[the Obscure]

I team-teach in Japan, so my job is mainly to encourage my kiddies to get over their shyness and actually speak, and to make English fun so that they actually want to be in class. Most of my kids can't spell to save their life, and I've just learned to accept the fact that my kids really like "animars" especially "hamstars."

I make my kids ask me how to spell stuff when they're doing writing exercises, and sometimes I'll just force them to deal with phonics by sounding out the word for them instead of spelling it out. And if I see that they've written that they like "hamstars" then I'll tell them I've never seen a "hamSTAR" before and ask them what it is. They all know they can't spell, and that they're too lazy to look it up, so they know that if I go around pronouncing words weird it's because they've spelled it wrong.

Since my kids would never be caught dead doing homework (such as writing the the words 5 times), I just have to make the most out of the class time I have with them.

Board races have worked pretty well for me as a way to force them to spell correctly. For example, I give them a letter to start with, such as "a," then they write "apple" and the next S writes a word that starts with "e," such as "elephant," and then the next student writes "today," and so on. If they spell a word wrong I won't let them switch partners until it's been corrected.

I think that repetition is pretty important (at least, it is for me when I learn foreign languages). My Tibetan teacher made us write the words over and over and over, and in class we had to spell outloud a bunch, too. We all hated him for it, but we could spell. So, if you're able to, then make the kiddies do a spelling bee or something and bribe them with spectacular prize. Bribery is pretty cool.