This chapter will cover various spelling techniques that are dyslexia friendly. There is an absence of phonic learning in this lesson, not because the author does not agree with phonics but because that is a stand-alone course. This course is concerned with other techniques without discrimination.

The various techniques are presented and shown as a toolkit; there is no preference given to any technique. Think of it as a plumber or electrician’s tool bag. The more tools that a person has, the more potential he/she has for getting the job done.

Whilst it may sound crude, that is exactly what spelling tutors need; lots of tools and tricks of the trade to help even the most difficult and challenging spellers.

Potential

A quick side note on potential. Before arming yourself with any tools and spelling memory tricks, you should always believe that any child or adult that comes to you has a spelling potential. You need to hold onto the belief in another person’s potential from the start and hold it tighter when the learning is more difficult. Believing in a person’s potential is what will encourage you to work harder, change direction and approach the spelling from a different direction if needed. The best spelling tutors will believe and know the learner they are working with can learn to spell words and gain both confidence and competence.  They will never let go of that learner’s potential. This absolute belief in another person’s potential is what will enable the tutor to know the difference between needing more practice and when to put one tool down and pick up another.

If a plumber did every single task with the same spanner, they would be limiting the plumbing tasks they could complete successfully, what end results they could achieve and limit their ability to problem solve. The plumber needs to learn what ALL the tools are and what they can do with each tool. Only then they can choose the best one to fit the occasion. A newish Plummer might not know there are better tools and may at first have an ‘old faithful’ that they turn to frequently. A newish tutor may be the same. However, time and experience will help you to broaden your repertoire. This course will be the first step to unlocking the spelling potential that all children and adults have. 

Technique 1: Focus on The Orthology of language 

The orthology of language refers to the writing system we use in a language. It concerns how language works, what underpins grammar and the structure of words. It is a focus on the writing system itself rather than words as a whole.

Focusing on the orthology of the English Language gives the learner:-

This technique is the intertwinement of Morphology, Phonology and Etymology. Let’s look at each one and make sure we understand them fully before we move on.

Morphology:  Morphology is to do with meaning. When we break words into their smallest morphological parts, we break the words up into their smallest units of meaning. These small units of meaning are called morphemes. 

Let’s take the simple word ‘girls’. This is made up of two morphemes; girl + the (s) to make it plural.

Lets’ look at another example by taking the suffix ‘ness’. The morpheme ness means ‘the state of being or property of’.

• Shy
• Loud
• Sad
• Happy 

All of the above are words with one morpheme; we call these base words or base morphemes. We know the meaning of each of these words. Then we can add the morpheme ‘ness’ and add more meaning. All affixes (suffixes and prefixes) are morphemes.

• Shyness = the state or property of being shy
• Loudness = the state or property of being loud
• Sadness = the state or property of being sad
• Happiness = the state or property of being happy

We will come back to this in more detail later, but this word family based on morphemes (not sounds) will demonstrate how words can be broken up into their smallest unit of meaning.

• cover + ing → covering
• cover + s → covers
• dis + cover → discover 
• re + cover → recover
• re + cover + y → recovery 
• re + dis + cover + er → rediscover
• un + cover → uncover 
• un + dis + cover + ed → undiscovered

By the time children start school, they already know about morphology and how it works within their speech. They know if they add an ‘s’ to a word it makes it plural. However, when they go to school, morphology is completely wiped out and replaced with sound-based teaching methods. This is particularly confusing for children who have dyslexia and struggle with sounds. The loss of the morphology system and the move to using phonics is what Sandman-Hurley (2019) attribute to a reliance on ‘sound it out’ methods which easily leads to mistakes such as:

• two → tow
• spelled  → speld
• does → dose

Orthology concerns three parts of the English language and how they interact together. Let’s look at the other two parts.

Phonology: This is the study of how the organisation of speech sounds in languages and how these speech sounds are organised in the mind related to meaning. It is not about breaking words into the tiniest phonemes, it’s about keeping the morphology and the sounds that create each morpheme. So, the sound just marks the boundary of the morpheme, it acts as a container for each individual morpheme unit. 

Etymology: This is the study of the history and origins of words. You might now understand why you read a whole chapter on the history of language earlier. https://www.etymonline.com/ is a wonderful free resource where you (and your students) can look online at the etymology of individual words and find their Latin, Greek or other origins. You and your learners will really be able to understand the rich history within words and see how they are connected. Dictionaries that provide the origins of the words will also be beneficial to you and your learners. 

