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G. Wiggins and J. McTighe(pg. 93)
"transfer manifests itself in a variety of ways...Can explain:make connections, draw inferences, express them in their own words with support or justification;apt analogies; teach others."

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Another issue could be that too much of the focus is on the research being done as well as what could be done to help it. The focus for this project is students spelling habits, however, there are other subjects that the attention cannot be brought away from because of the focus of this research.

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An issue with a action research such as this one can cause an educator to lie. If their findings show that the "issues" are caused because of a mistake on their part, they may change the results to make it not look bad on them. Therefore, they change the results of their findings which in the end will become useless.

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Spelling tests aren't teaching kids to spell. Test image from www.shutterstock.com

A couple of years ago, early one morning, I received an SMS advising "resadents to stay indoors because of a nearby insadent". I was shocked by the spelling, as much as the message. Surely, I thought, if it was a real message then the spelling would be correct.

Spelling matters. In a text message from a friend teeing up a night out "c u at 8" is fine - but in an emergency warning text from a government agency, I expect the spelling to be standard. But why is it that some people struggle with standard spelling?

Spelling remains the most relentlessly tested of all the literacy skills, but it is the least taught.

Sending a list of words home on Monday to be tested on Friday is not teaching. Nor is getting children to write their spelling words out 10 times, even if they have to do it in rainbow colours.

Looking, covering, writing and checking does not teach spelling. Looking for little words inside other words, and doing word searches are just time fillers. And writing your "spelling" words in spirals or backwards is just plain stupid.

And yet, this is a good summary of most of the current spelling programs in schools today.

So, what should spelling teaching look like?

Finding meaning

Children should know the meanings of the words they spell, and as logical as that sounds - ask a child in your life what this week's spelling words mean, and you might be surprised by their answers.

If spelling words are simply strings of letters to be learnt by heart with no meaning attached and no investigation of how those words are constructed, then we are simply assigning our children a task equivalent to learning ten random seven-digit PINs each week.

That is not only very very hard, it's pointless.

More than sounds

English is an alphabetic language; we use letters to write words. But it is not a phonetic language: there is no simple match between sounds and letters.

We have 26 letters, but we have around 44 sounds (it's not easy to be precise as different accents produce different sounds) and several hundred ways to write those sounds.

So, while sounds - or phonics - are important in learning to spell, they are insufficient. When the only tool we give young children for spelling is to "sound it out", we are making a phonological promise to them that English simply cannot keep.

How words make their meanings

Sounds are important in learning to spell, but just as important are the morphemes in words. Morphemes are the meaningful parts of words. For example, "jumped" has two morphemes - "jump" and "ed". "Jump" is easily recognised as meaningful, but "ed" is also meaningful because it tells us that the jump happened in the past.

Young spellers who are relying on the phonological promise given to them in their early years of schooling typically spell "jumped" as "jumt".

When attempting to spell a word, the first question we should teach children to ask is not "what sounds can I hear?" but "what does this word mean?". This gives important information, which helps enormously with the spelling of the word.

In the example of "jumt" it brings us back to the base word "jump"; where the sound of "p" can now be heard, and the past marker "ed" , rather than the sound "t" which we hear when we say the word.

Consider the author of the emergency text message at the beginning of this article as they pondered which of the many plausible letters they could use for the sound they could hear in "res - uh - dent".

If they had asked themselves first, "What does this word mean?" the answer would have been people who "reside", and then they would have heard the answer to their phonological dilemma.

Where words come from

English has a fascinating and constantly evolving history. Our words, and their spellings, come from many languages. Often we have kept the spellings from the original languages, while applying our own pronunciation.

As a result, only about 12% of words in English are spelt the way they sound. But that doesn't mean that spelling is inexplicable, and therefore only learned by rote - it means that teaching spelling becomes a fascinating exploration of the remarkable history of the language - etymology.

Some may think that etymology is the sole province of older and experienced learners, but it's not.

Young children are incredibly responsive to stories about words, and these understandings about words are key to building their spelling skills, but also building their vocabulary.

Yet poor spellers and young spellers are rarely given these additional tools to understand how words work and too often poor spellers are relegated to simply doing more phonics work.

Teaching - not testing

The only people who benefit from spelling tests are those who do well on them - and the benefit is to their self-esteem rather than their spelling ability. They were already good spellers.

The people who don't benefit from spelling tests are those who are poor at spelling. They struggled with spelling before the test, and they still struggle after the test. Testing is not teaching.

