Teaching Spelling: Sounds, Syllables, and Morphemes

Teaching spelling can feel like a daunting task. As a middle and high school ELA teacher - I did the only two things I knew how to do when my students spelled words incorrectly - I either told my students how to spell the word or guided them to use a dictionary. 

Once a reading specialist with a masters degree in literacy education, I still didn't fully know how to help students with their spelling errors, especially when they were phonetically correct. What was I supposed to do when they spelled jumped as jumpt or fabulous as fabulus?

Today I’m going to share four simple strategies you can use to guide all students - of all ages and backgrounds - to read and spell 98% of words in the English language (Eide, 2012, p.15). 

You can watch me talking through and modeling each strategy in this video: 

*These strategies don't apply to the 2% of irregular, high-frequency words that must be explicitly taught using methods such as “the heart word approach” - words like of, where, and their. You can find the strategy to teach those words on the free tools page of RLD’s website or within my book linked above.

English is a morphophonemic language,

meaning we do not solely use letters to represent sounds (which is what phonics is) - we also use letters to represent meaning (morphology). 

Let’s look at the word jumped: 

• the base word, jump, is phonetic (each letter represents one speech sound)

• the -ed suffix is a morpheme - it’s not phonetic - we hear the sound /t/ but do not use a t because the purpose of this part of the word is to relay meaning - past tense through -ed - not to relay the /t/ sound

If English were just phonetic, jumped would be spelled as jumpt. 

Why does spelling matter? 

Spelling is a critical component of literacy development. Strong spelling skills directly support reading fluency and comprehension. When students can accurately encode (spell) words, they are better able to decode (read) them. This connection between spelling and reading is fundamental and should guide our instructional practices.

Beyond memorization: Evidence-based strategies

Many traditional spelling programs rely heavily on rote memorization, which is ineffective and frustrating for students. Instead, we need to focus on teaching the underlying principles of the English language, including phoneme-grapheme correspondences, syllable types, and morphology.

Here are some core principles that should guide spelling instruction:

• Phonemic Awareness: Guide students to correctly identify and pronounce individual speech sounds. This is essential for spelling, as letters are assigned to represent those sounds.

• Systematic Phonics: Teach the relationships between sounds and letters (graphemes) in a systematic and explicit manner, following a foundational literacy scope and sequence. During this instruction, students learn spelling concepts such as when to ai or ay to spell the long vowel /ā/. 

• Syllable Awareness: Help students understand how words are divided into syllables and the different syllable types (e.g., closed, open, vowel-consonant-e, vowel team, r-controlled, consonant-le).

• Morphology: Explore the meaning and spellings of word parts, including prefixes, suffixes, and bases. This knowledge helps students spell complex words accurately, as many suffixes are not phonetic (-ed has three sounds, and -tial is pronounced /shul/, for example).

Putting It Into Practice: What does instruction look like?

In my latest YouTube video, I walk you through four practical strategies for teaching spelling, showing you exactly how to guide your students through each process, making spelling instructional clear and actionable: 

1. One-Syllable Words (e.g., bat): How to guide students through phoneme-grapheme correspondences.

2. One-Syllable Words with Suffixes (e.g., jumped): Teaching students to segment the base word and then add the suffix for morphophonemic words, preventing phonetic spelling errors like “jumpt” from occurring.

3. Two Syllable Phonetic Words: Breaking down words into syllables and applying phoneme-grapheme correspondences.

4. Multisyllabic Word Strategies: Teaching students to apply their knowledge of morphology, syllables, spelling concepts, and phoneme-grapheme correspondences to spell multisyllabic words. 

To ensure our instruction is effective, it’s essential to assess our students’ spelling skills regularly. Check out our free diagnostic spelling assessment tools that will help you identify your student’s strengths and areas for growth, allowing you to tailor your instruction to meet their individual needs.

Reference

Eide, Denise. 2012. Uncovering the Logic of English: A Common-Sense Approach to Reading, Spelling, and Literacy. Rochester, MN: Logic of English, Inc. 

Related Article: The Why and How of Teaching Morphemes as a Content Area Teacher

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Heather Ballantine, Founder & CVO of Root Literacy Design LLC