In 2010 Bowers, Kirby and Decon conducted an extensive literary study on the effect of morphology instruction on literacy skills and they found some very convincing results. Cross-referencing 22 studies (meta-analysis) they made four strong conclusions.

• Morphological instruction benefits learners
• It brings particular benefits to those who are less able (i.e have literacy difficulties)
• It is no less effective for younger children
• It is more effective when combined with other aspects of literacy instruction

Bowers and Bowers (2017) went further to say that the English spelling system is designed for meanings and the pronunciation of those meanings within words. So phonology (sounds) does play a big part, as the phonology is what creates the markings for the morphology boundaries.

The differences in the spelling ‘to‘, ‘too‘ and ‘two‘ are often classed as irregular. However, that is a mistake because the spellings show how the English spellings are coded for different meanings, rather than sounds. If you unpack homophones and look at them using morphology and etymology, you will see each one is connected to a family of words that are connected via meaning. Homophones are the biggest evidence of the English language spellings being based on meanings and not sounds. If the language system was just sounds, the homophones would sound different. The differences are only present in the spellings of the homophones because there is a difference in meaning.

The word two is an interesting example. It’s easy to dismiss this as being an irregular word and turn it into a sight word that a learner is just expected to learn. However, when we place it in its morphology family, the spelling makes more sense because it is connected with having two things, such as two, twice, twenty, twin and between. It’s the ‘w’ in all these words that is the etymological marker for having two things.  (Bower and Bower 2017).

Often the morphological relation between words (which helps you remember the spelling) is hidden because the phonology changes. Very simply, we can’t see the meaning connections because of the way we pronounce them. The word Sign is a good example of this. Sign, signal, signature, design all share the same morpheme ‘sign’. However, the ‘gn’ pronunciation changes, sign and signal are not phonologically related. Let’s look deeper.

 

The word sign stems from the early 13th century and means ‘the gesture of motion of the hand’. It is rooted in the Latin word signum ‘Identifying mark or token’. So with that knowledge, we can see the morphological relationship between sign and signal is shared even though they don’t sound the same, Sign and Signal have the same base word sign and the word signal has the suffix ‘al’ added (al means the process of or action).  If we were to use ‘sound it out’ methods, we would probably do: s-ig-nal, or s-i-gn, hence the true relationship between the words would be lost. If dyslexic learners can learn the spelling of the relationship, and what words are related by this meaning, the spellings of the related words will be automatic.

Teaching spelling this way creates meaning behind arbitrary sounds and it gives a dyslexic speller a comprehensive system to use for words that relate together via meaning. No word is learnt as a ‘sight word’ that is without a context. The use of the term ‘irregular’ or referring to words as weird could suggest to a learner that the English language is haphazard and doesn’t make sense, so they will always struggle with it. By looking at the interaction between Morphology, Phonology and Eytomolgy the dyslexic learner will always have a system and will understand the ‘why’s’ reasons behind spelling that often heightens memory recall as it provides a deeper method of learning.  Looking at the morphological relationship between please and pleasant helps learners to see a normally hidden relationship and a new way of remembering the spelling of the word ‘please’.

However, whilst this technique does give a dyslexic learner a very deep understanding of the workings within the English language and supports spelling by linking those understandings, it does require the tutor to have a firm commitment to understanding English orthology.  It is not enough to just present the prefixes and suffixes, it is vital that there is a commitment to helping a dyslexic learner explore the etymology and morphology within words.  Bower (2017) said that looking at the interplay between Morphology, Etymology and Phonology is not a programme, it is a science.  It requires the learner to be supported to make a scientific enquiry and investigate how words might be related, especially if the word initially seems like a strange spelling. It requires learners to make a hypothesis or educated guess about how words might be related, and then with your support to test them out.  Sadman-Hurley (2019) provides clear steps in how to approach this scientific investigation with learners. Let’s go back to that word two as an example.

1) Ask your dyslexic learner what is it about this type of word and its spelling that was difficult for them to understand.

• The ‘w‘ in the two is difficult to remember and why is it there?

2) Ask the learner (and with your help) to look up the meaning and origin of that word. Then ask them to think of other words that are related to the meaning and spelling.  Generate a list of words of all those you found.