Parents and teachers should consider these questions as they reflect on the ways in which spelling is approached in their school.

Are all children learning to love words from their very first years at school? Are they being fascinated by stories about where words come from and what those stories tell us about the spelling of those words?

Are they being excited by breaking the code, figuring how words are making their meanings and thrilled to find that what they've learned about one word helps them solve another word?

Put simply - is spelling your child's favourite subject?

If the answer is no, then something needs to be done about the teaching.

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Why some kids can't spell and why spelling tests won't help

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A couple of years ago, early one morning, I received an SMS advising "resadents to stay indoors because of a nearby insadent". I was shocked by the spelling, as much as the message. Surely, I thought, if it was a real message then the spelling would be correct. Spelling matters.

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Learning how to to teach spelling can be complicated. Here's how to begin!
(This post contains affiliate links.)
In a previous post I wrote about how we need a better way to teach spelling. Instead of teaching kids to memorize lists of words and try to remember rules that aren't true half the time, we need a different approach.

It's called Word Study.

You don't need an expensive curriculum or costly workbooks.

To begin, you just need some basic knowledge about how children learn to spell. In my second post in my Word Study series, I wrote about the five developmental stages of spelling.

What's next?

Maybe teaching spelling is brand new to you. But if not - can I ask how you've taught it in the past? Did you map out your students' lists for the year before school had even begun? Did you copy worksheets, plan workbook pages, and write the name of each weekly test in your planner?

You're organized - that's great!

But I'd love to see you try something new.

If you have a classroom full of kids, that scheduled weekly list is only going to meet the needs of a handful of them. You'll likely have students who are spelling well below grade level and who struggle mightily each week only to perform poorly on the spelling test. You'll also have students who never have to study a spelling list and ace each test without any effort. And how do you know that your kids are going to be ready to move on to the next list according to your schedule?

If you're homeschooling, how do you know that your word lists are just right for your child? You could be needlessly frustrating him. Or maybe you're missing an opportunity to challenge him.

What spelling words should you teach?

How to find your students' spelling level

You give a spelling inventory.

A what?

spelling inventory. noun. A list of words chosen to represent a variety of spelling words at increasing levels of difficulty. When a child takes the inventory like a spelling test, his teacher can analyze the results to determine his spelling level.

How to administer a spelling inventory

Kids don't get to see the words in advance or study for the test.

When giving the test, assure your students that this is not for a grade. It's just to help you see what they can do and where they need help. Encourage them to spell the words as best they can.

Provide numbered paper. Call each word and repeat it. Use the words in sentences if necessary.

When a child has misspelled at least three or four words in a row, he may be starting to experience frustration. There's no need to finish the test. You'll have enough information.

Where to find a spelling inventory

Download them here:

You've given a spelling inventory. Now what?

You use the feature guide from the above downloads and put checks to show which features your students got correct. This looks scary. It's really not.

I gave my Four the Primary Spelling Inventory (designed for kids from kindergarten to grade 3). Here's what his inventory looked like:

Even though the inventory has 26 words, I knew my Four would only be able to get the first few right. So I made a sheet with ten lines and read him those words. Then I copied the feature guide from the Words Their Way book.

Here's the feature guide that you'll photocopy from the book. And here's how to use one:

Check off the features of each word that are spelled correctly.

Put a check at the end of the row if the entire word is correct.

Add the numbered checks under each feature and the words spelled correctly - write at the bottom of the form.

Look at each feature column. If your student made more at least two errors in a particular column, highlight it. That's where Word Study instruction will begin.

Here's another sample. This is for my daughter, who's going into first grade. Again I made the test page shorter than the 26 words, because I knew she'd start to get frustrated before completing the entire inventory.

In this case you can see that she didn't start making mistakes until the long vowel feature. Even though she had some long vowel patterns correct (as in hope and wait), she had many incorrect. This is a sign that a child is ready for instruction on a particular feature: using but confusing. My Six knows that you have to do something different for long vowel words, but she isn't always sure what.

Do you want to see some more sample spelling inventories? Check out Word Study: Where do I Start? from This Reading Mama.

What do you do after scoring the inventories?

If you're a homeschooling parent, I have good news. You're ready to begin Word Study instruction!

If you're a classroom teacher, you have one more step. Staple each student inventory to its feature guide. Arrange your students' feature guides in order from lowest to highest total points. List students' names in this order on the Classroom Composite Form (from the Words Their Way manual) and transfer feature scores to the form. Highlight cells where students make two or more errors to get a sense of your students' needs and to form groups for instruction. Then decide how to group students based on where the highlighting begins in each row.

