Learning to Spell: A Manual for Teachers Using the Aldine Speller

by Catherine T. Bryce; Arthur W. Kallom; Frank J. Sherman

Dictionary Work

The new work of grade IV consisted in the presentation of the formal use of the dictionary. Many drill lessons were given in connection with language, reading, and spelling lessons. A good habit has been started. The children, however, have not become sufficiently familiar with the dictionary to make the finding of words easy. Much practice in searching for words needs to be given so that such searching becomes more or less automatic. They have little need outside of school to use the dictionary, and there are many matters which the fourth grade teacher did not have the time to teach, even if the children had been prepared for it. To give all the drill that is necessary without the work becoming a burden which the children will approach with little or no interest will tax the best ingenuity of the teacher.

The fifth grade teacher, therefore, must continue the good work begun in the fourth grade. She must attempt to make the habit more automatic. Children must be taught that they have a real need for the dictionary. The fourth grade was taught the use of the long and the short vowels in the word. The fifth grade completes this work by presenting the other sounds of the vowels and the use of the key at the bottom of the page in every dictionary. This work is presented in Lesson 7. Accompanying this lesson is a list of words which present some difficulty in pronunciation. Pupils are asked to look up the pronunciation in the dictionary. This should be done under the immediate supervision of the teacher. Directions are given the pupil as an aid in fixing this phase of the work in the memory, not as a substitute for the teaching.

Toward the latter part of the year a further phase of the use of the dictionary is presented. Lesson 145 deals with the subject of finding the spelling of a word of which the pupil is not quite sure.

Steps in finding the spelling of a word:

1. Think carefully how the word might be spelled. (a) Note the syllables. (b) Note the sound of vowels and consonants in each syllable. (c) Note the possibilities to represent each sound. 2. Find the word in the dictionary. (a) Call attention to the fact that the first two or three letters will approximately locate a short word. (b) The first four or five letters will approximately locate nearly every word. (c) Every word in the dictionary is arranged in exact alphabetical order.

Words in Lessons 3, 17, 39, and 40 illustrate a third phase with the development of root words and derivatives which will be taught formally in the seventh grade. These lessons bring together words which have a common root. The teacher should be continually on the watch for these common roots and call the attention of the children to them. In undertaking to develop a spelling consciousness there is probably nothing that will help so much as this phase of the work. In agree, agreeable, disagreeable, and agreement, agree is the common part. Children do not always recognize this, as shown by the fact that children spell the derivative with a lower degree of accuracy than they spell the root word. (See page [19] of this manual.)