Spelling...

I'm thinking about spelling, and why so many people struggle with it... and why some of us don't, and how much more of it is nurture, not nature.
I have "always" been a good speller. Granted, I'm a phonemic awareness queen. Still, it's a setup. Those weekly spelling quizzes? Usually there were three or four words I had to “learn.” The rest I already knew. This meant that while others were toiling over the letter sequences and trying to cram them into rote memory, I was actually learning something from those “side” exercises filling them into sentences, internalizing the rules and patterns, and mentally analyzing the ones I didn’t know yet and realizing that often “exceptions” to spelling patterns come in groups with the same spellings.
I do believe that by putting students in that same position of knowing most of the words, but *learning* why they're spelled that way and a nuance or two, can mean they become confident with spelling. It might take a bit longer, but there's no reason to abandon the task and settle for writing probally and definate (and, of course, apostrophes...)