• The meaning is related to the number 2. It comes from Old English Twa for the number 2.  If we take the tw It is like twin and twice.

3) Ask the learner what they noticed about the spelling in all these words we found?

• The tw

4) Ask the learner how are these words related by meaning?

• They all mean a two of something.

5) Ask the learner to describe why the spelling they were initially finding difficult is there, such as the w in to.

This type of investigation works well with learners that are relaxed and open to learning. However, for some dyslexic learners, you may have to start off the investigation process yourself and show them how it can work. Once the dyslexic learner can see the potential for a deeper understanding of how words are constructed beyond the sounds of them and beyond phonics, they will be motivated to join in. However, you really do need to have a commitment to understanding and building a bank of words where you know the entomology. If you can already dissect the base words from the affixes, you will be able to see what are just connector vowels, (e.g e, i, u, 0), as those will be all that is left.  For dyslexic learners who like to know ‘how and why things are the way they are, this technique will really suit them.

Not all dyslexic learners will benefit from exploratory learning and making connections independently, some may even be discouraged by it. Should this non-engagement be the case then you can switch to explicit instruction. You will need to have a grasp of the etymology of the English language and to see the morphemes in order to make it come alive. For example, knowing that ‘Sal‘ was the Latin word for salt, and ‘saltus‘ was the word for salted can help bring extra meaning to words like salary, for which the old Latin word was ‘salarium‘, and we used to pay for things with salt! A great book that will probably have you laughing out loud with the etymology of some words is ‘The etymologicon’ By Mark Forsyth. Look at where the word ‘avocado comes from…

A multisensory way of working with ontology is to have coloured cards. You will need a separate colour for each of the following:

• Prefixes
• The smallest morpheme base words
• Additional morpheme base words
• Suffixes
• Connecting vowels

With these different coloured cards and some + signs, you can make word sums with your dyslexic learner. They can then commit these sums to memory as they are encoding them into their long-term memory via meaning, colour and moving of the cards.

The take-home message of all of this is that you possess an opportunity to teach your dyslexic learner the deeper systems within language. After reading this chapter you should do everything possible to avoid falling into the trap of saying ‘weird’ words or even ‘irregular’ words. Please never say ‘crazy’ words as this suggest to the student that the English language is nonsensical and therefore they can never master it.

If you are going to work with children and adults aiming to support them with their spelling, it is always a good idea to read some books on etymology. This course would have to be chapters long to give you all the tools you need for that subject. However, reading just a few books will certainly give you a solid platform for you to enrich the English language for all learners. Just remember, once there is an answer to the conceptual underlying confusion – the ‘why’ – is answered, most dyslexic learners can learn faster and recall the spellings after.

Technique 2: Eradicating Trigger Words and Symbols Through 3D models

Whilst working with 3D models and dyslexia has been found amongst a lot of the dyslexia literature over the last 100 years, it is really the work of Ronald Davis (1997 and 2017) that gave ground to this approach and the reasoning behind why it is a successful way of supporting dyslexia spelling. Davis has worked with dyslexic children for almost 40 years and has a huge following of practitioners who implement his method of working.

Davis believes and argues for an understanding of dyslexia stemming from a particular gift to do with perception. He explains that children with dyslexia are able to see mental images (consciously or unconsciously) in their minds. These images are perceptions of any object they are trying to understand and they can mentally see this object from all angles.

He gives an example of a kitten. A child sees a kitten and knows what it looks like, but then one day the child sees the kitten curled up in a ball asleep. Before the child even knows about the properties of cats (fur and various positions) the child can spin all the perceptions of the kitten around in their mind until they can replicate this new object shape. Thus, they know it is a cat. They can use this ability of perception to create the images they cannot see. Dyslexic learners can often imagine what they would look like from behind, often with a clear mental image.

It is these perceptions that Davis terms as a unique gift for people who have dyslexia. Their minds are always in 3D mode and they can mentally imagine anything they see from any position. For example, a dyslexic child can imagine what they would look like from a side view when they are playing with a toy.  Davis draws extensively from the research of Thomast West (1997) and his groundbreaking book ‘In The Minds Eye’.

