SED Associate Professor Carol Jenkins says that in addition to teaching children how to self-edit to find words for their spelling lists, teachers must examine children's writing to discover the kinds of strategies they use to spell unfamiliar words. Recognizing that the word doesn't look correct and that the sound strategy doesn't work, she adopts the visual strategy, concentrating on how the word should look. If uncertain, she checks her hunch with someone or against a dictionary. She needs to learn that the prefix mis is a fixed unit regardless of the first letter of the root word. Jenkins emphasizes that teachers must show children how these strategies work, as well as teach certain spelling patterns and rules.
Spelling is a complex cognitive process that entails more than sheer memorization.
She advocates setting aside fifteen minutes a day for a spelling workshop, which can be structured in a number of ways. For example, on Friday, children are instructed to examine the pieces in their writing folders or notebooks and locate three or four words that were troublesome or that they would like to learn to spell. The teacher can add one or two core words to each child's list and one or two words that fit a particular spelling pattern or rule. On Monday, children record their spelling words in their spelling log. The teacher does a mini-lesson on the new spelling pattern or rule and then asks the children to use the study strategy to study their words.