Willis and Victoria Hodson, I confirmed that I was a visual learner, while my older son was an auditory learner and my younger son was a kinesthetic learner. This was a lightbulb moment for me, when I stopped wondering why my kids weren’t like me, and started accepting their differences. Here’s a simplified self-test for four different learning styles.

Standard IQ tests rarely recognize the multiple intelligences from Dr. Howard Gardner’s extensive work (see Related Articles below), and traditional schools and curricula are usually geared at one or two learning styles, or types of intelligence.

I had been trying to get my older son to turn off the music and study in quiet, because that’s what works for me. I now realized that he needed music in order to focus! I had wanted my younger son to sit comfortably while studying (again, my personal preference) but now realized that he learned best when physically active. They both had stories to tell, and something to say, but neither of them could spell!

Developing a Spelling Game

When my son was failing those weekly spelling tests, I grappled with the fact that the English language might be one of the hardest in the world when it comes to spelling. Our words come from so many other languages, that every spelling rule is broken, perhaps more than 50% of the time! For example, the “i before e” rule that I had to memorize in grammar school is broken in plurals or verb tenses such as “fancies.” It is impossible to learn how to spell correctly by memorizing spelling rules! In fact, the only way we memorize spelling is visually. The proof is that when we’re not sure how something is spelled, we write it out and ask ourselves, “Does this look right?” If we’re not sure, we write it another way and ask which one looks right. So I created a game that relies on visual repetition.

I used my son’s misspelled words from his own writing, along with any words he wanted or needed to learn. It is best when the words come from the student’s spoken and written vocabulary. I would ask him to look at a page he had written and circle or underline any words he thought were misspelled. This reinforces the self-correction process we use as adults. I praised him for recognizing misspelled words. If he chose ones that were not misspelled, then I praised him for having spelled those words correctly. There was a lot of praise going around and very little pressure. (If he wanted to, he could erase and correct these words in his writing). If I ended up with a short list, I might add a few misspelled words he failed to notice, or ask him to give me a few more he wanted to learn. I typed out the words and copied them in a second column, so I had two of each word for our game.

The Spelling Game

The Spelling Game that I created is a form of “Concentration”, a matching game from my childhood TV shows, designed for two players.

To prepare:

Write down every spelling word twice and cut them out. Make sure the words do not show through. The pieces should be identical in size and shape, and look blank from the back.

To make the “board”:

Mix up the words. Place them face down, randomly (not in order), in neat rows to form a grid of "board.” on any tabletop. The grid does not have to be square, but it should be symmetrical. For example, 10 pairs of words will make 20 pieces or small cards, which can form a grid four rows down and five rows across. When you turn the cards over, each word should be upright, ready to be read. 

The first turn:

Decide who will go first. Player #1 turns over a single card (their choice), says the word, and spells it out loud. Then the same player turns over a second card, says the word and spells it aloud. If the words are the same, it’s a match, and the player takes the two cards from the “board” to keep. Leave the blank spaces in your board as they are. Do not rearrange the cards -- it’s a memory game! You need to remember where each work was the last time you saw it. If the words don’t match, turn the cards back (face down). If it was a match, not only does the player get to keep the word cards, but they can go again!

The second player then repeats the process, hoping to find two words that match. If they match, that player keeps the cards and has another turn. If there’s no match, the first player goes again.

When all the cards are gone, whoever has the most cards (or matches) wins.

If the student wants, you can this game two or three times in a row, maybe for a total of ten or fifteen minutes. It’s always best to stop before the student is bored and leave them wanting more. Play the game again a day or two later, and maybe again later in the week, if they’re not bored with the same words. At the end of the week, you can quiz your child on the word list. Most, if not all, of the words will be spelled correctly. It’s easy to see why when you count how many times you look at the words (reading and spelling them slowly and carefully), taking a mental picture of the words again and again every time you play the game. My son enjoyed this game so much that when we skipped a week, he asked why!

Prioritize Learning Style

In adulthood, my older son became a writer who creates a playlist for every character and setting. He uses his auditory pathway to increase his focus and inspiration. He is still a bad speller but, like all writers, can get help to polish his wonderful tales. (Spellcheck alone is not enough!)

My younger son chose physical pursuits, and became a massage therapist with a focus on acupressure. He is also a confident speaker with a strong voice and decent writing skills. When he needs to write, he asks others for feedback, which is helpful for all writers who want to improve and correct their work. 

The fact that my sons were not visual learners, and are, in fact, poor spellers, did not stop them from learning good communication skills. Anyone can learn to write from their heart!

Spelling Resources

For a foundational approach to spelling, try Sequential Spelling, a curriculum designed for children with dyslexia or learning disabilities. Students rewrite misspellings just once, and learn basic spelling patterns in a concrete manner that also teaches common prefixes and suffixes. Here are some sample pages. At home, we tried this in workbook form (formerly called AVKO), skipped the quizzes and found the system simple, pain-free, and effective.   

Alternative Resources for Language Arts including Grammar (downloadable pdf) includes a list of grammar books for elementary to high school years, that use humor or fantasy to make a boring task fun. Scroll to the last page of the pdf.

Related Articles

Multiple Intelligences (MI) by Howard Gardner shows that all intelligence is multi-faceted. Here are eight different types of intelligence described.

Multiple Intelligences drawn from Dr. Gardner’s work, showing a list of nine.

How to Learn Something in Eight Different Ways by Dr. Thomas Armstrong, includes a short video demonstration.

The Take-Out Curriculum is an early writing project that uses inventive spelling, allowing young children to create their own spelling and write more freely.

Games That Teach Parts of Speech introduce basic elements of English in a way that’s fun for the whole family, and offers a practical method for inspired storytelling.

Seven Poetry Games are ways to make writing fun for any age!