Disable Spell Checking on Your Child’s Computer
One of the things I loved as a parent of an elementary school student was watching how my son’s spelling developed over the years. When he brought home a kindergarten assignment and a first grader, it was difficult to decipher his essays. The letters themselves were clear (he was always gifted with neat handwriting), but he paid little attention to the wuz speld fonetikle.
He was never shy about whether he wrote something correctly, and over time, as he and his classmates became more proficient readers and learned the weekly vocabulary lists, his spelling gradually improved. Education.com notes that it is more important for young children to learn how to speak words and be able to read their own texts than to know that there is a “w” at the end of the word “snow”:
Don’t correct your child’s spelling. Children need to feel like successful freelance writers. If children feel they cannot write without accurate spelling, they will not think of themselves as writers. Children may also develop a tendency to rely on what adults tell them to make sure their spelling is “correct.” Instead of focusing on correct spelling, encourage your first grader to write phonetically. If first graders can describe all the sounds they hear in words, they can read their own letter. This is what we want from young writers – the standard spelling will come later.
But this year, kids are reading and writing a lot on Chromebooks and other electronic devices that are usually done with paper and pencil. And as soon as everything went virtual, I noticed that my son became more preoccupied with his spelling – thanks to all the red lines that suddenly appeared under his words. He began asking how to spell words correctly, with much greater frequency than before, until in the end it seemed like he was focusing more on spelling each word correctly than on the essence of what he was actually trying to write. He hated the highlighting of every last mistake.
Young children don’t need to know every time they use the letter “f” where “ph” should be. The simple solution to this problem is to turn off the damn spell checker completely. This should be an option no matter what device they are using. For example, if a school gave them a Chromebook, it’s quick and easy to do:
1. Open Google Chrome and click the menu icon in the upper right corner.
2. Click “Settings” and then select “Advanced”.
3. Click “Languages”, and right below the language setting will open several spelling options. You can choose “basic” spell check, “advanced” spell check, or customize the spell check by adding specific words (for example, your last name). However, you don’t want any of this; you want to turn off Spell Checker completely.
Eventually – say, by the time they are writing articles in middle school or high school – the spell checker will become a useful tool for spotting random mistakes. But for most young readers, it can add unnecessary pressure to get every word right.