Why do we have to group for instruction? Why can't the whole class learn the same thing?

Some people are against ability grouping because they believe there's a stigma attached to it. While there may be some truth to this, children appreciate being taught where they can succeed. In my years of using Word Study in the classroom, I never noticed children being made to feel badly because of their Word Study instructional level. Not once!

As for why kids can't all learn the same thing, that's pretty clear, right? It's because those feature guides will prove to you that your class is at all different levels, so you need to meet them where they're at, not force them into a year of lessons that will frustrate or bore them.

Do your best to form no more than four groups. In doing this, some students may have to be challenged or held back just a little. If you want to try 5 groups, go ahead. I've done it - but it was hard to manage.

Groups should be fluid. If a student is frustrated or not challenged, groups should be reorganized. Sometimes I found myself doing some reorganizing a few times at the beginning of the year. Usually the groups stayed pretty consistent after that.

What if you have a child who is way behind everyone - or way ahead? Consider teaching him or her alone. A very low student may be able to catch up with a tutor's help. A very high student may be able to get help from an upper grader when playing games and doing partner work.

target="_blank" rel="nofollow">An edition of this book is a must-have resource!

Read the whole series!

And if you're looking for printable games that you can use with any word list, we highly recommend this ebook. Many of the games are editable!

© 2013 - 2016, Anna G. All rights reserved.

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How to teach spelling: Where to begin (Word Study, part 3) - The Measured Mom

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Learning how to to teach spelling can be complicated. Here's how to begin! (This post contains affiliate links.) In a previous post I wrote about how we need a better way to teach spelling. Instead of teaching kids to memorize lists of words and try to remember rules that aren't true half the time, we need a different approach.

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We share evidence and practitioner-based learning strategies that empower you to improve K-12 education.

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When a child struggles with spelling, his writing is much slower than his thinking. This makes it hard for him to clearly express his knowledge and ideas in written school assignments. Spelling is especially difficult for students with learning disabilities (LD), so it is important that schools provide explicit, systematic spelling instruction on a regular basis throughout elementary school for these students. In order to evaluate spelling instruction in your child's classroom or to consider how you might help your child improve spelling skills, it helps to have some understanding of the skills students need in order to become competent spellers, and the types of activities that promote these skills.

Fiction versus fact

Unfortunately, some popular myths about spelling may discourage parents from trying to help their child improve in spelling. These include:

Fiction: Many people believe that good spellers simply memorize strings of letters to spell words correctly because English is too unsystematic.

Fact: It's true that learning to spell in English is more difficult than in other languages where the correspondences between letters and sounds are more predictable and less complex. But, in fact, the regularities in English spelling outnumber the irregularities. When a student learns these regularities, he can improve his spelling skills and minimize his dependence on rote memorization.

Fiction: Many people regard spelling as an isolated, outdated skill that students no longer need in a technologically advanced society with computers and spell checkers.

Fact: First, spelling is not an isolated skill; it's closely tied to other language skills. The relationship between spelling and reading is extremely strong, indicating that skilled spellers are most often skilled readers. Second, spell checkers catch only 63% of spelling errors, so for a student to write words accurately, he must know the correct spellings. When a student can write words correctly and automatically, this helps him to compose text more efficiently because it frees up his attention to focus on ideas rather than on how to spell words.

Learning foundational spelling skills

When a student begins to write a word, he first tries to locate its spelling in his memory. If this fails, he then applies his knowledge of sound-letter correspondences, spelling patterns, or spellings of other similar-sounding words, to devise a plausible spelling. In English, memorization plays a key role, because of the number of irregularities in English spelling. When the same letters and letter patterns are used to represent sounds consistently in different words - for example, "b" represents the sound /b/ in "bird," "ball," "baby," and many more words-this creates regularities. But when different letters or combinations of letters can represent the same sound - for example, the beginning sound in "farm" and "phone," or the vowel sound in "now" and "plough" - these irregularities can present reading and spelling challenges, especially for students with LD.

How are correct spellings stored in memory, and what skills does a student need to commit spellings to memory? A student remembers the spelling of a word when its letters become connected in his memory to its "phonemes." Phonemes are the smallest distinct sounds that we hear when a word is spoken. For example, s-t-o-p has four phonemes, and ch-e-ck has three phonemes. Each of these phonemes is represented in the written word by a single letter or by a two-letter "digraph," such as "ch" or "ck." A student who learns the most common letter-phoneme connections - and some common letter combinations such as prefixes and suffixes (for example, un-, dis-, -ful, -able) - has acquired the foundation for learning to spell.

