common misspellings

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Home : 2002 : January : 12

common misspellings
By Dedi

This is a little bit off topic for your questions, but it may help. I recently attended a workshop at which the presenter made a very interesting suggestion-- to get rid of those awful, commonly misspelled sight words, like
"thay" instead of "they" and "dose" instead of "does," have the child write the word correctly several times, with their nondominant hand! Sounds crazy, but here was the rationale, which made a lot of sense to me-- These words are used very frequently, and because these misspellings were allowed in invented spelling, they have now become "wired" and automatic for these children, who

spell it incorrectly, without even thinking! When they start doing it with their nondominant hand, they have to think about it more, and their brain is able to "rewire" its concept of how to spell this word. I just started using this method with my students, so I can't tell you any success stories just yet, but my third graders loved the idea of it!