Helping children to select their own strategies for learning to spell

Children can be helped to select their own learning strategies. Here is one suggestion - a strategy for storing and retrieving information about the spelling of a word.

When you have to remember a word so that you can spell it later on, you might try saying to yourself: "Hey, what's this?"
Ask yourself whether the word is spelled the way it sounds. If it isn't, where's the trick?
Think the sounds! Learn to count or feel with your mouth the separate sounds in a word or syllable automatically - this alerts you to 'extra' letters, e.g., cause.
Think syllables! One syllable for every sounded vowel: de vel op ing
Think prefixes and suffixes! Re strict ion
Think 'What do I know in this word?' re con cil able
Think "Which bits do I have to think about?' cil not cile. C is spelling its soft sound. It does that before e, i and y.