Best Practice in Spelling

1
Best Practice in Spelling

• Methodologies which effectively teach students to
  be accurate spellers are combinations of
• Phonemic spelling
• Whole Word approach (Visual)
• Morphemic spelling

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Do we need to explicitly teach spelling?

• List 3 reasons why you believe spelling should be
  explicitly taught at school.
• Share your reasons with your neighbour
• Add to your 3 reasons, one more from your
  neighbours list.

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We should explicitly teach spelling because

• The English language DOES conform to predictable
  patterns
• Those patterns can be taught directly to
  students.
• Collins, 1983
• Dixon, 1991
• Graham, 1999
• Dixon and Engelmann, 2002

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Phonemic Approach

• Understanding the relationship between letters
  and their corresponding sounds is an important
  skill for successful reading and spelling
  performance.

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• Children (especially young children) have less
  difficulty spelling words that are based on
  predictable letter-sound relationships.

6

• Teaching phonemic awareness has strong and
  significant effects on childrens reading and
  spelling skills, with those effects lasting well
  beyond the end of the teaching period.

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example

• the word hat has three sounds
• /h/, /a/, and /t/
• It can be correctly spelled using the three
  letters
• (h, a, and t)
• that correspond with each of those sounds.

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• Systematic phonics instruction boosts the
  spelling skills of
• at-risk students
• young developing readers
• students from across the socio-economic spectrum,
  from low to high Socioeconomic backgrounds
• (National Reading Panel, UK, 2000)

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• Students should have at least 1 year of
  instruction in a systematic phonics-based program
  to develop skills related to letter-sound
  correspondence.
• This is most effective in the early years when
  students are building their capacity with written
  language and with reading skills.
• http//www.fonetiks.org/foniks/1/pagessou/ii.html

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Reflection

• What are some of the key concepts addressed so
  far?
• My personal convictions
• The correlations I am prepared to make between my
  convictions and the new learnings
• Aspects I need to explore further

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Whole Word Approach

• Not all words in the English language can be
  spelled correctly using letter-sound
  correspondence.

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Irregularly spelled words

• Examples of irregular words include the words
  yacht, straight, and friend
• These words cannot be spelled correctly by
  applying a regular phonics approach.
• To teach irregularly spelled words, a different
  instructional strategy is required.

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However.

• Whole-word approaches to spelling instruction
  have both
• advantages
• and disadvantages.

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Advantages

• Whole Word approach works well with words which
  do not conform to a regular spelling pattern.

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• In a typical Whole Word program, groupings of
  words are based on some similarity
• Similar beginning sounds like
• wh, th
• Words belonging to a common theme
• Word pools for a particular topic
• Word groupings

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Disadvantages

• Often students are asked to memorise word lists
  for a test later on in time.
• Memorisation is not the most efficient strategy
  for spelling instruction.
• It should only be used to teach the spelling of
  words with extreme irregularity.

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• When students are given spelling lists they need
  to
• be convinced that there is a purpose to learning
  the words on the list
• Be given the skills to learn the words

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• Whole-word approaches to spelling have been
  shown to produce highly accurate spellers.
• Add a Word program
• Write-Say method

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• The Add-A-Word program increases overall
  spelling accuracy
• It also increases the accurate spelling of
  journal words from a low of 0 to a high of over
  80 correct.
• UK Research Pratt-Struthers et al., 1983-1993
• Jan Turnbill-Brian Cambourne-University of
  Wollongong 1994

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• A second example of a whole-Word spelling program
  is the Write-Say method.
• First, a student looks at a word.
• Then, while touching each letter of the word, the
  student spells the word.
• Next, the student covers the word so it is no
  longer visible.
• The word is then written on a separate piece of
  paper.
• Finally, the student uncovers the correctly
  spelled word and checks to see if he or she has
  copied it down correctly.

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• This method is particularly effective with
  students receiving special education.
• It was found that it improved spelling accuracy
  of special education students by 34.9, in less
  than seven weeks.
• Kearney and Drabman (1993)

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A third example is irregular words in a whole
sentence approach

• e.g I thought he was through.
• At first the unpredictable letters or letter
  combinations are provided and students must fill
  in the missing letters (e.g., _ _ _ ough _ _ _ _
  a _ _ _ _ ough).
• Gradually, the number of provided letters is
  decreased until students are able to spell all
  the words without visual prompts.
• Once the sentence is learned, variations are
  presented so that students can apply the spelling
  of irregular words to various sentence contexts
  (e.g., She thought about her homework throughout
  the night.).

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• This method has been found very effective with
  Middle Years students.

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• The English language contains words with both
  regular and irregular spellings.
• Both the phonemic and whole-word approaches are
  required to teach regularly or irregularly
  spelled words.

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Reflection

• Note two things you agree with
• Note two things you dispute or would like
  clarification on
• Note something you would like to explore further

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Morphemic Approach

• A morphograph is the smallest unit of
  identifiable meaning in written English.
• Morphographs include prefixes, suffixes, and
  bases or roots.

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• Following a small set of rules for combining
  morphographs can create many words in the written
  English language.
• For example, the word recovered is made up of the
  prefix re, the base cover, and the suffix ed.

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Example

• Using a morphemic approach, students can be
  taught that when a base ends in the letter e
  (e.g., make) and is to be combined with the /ing/
  suffix, the letter e is always dropped (make
  becomes making).

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• The morphemic approach to spelling instruction
  offers several advantages.

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First

• Morphographs are generally spelled the same
  across different words.
• For example, the morphograph port is spelled the
  same in the words porter, deport, and important.

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Second

• When the spelling of a morphograph changes across
  words, it does so in predictable ways.
• The morphograph trace is spelled differently in
  the words trace and tracing, but the change is
  governed by the rule for dropping the final e.

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Third

• The number of morphographs is far fewer than the
  number of words in the written English language
• and
• the number of principles for combining
  morphographs is relatively small.

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Therefore

• Teaching students to spell morphographs and
  teaching the rules for combining morphographs
  will allow students to spell a far larger set of
  words accurately than by teaching individual
  words through rote memorisation of spelling
  lists.

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• There Can be two steps to Spelling through
  Morphographs
• Step one does not require rules-e.g
• students might learn to spell the morphographs
  i.e form al ly, combined spell the word
  formally.
• Step two requires use of previously learnt
  spelling rules
• e.g hop hopping but, hope hoping

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• Using the rules for dropping the final e and the
  rule for Consonant Vowel Consonant consonant
  doubling, students will consistently and
  accurately spell these words and many others that
  conform to the same morphemic rules.

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• This morphemic spelling approach continues,
  gradually increasing in difficulty with the
  addition of new spelling rules and new
  morphographs

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• In summary, phonemic, whole-word, and morphemic
  approaches are useful for teaching the wide
  variety of word types in the English language.
• Together these approaches represent a
  comprehensive set of strategies for teaching
  children to be accurate spellers.

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What programs are available?

• Spelling Mastery
• Lessons are sequenced so that students move from
  Phonics to Morphemic spelling in sequence
• Spelling Through Morphographs
• Lessons are sequenced so that spelling words are
  efficiently learned and then effectively
  retained.
• https//www.sraonline.com/products_main.html
• http//www.spellingzone.com/ (Australian)
• https//www.sraonline.com/products.html?PHPSESSID
  1243095798a5abd68b17a20cc0d42b6dtid9sid81