What makes Davis’s understanding of dyslexia convincing to many practitioners is that Davis can explain why so many dyslexic people can problem solve and work things out mentally, yet struggle with a lot of literacy-related tasks that involve reading and writing. Davis explains dyslexia as the ability to create a 3D world inside your mind and then being unable to switch from this 3D way of thinking to the 2D flat line symbols that form our English reading and writing system. If you read ‘The dyslexic adult in a non-dyslexic word’ by Moran and Klein (2000) accounts from adults continually describe this phenomenon.  Therefore, Davis suggests that when dyslexic learners learn how to translate their ideas and concepts from the flat line symbols we use for literacy and turn them into mental models for words, dyslexic learners can then read and write well.

However, if there is no associated 3D model, it creates a lack of meaningful mental representations in the mind and the dyslexic learner goes into a state of disorientation. It’s like all the pictures and the models collapse in the mind, and the leaner is left trying to work it out without their normal way of thinking. Also, this disorientation can also cause letter flips and non-stable images of words already learned. In order to try and work everything out and regain their mental pictures, the learner has to resort to intense concentration which reduces their cognitive processing.

Importantly, Davis strongly advocates that mental imagery is without auditory processing and that the natural state of the dyslexic mind is a non-verbal process. Therefore, everything is visually represented (consciously and unconsciously), these pictures tell a greater story which is why Davis believes that dyslexic learners understand concepts at a deeper level and can think about ideas in a deeper way.

The most important aspect of this technique is the focus on the non ‘picture words’. These are what Davis describes as trigger words for disorientation. When the lack of a picture word triggers the disorientation, children suddenly get worse and can no longer read the words they could before, as their brain is in a disorientated state creating multiple perspectives trying to stabilise the mental imagery it is used to.

List of picture words

Davis says all dyslexic learners need:

• Stable pictures for words
• To spell visually not phonetically
• A whole word approach
• Be creative and personal
• To make 3D models can be viewed from all angles
• To construct multi-sensory modelling to conquer silent visual words (trigger words)

The list of the trigger words are all words where it is difficult to associate a mental picture for the word as an object in own right, such as ‘and’, ‘also’, ‘the’, ‘about’, ‘are’ ‘become’, ‘done’ etc. You will recognise a lot of these words as high-frequency common words.

List of Davis’ trigger words. Click to download

The spelling technique is to create a 3D model associated with each word. However due to the nature of these words, you are creating a 3D model of the concept.  It’s very common to think that children will not be able to do this. How do you make a model or strong visual representation for the word ‘the’? However, you will be surprised at how they can. Learners with dyslexia can make visual representations of most concepts very easily.

Davis says dyslexic learners need to

• Look at the word
• Know what the word means
• Know what it sounds like (as a whole word)
• Create a model representation of the word, letter or number
• Make the word itself if making a model
• Visualise the word with the model in their mind

The drawback to this method is it can take a while. Using modelling plasticine is probably the best material, but make sure it is preheated before the child comes so as not to waste time warming this type of plasticine up before it’s mouldable.

You don’t need to work through every trigger word manually, perhaps there are just one or two words that won’t stick. Some children may need to do this with letters and numbers to get a visual representation of them before they can write.

Technique 3: Visual Spelling 

Learning to spell via some form of visualisation or making the words more visual is one of the most popular ways of teaching spelling with dyslexic learners. For the most part, visual techniques with spelling build upon the sounds of words or cuts away the sound altogether. Either way, visual spelling is a multisensory approach to which many learners with dyslexia benefit.  The techniques that follow are just a handful of examples of how to do embark on visual spelling with dyslexic learners.

Visualising a mental picture: This technique involves visualising spelling and seeing whole words in the mind’s eye, or in your imagination. It will feel strange to do at first because you are not asking the dyslexic learner to draw or write when learning, you are asking them to imagine and see words inside their mind. 

Our long-term memories often connect more reliably with pictures more than any other form of medium. We remember what we see more than we remember what we have read or heard. Many children and adults who struggle with maths only really begin to grasp it when they can see shapes and models in their mind and almost have them running alongside when they are working. Spelling is just the same, some people can explicitly see the words and letters in vibrant technicolour, and some people have a sense of the images being there. Many dyslexic children try and write using the pictures they see in their mind, why not add words to those pictures?

When people visualise, looking down tends to link to the feeling place. If your learner is anxious, worried or has low self-esteem connected to their spelling, it is advisable not to look down when visualising as this will heighten that emotion.

