Alternative Teaching Techniques for Low Achieving Students

1. AlternativeTeachingTechniques for LowAchieving Students

2.  Spelling is both an auditory analysis activity and a visual analysis
activity.To become a good speller, the learner needs to pay
attention to the sequence of sounds in words, and he needs to pay
attention to the sequencing of letters.This information must be
adequately integrated (visual-auditory integration), which means
that the child must link together the visual information with the
information that he hears. Activities such as seeing a word and
saying it aloud, or hearing a word and writing it down are
examples of visual-auditory integration. A problem in visual-
auditory integration often leads to poor spelling ability.Traditional
spelling activities and remediation do very little to help a
struggling speller.To help these children, we can use alternative
teaching strategies such as…

3.  An exercise to help the child develop the ability to
hear sounds in words is to write four words on a chart,
chalkboard, or a piece of paper (e.g. dump, stone,
slot, burst). Read the words aloud and have the child
analyze the sounds by giving directions like, “Point to
the word that starts with the same sound (or sounds
combination) you hear in the word slime (slot)” and,
“Point to the word that ends with the same sound you
hear at the end of the word first (burst).” If the child
shows difficulty with this task, you can use a point-
and-match approach; for example, “first-dump,”
“first-stone,” “first-slot,” and “first-burst.”

4.  Have the child tell the sounds in a word. For
example, you say a word like breed and ask:
1. What is the last sound you hear in breed? /d/
2. What is the sound combination you hear at the
beginning of breed? /br/
3. What sound do you hear in the middle of breed?
(long e sound).
 Remember that the child is saying sounds (//),
not naming letters.

5.  With longer words, you say the word slowly,
pausing between syllables or chunks, repeat
fast, and then have the child repeat the word,
first fast, then in syllables or chunks, and
again fast; for example, partnership: part ner
ship, partnership.

6.  Ask the child to write the cluster (letters combination)
that say a specific sound in a word; for example, to
spell hesitation, ask:
1. Write the letters that say the /ta/ sound
2. Write the letters that say the /hes/ sound
3. Write the letters that say the /tion/ sound
4. Write the letter that says the /i/ sound
 Then, have the child write the word hesitation as you
say each part, e.g. hes i ta tion. Finally, the child
turns over his paper and writes the word from
memory, saying the word aloud as he writes it.

7.  Show the child five-to-eight words written on a chart,
chalkboard, or piece of paper (e.g. dump, stone, slot,
burst, drift, pulls). Give the child scratch paper and say,
“On your paper, select and write the word that ends with
the same letter combination you see at the end of the
word first (burst). Now, select and write the word that
starts with the same letter combination you see at the
beginning of the word stamp (stone).”
 Using the cloze procedure, present a word partially spelled,
and have the child write down the missing letters, e.g.
dinosaur: d _ _ _ saur, dino _ _ _ _. Write a blank for
each missing letter, and have the child fill-in different
missing letters in the same word. Finally, the child spells
from sight memory the whole word.

8.  Give the child the letters that he is going to need to spell
the word, but in a random order, and have the child
unscramble the letters to spell the word correctly (e.g.
dinosaur: sraudnio).
 Rather than presenting new spelling words in isolation and
lists, present each new word in a sentence. For example,
“T-Rex is the fiercest _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ of the meat eating
beasts.” Select the sentences and spelling words from the
child’s readings, and write a blank for each missing letter.
 Give the child a misspelled word and say, “This word is
misspelled.Your job is to write the word in three different
ways, and then, circle the spelling that ‘looks right’ to you.
Be ready to defend your choice.”

9.  Do visual recognition spelling exercises where you write
the same word with three or four different spellings
(only one spelling is correct) for the child to recognize
and write down the correct spelling.
 When you use lists of spelling words, is better to
include only words with the same visual pattern, e.g.
m atch, c atch, spl atch or per ish, self ish,
brown ish.
 Teach the child to “borrow words” she already knows
to help her spell a new word; for example, joy-joyful,
horn-hornet; mess + age= message.
 Have the child search for words with the same visual
spelling patterns in his readings.

10.  With an older child, you can use a multisensory
(seeing, hearing, and saying) chunk this word
technique; for example, the child:
1. Sees and hears the word
2. Says the word fast
3. Says the word in syllables or chunks
4. Writes the word in syllables or chunks (assisted
visually and/or orally if necessary)
5. Writes the whole word from memory
 To reinforce kinesthetically, have the child spell the
word in syllables while jumping rope, bouncing a ball,
or tossing a beanbag from one hand to the other.

11.  Have the child practice writing the same word using
five different writing tools; for example, using a
marker, a chalk, a pen, a crayon, and typing the word.
 Have the child write the same word in five different
ways; for example:
 dinosaur: DINOSAUR, dinosaur, di no saur, DINO
saur, dino SAUR
 You will get better results if the spelling practice is
shorter but the child writes the spelling word in
different ways, than with a longer practice where the
child writes the spelling word the same way each
time.

12.  Do not use separate lists for reading and
spelling.The child’s spelling words should
come from within her reading materials.
 Have the child create her individualized
spelling lists with the words that she
frequently misspells.

13.  In the school setting, spelling problems rank as one of the most common, and for
some children, is also one of the most difficult to remediate. Children with weak
auditory memory will have difficulty with phonetic spelling, or understanding
how words sound. Children with deficits in visual memory will have difficulty
recalling the visual features of words; that is, recalling how words look. A weak
auditory and/or visual memory impairs the child’s ability to apply sound-letter
correspondence to spell unfamiliar words. As an added problem, most weak
spellers are inflexible in applying the right spelling strategy for the right word; for
example, the child may try to spell a word like ought phonetically (using sound-
symbol correspondence), when what the child needs to do is to recall the visual
configuration of the word, or retrieve the word from sight memory. Children
become spellers that are more efficient when they understand that there is a
variety of approaches to spell different kinds of words, and when they keep a
flexible approach in spelling new words. In other words, when the approach they
are trying is not working, children need to remain flexible in changing the
approach or the spelling technique, making sure that visual spelling strategies
match visual word types, and auditory spelling strategies match auditory word
types.

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