What is Orthography? Why Does it Matter?

What is orthography? Why does it even matter? That’s what we’re going to talk about in today’s post!

You’ll like like our Orthographic Mapping Puzzles Bundle.

My goal is to take this scary sounding word and break it down for you. I want to explore what orthography is but more importantly why it even matters for our learners. Whether you’re a homeschooling parent, a tutor, or a classroom teacher, I hope this post will be helpful for you!

What is Orthography?

Put in the simplest of terms, orthography is the correct spelling of words. Literally, it’s what the word means. The prefix ortho means “proper” or “correct,” while graph means “writing.” So, orthography means “correct writing.”

For example, the correct orthography of the flower is ROSE, not ROWS. The correct spelling of the home you live in in HOUSE, not HOWSE.

The issue {or “problem”} with English is that it is a compilation of many different languages. We have many root words from Greek and Latin not to mention all the words we’ve assimilated into our language like ballet or taco. We’ve also changed the pronunciation of some words over time like been and said.

What this means is that the spelling of certain phonics sounds can be ambiguous and confusing at times. Just think about the long u sound. It can be spelled u_e, oo, ew, ui, ou, and ue. That’s not confusing at all, right? Ha!

Since English can be ambiguous at times, does this mean we shouldn’t focus on orthography? NO! Orthography matters!

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Helpful Books for Teaching Orthography

These are the main resources I reference to write this post:

• Speech to Print: Language Essential for Teachers by Louisa Cook Moats
• Uncovering the Logic of English by Denise Eide
• A Fresh Look at Phonics by Wiley Blevins
• Teaching Word Recognition by Rollanda E. O’Connor
• Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties by David A. Kilpatrick

Why Does Orthography Matter?

One of the things we can see, based on observations done on skilled readers and readers who struggle, is that skilled readers use their awareness of orthography not only to help them sound through unknown words, but to “map” words by their sound-spellings so they can easily store them for the next time they see the words.

This process is called orthographic mapping. So, instead of trying to learn or memorize words as a whole, skilled learners take the words they see and break them down into their sounds and spellings. They seem to do this pretty automatically as they read.

For example, cat would map or break down like this: C-A-T. The word cat is an easy one because it has a completely transparent mapping, with every sound mapping to every letter. A word like sheep would be a little bit trickier because two letters are used to make the /sh/ sound: sh and two letters make the long e sound: ee. Still, sheep can be mapped like this: SH-EE-P.

A high frequency word like said would be even trickier because part of the word doesn’t follow the phonics rules we know, namely ai = long a. So while the s and d map transparently, the ai does not. So a skilled reader would map or break apart said like this: S-AI-D.

At the same time, they may also say to themselves, “Hmm…the ai doesn’t make the sound I would expect it to make. I’ll make a mental note of that.”

Struggling readers, on the other hand do not automatically think about orthography and sound-spellings. For them, it’s often the survival motto of “any clue will do” when they don’t know a word. They rely mainly on context and other guessing games. Can they use the picture? Can they use the first letter and just guess the word? What would make sense?

Struggling readers need explicit instruction in orthography. They need us to point out how map words into their sound-spelling relationships.

Practical Ways to Teach Orthography

That sounds great and all, but what about when the rubber meets the road. How do we even teach orthography? Here are some practical ways:

• Explicitly teach phonological awareness and phonemic awareness. {Use our step-by-step lessons to help you.}
• Focus on activities that connect letters to their sounds when they are young. {A.k.a. the alphabetic principle.}
• Teach phonics. Start with the ABC’s and work your way through the skills. This post has a free printable K-2 Phonics Skills List if that would help.
• Use decodable texts. Let learners practice the skills you’ve taught through reading words in context. You can do this with decodable phrases & sentences, or phonics books.
• Teach learners to use the clues in the word, not the context, to figure out unknown words. Find our free printable decoding strategies for beginning readers.
• Explicitly teach them word mapping with tools like our Orthographic Mapping Puzzles. {printable and digital formats}
• Map {Not Memorize} High Frequency Words. Don’t just teach learners to memorize these words as a whole. Teach them how to break these words down into the parts that are easy to map and the parts that aren’t so easy to map.

Enjoy teaching!
~Becky

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