Looking to the side when visualising is linked to the auditory recall. Most people will look to the side what they want to remember what was once said or what they were just told.

The visual memory field is accessed best by looking up. Some people close their eyes, some people keep them open. Many dyslexic people describe a sort of shifting back in their mind and allowing the pictures to come forward.

There is also ‘what’ and ‘where’ of visualizing. Ian Robertson describes this in a lot more detail in his book ‘In the mind’s eye’. The ‘what’ is to do with static images, such as objects and letters. The ‘where’ is to do with moving pictures. You may have heard of memory techniques such as a memory palace where people remember objects placed in imagined rooms and houses. The person then walks around this imagined room in their mind and ‘sees’ where they left the objects.  In regards to spelling, we are focusing on the ‘what’ visualisations, the fixed static pictures.

The first step is to see if the child or adult can visualise in the first place. If you are working with a child or adult who has Aphantasia, this is someone who cannot make mental images at all, none of the visualisation tricks will work. It is a rare disorder and not often tested for. However, a person with Aphantasia may also be unable to recall sounds and what is being taught verbally or visually, hence they may end up coming to a SEN tutor for literacy and school support. It’s always good to rule Aphantasia out.

Ask the person you are working with to visualise their classroom. The word visualise might be too big for younger children, so the word imagine or make a picture in your mind is more effective. Ask them if they can imagine a clown in there or a giant rabbit. Ask them if they can imagine/picture this clown or rabbit wearing big red pants and playing the trumpet. The child will be able to tell you if they can imagine it or see a picture of it in their mind. If they don’t go to school you could ask them about their living room, and imagine a giant rabbit sat on the sofa. You are just playing with mental pictures, seeing if the child can do it. The child’s facial expressions will help inform you, as the more playful you can make the mental pictures, the more the child will express a smile or enjoyment.

The aim of the following task is for the dyslexic learner to be able to visualise an object, or a non-picture word and link the actual spelling of the word. The next step is for the learner to just be able to visualise the word on its own. This mental image of a word should be stable enough that they can read the actual letters from it. They should also be able to read the letters backwards too.  You will be amazed at how learners who can visualise words can read them backwards as well as forwards, this also helps to build sequencing fluency.

The second step is to support your learner to visualise an object. Make it a simple and familiar object like a tree or a house. Can they see it, can they zoom in and out from it? Don’t ask them to walk around it (many dyslexic spellers and visualisers will want to) or to enter the house. Remember we are trying to stabilise words and letters, so we need to only use ‘what’ visualisations.  You also need to choose an object a child already knows how to spell. Such as fish, dog or cat to start with.

The third step is to ask your student to paint the correct spelling onto their stable visualisation. So, they would write the word tree onto the tree. They could imagine writing or using spray paint to write the word on their mental image in any colour they choose.  The image should be so static that they can read each letter forwards and backwards.

The fourth step is to start visualising words without a picture anchor. Maybe the learner could imagine a whiteboard, a blackboard or even projecting the image of a word onto a wall.  Again, you need to help the child or adult stabilise their images so they are ‘what’ images. Maybe help them find the best colour, the best size and so forth.

The fifth step is to start to build visualisations of words that the child or adult wants to learn. This is where they will need your help to construct the image. However they do it, whether by projecting mental images onto a wall or imagining a space in their mind where words can form, you need to tell the speller the letters to place, and they need to practice stabilising and placing the letters in the right order. Once all the letters are there, the speller needs to read the letters forward and backwards.

What can sometimes happen is the learner can only read or say the first letters and the last letters, this is called the Primary or Recently effect in memory research, this means that the pictures are not static, the speller is trying to ‘remember’ the words instead of visualising the letters.  More practice is needed to visualise and hold still the word.

Many tutors will not use this method or give up very quickly. However, this is how all incredible spellers, such as champions in spelling bee’s spell. They imagine what the word looks like and they memorise it until they can see it. Try it on yourself and see what results you get.

When children and adults are writing they will be able to visualise words and have a visual representation for the non-visual words, and it keeps the mental images in a word form. This is ‘whole word’ spelling.

Visual links to words with pictures:  This method is similar to Davis’ linking non-picture words to words. However, rather than making 3D models, the child

can draw a picture that associates the non-picture word with an image. The aim is to stop forms of visual collapse when the child is reading and writing using non-visual words, such as high-frequency words. 

