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Spelling conventions

It is tempting to declare that spelling conventions belong in the writing domain only and should not be
addressed until some point after students have gained confidence in their writing ability through
phonetic spelling. In this, as in many cases, the intermingling of writing and reading points to the utility
of teaching spelling conventions in order to enhance the students’ decoding ability.

Of course, as you encourage your students to write, your focus will not be holding them accountable
for spelling, grammar, or punctuation. Initially, you’ll want to prevent writer apprehension by
emphasizing the importance of getting ideas and stories onto the paper. Later in the year, as the
students mature into imaginative writers, you can begin to introduce editing conventions one at a
time.

This is where your efforts with sight words and word walls will pay off. It’s where phonics through
spelling becomes more interesting for both you and the students.

The conventions that appear frequently in monosyllabic words and within polysyllabic words lend
themselves to explicit instruction on conventions. For instance, in monosyllabic words that have a
short vowel sound, the spelling will be a vowel-consonant combination (or VCC), perhaps with
another consonant tacked onto the end, as in tack, a VCC word. When those same VC words are
turned into adjectives—that is, when they end in what sounds like a long e—the final consonant is
doubled before adding the final {-y}, as in sap’s transformation into sappy. Since tack and other VCC
words already have that extra consonant at the end, it is only necessary to add the final {-y}.

Word Study
Word study often incorporates a strategy known as a word sort. Word sorts provide students with an
opportunity for guided practice and independent practice, but they require that students have
mastered the ability to identify letters as vowels or as consonants, to sort like items, and to recognize
patterns that appear in like words. Like words in this case may refer to words that end in VC (vowel-
consonant) or VCC. The discussion of spelling conventions in this module provides an example of
generalized conventions that are conducive to word sorts, and vice versa.

Question

Which of the following phonics concepts emphasizes roots, prefixes, and suffixes?

A Morphology

B Graphology

C Phenomenology

D Orthography