The dictionary is not a spelling book

Patient: Hey doc. Not feelin' so good today.

Doctor: It looks like you have the flu. Google your symptoms and treatment. WebMd is a good site.  Be sure to check out with the front desk.

Patient: Thank god for health insurance copays. 

Telling kids to look up their misspelled words in the dictionary is the equivalent of a doctor asking you to google your symptoms. Actually it's worse. Some kids don't KNOW they misspelled the words in the first place.

People, the dictionary is NOT a spelling book. You kinda need to know how to spell to use the dang thing.

Let's have some solutions in place for kids to help them.

During Drafting Phase: 

• Hearing and representing sounds with slow articulation: Help kids stretch the words out slowly, chunking them into the parts that they can hear. (Sometimes, you'll realize that they don't hear the words correctly because of dialect - "probly". Then you know that their problem isn't spelling, probably.)
• Placeholders: Help kids know that they can do their best to get the word started and then draw a line for the rest or circle the word so they can come back to it later.  
• DON'T ask them to spell everything correctly while drafting. DON'T. Let them get their ideas on the paper first. 

During the Editing Stage: 

• Conference with the child to see discover their most persistent patterns of errors. Help them know the "rule" so they can know how to fix it. Let them focus on mastering that one rule and show you their evidence. 
• Help the kids learn how to slow track through the whole word - beginning to end - to make sure all the sounds are there. Sometimes it helps to do this starting with the last word and reading backwards. 
• Provide a bad spellers dictionary. 
• Teach kids to ratiocinate for the 8 basic spelling rules with codes and solutions. These lessons usually come with a list of exceptions that they can look for. 

Filling Gaps: 

• Figure out what stage of spelling development and work with word sorts to shore up their knowledge. 
• Teach the basic 8 spelling rules. 
• Use spelling word walls. Thematic clusters of words are good.
• Provide a list of spelling demons.
• Provide homonym lists and activities and books
• Help kids with mnemonics to remember words - vegetables go on the table
• Provide a list of commonly confused words 
• Read Chapter 10 in Kylene Beers book When Kids Can't Read What Teachers Can Do