The thing to be careful of here is that the child doesn’t just see it as just a fun drawing task. As fun as that might be, it is the spelling of the word the child needs to look at, not the beautiful picture. So the picture needs to make a cognitive anchor (a hook) to the correct spelling. A tethering concentration is needed on the actual word itself.

Technique 4: Breaking Words up 

The point of breaking words up is to find a way for the dyslexic learner to ‘chunk long words. Chunking is where we break a sequence of letters or numbers into smaller units. Breaking words up helps the child or adult to encode the word into their long-term memory. When teaching learners to spell through phonics, if we think about it we are actually teaching them how to break words up using a system. However, if that particular system is not working (i.e the phonic system) we can use another system.

There will be multiple ways of breaking words up and, if we are not going to do it by sound, we have to find the best way that suits the child or adult you are working with. Anne Betteridge has been working with dyslexic children and adults for over 30 years and recommends that you try a few ways of breaking the words up into multiple parts, and then assess (we will cover assessment later) which way works best. It is always better to play to a strength than try and force the learner to use a system that isn’t working as well. Betteridge (2008) advises breaking words up in five ways for dyslexic spellers, we will go over those five ways and add one more of our own.

Note, before we start, when we say ‘break words up’, it is up to you to know the learner you are working with and be able to gauge how you should best represent the different parts. Just using a highlighter pen is the simplest way (although might not be the most memorable for most), you can also use different colours to make up parts of the words, use wooden or magnetic letters, have parts of the words on cards and play games to rearrange them. You could even have parts of the words made out of different textures, the ways of representing the split is endless.  If you are working online you may choose to break the words up with different colours, or the child might have letters they can physically use at their end.

Words within words: This memory aid involves finding words inside words. Let’s take the word believe. It’s the ‘i‘ and the ‘e‘ in the middle of the word that causes some difficulty for many dyslexic spellers. So, if we were to look at it closely, we can see a useful word inside it. 

believe.

the word ‘lie‘ is in the middle of the word. Then you can use a memory trick of putting it into a sentence I will never believe a lie again.  

Our brains have an amazing capacity for stories, so if you can help the learner to put the small word into an action or a tiny piece of movement within the sentence, it will be much easier to remember. The rat found it hard to operate the microwave.

As mentioned before, due to the deficit in phonological processing, many dyslexic children and adults will miss out the middle bits of words and close together the syllables, such as in vegetable (vegtable) and remember (rember). This is a very good memory trick for helping children remember the inner letters.

Can you get that vegetable off my plate?

Will you remember me?

You won’t be able to find words within all words, and this is not how to teach every single spelling, but it is a very clever trick for words that are often mistaken, or to really focus on the inner parts of the words. 

Syllables: Syllables are the beats in words. The best way to support children to recognise a beat is to have them clap them. Start with one-syllable words and ask them to clap one beat. Then support them up the scale; from two syllables to four or more syllables. 

Once you are satisfied they can count the syllables and can clap them out using cards, wooden letters or different coloured pens, you can help them to break the words up into syllables.

It would be a good idea to teach them about every syllable having a vowel or sometimes they have a ‘y‘ instead. Whilst this is an exercise in sounds, many children can grasp them as they have a rhythmic quality. If you ask young children to draw the beats, even very young children can draw up and down motions for the syllables. It is easier for children to identify syllables than it is for some children to identify the phonic and diagraphs within words.

Affixes – prefixes,  and suffixes: We won’t go over these in too much detail as they were mentioned in the ontology section which looked at how language works. However, even if you didn’t want to take on the whole etymology as much (it is recommended to), or you need to give yourself a bit of time to learn more about the interplay between etymology and the morphemes, you can start by teaching the affixes. Just spending some time learning what the different prefixes and suffixes mean and their origins will help you begin to break words up with conceptual meanings. 

Prefixes go at the start of the word.

• dis, meaning opposite. So, dishonest = not honest
• re, meaning again. So, rewrite = writing it again
• un, meaning not. So, unkind = not kind
• pre, meaning before. So, preview = seeing it before it viewed
• mis, meaning wrong. So, misunderstood = wrong understanding
• uni meaning one. So, unicycle = one circle wheel
• co, meaning together with. So, cooperate = operate together
• trans, meaning across or beyond. So, transform = beyond the current form.

Suffix after the word

• -able, -ible, meaning capable. So, likeable means cable of being liked
• -less, meaning without. So, worthless means without worth
• -ness, meaning the state or property of. So, goodness means the property of being good
• -ology, meaning the study of. So, psychology means the study of the psyche

By using prefixes and suffixes you begin to build in the context and meaning behind words and children will learn a deeper understanding of them. Even very young children can understand how affixes can add meaning to words.

Using multicoloured cards, changing the colours, using wooden/ plastic letters or drawing the words out, you will be able to help children get a visual and tactile sense of the letters being split up.

Word families: This involves gathering words that have the same spelling pattern and a connecting sound. More often than not these words will rhyme. It’s important to have the same spelling pattern and not just choose that rhyme. 

So you are looking for words like hear, dear, fear, ear. Not bear, there, their and hair.

By splitting the words up and highlighting the repeating spelling within the word family, you are helping the child match the whole sound to the whole spelling pattern. in the case above it is ear.

Say it oddly: This relates to saying words as you would phonetically spell them, For example, Wed-nes-day. It is very good for children and adults who have a spell it out approach and spell phonetically. The unusualness of the word especially if it is a common word like Wednesday helps to make the second layer memory. So friends can be said as fri-ends. You can even take it a step further and a deeper level by inserting the adapted sounds into a sentence that has a story and movement; I like to see my fri-ends on Fridays. As above, you can be multisensory with how you split the words. 

This technique works well for a few words but is not the greatest technique as a single system, if a dyslexic learner was to learn every ‘tricky’ word like this, they would be almost learning a second language. The strain on the working memory would be very large when writing stories, but it is a great technique for when a stop and think about the word is needed

Technique 5. Memory Enhancers 

Wooden/Plastic Letters: Writing often gives students an extra layer of memory recall. You might have experienced for yourself that you cannot remember your pin code for something, but when you press the buttons on the keypad, the number comes back automatically. It was easier to access the code from your muscle memory. Sometimes you may have experienced spelling words in the same way, someone asks you to spell a word and you need to write it down to recall it properly. However, it’s important to note that writing only really helps us when that spelling or sequence we are trying to recall is already stored in our long-term memory.

Writing itself is quite a complex task for children when they are learning. The processing required to form the letters and remember how they are sequenced is vast. Some children will automate quite quickly by the time they are 11, other children will take a long time. As we have discussed before, some children will struggle to automate their handwriting and will always require a certain amount of processing space to write.

Using wooden, plastic or even plasticine letters to make the words enables your learners to focus on the letters using up as little working memory space as possible. The learner is able to focus on the letters and the sequence of the word with their full working memory capacity and thus enabling the transformation of the spellings into long-term memory.

Working with physical shapes also allows time for exploration and creativity in terms of the colours used, exploring words within words, looking at prefixes and generally getting a slower focused understanding of the words.

Obviously, this slow focus is not suitable for learning every word, and you would need to engage in some freewriting to see what the child or adult is retaining, but it is a great way to see which memory aids are working with individual words and which are not as you have little distractions. Having to search through letters to find the right ones with spellings, also enhances the deeper learning as they have to focus on the letters needed amongst lots of letters they don’t need.

The shape of the word: For some children and adults, they need a visual element to stabilise the handwriting and to stabilise the spelling of the words. For these learners, they may need to outline the word itself and learn from the word shape. There is an important technique to outline the shape of the word, and that is to make the world in a box shape. 

Dyslexic learners can firstly outline the word, then they can begin to draw the shape without the word inside it, remembering the sequencing of the letters that need to fit.

This is a technique that helps dyslexic learners who already know the majority of the words, but they struggle to remember the letter sequences or the inner workings of the word.

 

Mnemonics: There is contention regarding mnemonics in helping dyslexic children and adults learn spellings. There is no doubt that mnemonics is a powerful memory tool. But how easy is it to automate, and how much working memory space does the particular mnemonic take? 

The word Mnemonic derives from an Ancient Greek work, Mnēmonikos, which means ‘of memory. It’s also related to the Greek word ‘remembrance’, the name of the goddess of memory in Greek Mythology. Mnemonics are basically memory devices that help us to remember something that is a fact and doesn’t change. A lot of what we have spoken about are mnemonics, they are memory techniques to help with spelling.

However, there is one in particular that is very powerful but needs to be used wisely so it has been given its own paragraph. We are talking about using Acrostics.

Big Elephants Can Always Understand Sums Easily – Because

Silly Alice Is Dancing – Said

The first letter is the letter of the word that needs to be spelt. With practice, children can stop when they get to this word and then they can associate the first letter of each word with the spelling of the word. It helps ordering, sequencing and the fact that it is in a sentence that is often silly helps give a much deeper level of memory.

However, there are two drawbacks to this. The first one is that it is like ‘saying it oddly’, the child or adult will be stuck using this device and will mostly have to stop what they are doing and use the device instead.  Which may go something like this.

I was walking down the road with my mum big elephants can always understand sums easily it was Saturday and we were going to the shops.

As you can see, too many of these memory techniques will disrupt the fluency of the writer and the subsequent spellings

 

Secondly, it gives the child or adult something extra to learn. In some ways, this is helpful as things learnt in association with something else have a much stronger neural pathway and can be recalled more easily. However, it will take a lot of working memory to access both aspects for a while until it is automatically associated. So, whilst the working memory pull will lessen and the memory will be stronger, the fluency will likely always be disrupted.

Nonetheless, if you have a dyslexic learner that is stuck on the odd word, using mnemonics is an excellent way of making those tricky stubborn words stick.

Word families: Word families are often thought of as words related to sound and spelling, like the ones we have mentioned before, hear, ear, fear and rear. 

However, word families can also be based on meaning (morphemes) as we have discussed in the orthology section. So, lets’ think of other ways that words can be grouped together that can become a memory aid.  One way is to group words by topic. For example, if we were talking about spelling in a school, we could group them by subject, all the biology words, or all the words that concerned language techniques in English. The school subject itself becomes the associated memory layer.

You can also group words that are related by activity, all the words associated with football, music or Minecraft! What you are aiming to achieve is a double layer memory effect which is caused by the ways words are categorised into meaningful groups.

More often than not, children are given words in a family that is based on sounds. However, if they are not processing sounds through some phonological deficit, then that family grouping is meaningless, or there is no memorable group

Multisensory Experiences: 

When you think of Multisensory tutoring what do you think of? Some people will automatically think of using plasticine or clay, some people will think about different textures. However, multisensory just means more than one sense.  even tapping out the syllables for the number of morphemes in a word is more than just reading it. Using different card colours to represent different parts of a word is often helpful.

However, multisensory does mean overload the senses as much as you can. It must be an aid for memory wherever possible, not just for multisensory sake. Ultimately all writing and use of spelling will need to transfer into 2D flat ink and paper for exams and school work.

Final Thoughts

As you can see there are multiple ways of supporting dyslexic learners with their spelling. In our next lesson, we will look at how you know which technique to use and how to access if the technique is working.

References and Further reading 

Betteridge, A., 2011. Chambers adult learners’ guide to spelling. London: Chambers.

Bowers, J. and Bowers, P., 2017. Beyond Phonics: The Case for Teaching Children the Logic of the English Spelling System. Educational Psychologist, 52(2), pp.124-141.

Bowers, P., Kirby, J. and Deacon, S., 2010. The Effects of Morphological Instruction on Literacy Skills. Review of Educational Research, 80(2), pp.144-179.

Davis, R. and Braun, E., 2010. The gift of dyslexia. London: Souvenir Press.

Everatt, J. and Denston, A., n.d. Dyslexia.

Forsyth, M., n.d. The etymologicon.

Hickmott, O. and Bendefy, A., 2006. Seeing spells achieving. Wendover, Buckinghamshire: MX Pub.

Montgomery, d., 2017. dyslexia friendly strategies.

Morgan, E. and Klein, C., 2004. The dyslexic adult in a non-dyslexic world. London: Whurr.

Ott, P., 1997. How to Detect and Manage Dyslexia. Oxford: Heinemann Educational Publishers.

Reid, G., 2016. Dyslexia a practitioners handbook. 5th ed. Oxford: John Wiley & Sons.

Sandman-Hurley. (2019). Dyslexia and Spelling. Jessica Kingsley Publishers

Stanton, L., n.d. 200 tricky spellings in cartoons.

west, t., 1997. in the mind’s eye. Prometheus Books.