At the phonemic level, memorizing correct spellings requires that:

When a student hears a word, he can figure out how to segment it into the phonemes that comprise its pronunciation.

When a student writes a word, he knows which letters might represent its phonemes.

When he looks at a written word while saying the word, he can figure out how the letters represent each phoneme in its pronunciation and whether some letters are silent.

When a student performs these steps at the phonemic level to learn the spellings of smaller words, he is building a foundation for learning the spellings of longer and more complex words.

Segmenting words into phonemes

The first step in this process, segmenting words into phonemes, is not so easy because when a student hears a word spoken out loud, he doesn't perceive any breaks between phonemes - the points where one sound in a word ends and the next begins.

Parents can help a student distinguish each phoneme in a word by helping him notice the activity in his mouth as he pronounces a word. For example, when a student says "spot," first the air hisses over his tongue to say "s," then his lips close to say "p," then his mouth opens to say "o," then the tip of his tongue taps the roof of his mouth to say "t." Instructional programs such as Lindamood-Bell's LiPS © program provide extra help with this by teaching a student to monitor his own mouth movements by watching in a mirror as he pronounces a word.

Knowing which letters might symbolize the phonemes

A young child at risk for LD may be slow in mastering the alphabet, including the shapes, names, and sounds of letters, so he will need to be provided more opportunities to practice. You can tell whether your child needs more practice if, by about age six or the end of kindergarten, he cannot name capital and small letters easily and cannot write these letters from memory.

Instructional programs such as Letterland©, published by Wendon, offer help by providing special "mnemonics," or memorization aids. In this type of program, the student is shown a picture of a familiar object that he can name, such as a snake. The snake is drawn in the form of a letter "s," and is shown making a "Ssssss" sound. Another example might be a "Kicking King," drawn in the shape of "k." The mnemonics are effective because children can look at the letter's shape and be reminded of the picture whose name begins with the sound of that letter.

Linking letters with phonemes in specific words

A student with LD may have trouble figuring out how letters are linked to phonemes, in the pronunciation of a specific word. This is because students with LD have more than average difficulty distinguishing each phoneme in a word when they hear it spoken. When a student is experiencing this difficulty, it can be helpful for him to say the word out loud while looking at its spelling. Assuming he has some understanding of letter-phoneme correspondence, the letters can tell him what sounds to listen for in speech and to feel in his mouth when he says the word. For example, the two separate phonemes in consonant clusters such as the "s-k" and "n-k" in "skunk" are hard to hear. However, looking at the spelling draws the student's attention to their presence.

Instructional programs such as Benchmark School Press's Word Detectives © program provide extra help with this skill by teaching beginning spellers to fully analyze letter-phoneme correspondence as they learn to read and spell words. The steps that students follow to perform this analysis are illustrated in Figure 1 below.
Figure 1. These are scripted steps a student uses to fully analyze the spelling of a word, by talking to himself out loud about the word as he looks at it and pronounces it. Using the example of the word "speech," one student's possible answers appear underlined.
Storing words in memory for reading and spelling

2. I stretch the word and count the sounds (phonemes) on my fingers. I hear sounds (s-p-ee-ch).

4. There are/are not the same number of letters as sounds because it takes two letters to spell two of the sounds (phonemes) in the word.

5. I write the letters in sound boxes (a horizontal row of squares) to show how the 6 letters match up to the 4 sounds.

(If relevant) Some of the letters don't fit because* _________________________

6. This is what I know about the vowel. The name of the letter E matches the vowel sound in the word. It is a long vowel so it is spelled with two letters.

7. Another word I know with the same vowel sound and spelling is

8. (Student writes each word studied from memory.)

* In analyzing words in Step 5, students will encounter some words containing letters that don't fit because they do not represent a phoneme by themselves or as part of a digraph, for example, the "e" in cake. Students are taught to explain this and to write the letter smaller in size in an adjacent sound box.
Adapted and reprinted from Beginning Word Detectives, ©1966 by Benchmark School Press. Used with permission.
Some common spelling difficulties

In order to help a student overcome spelling difficulties, a teacher must first understand exactly what the student's particular problems are. One way to figure this out is simply to ask the student to spell words. His errors should provide the teacher valuable insights. For example:

When a student has trouble remembering some letters in a word that he can read easily, it may indicate that he "slights" those letters when he reads the word, relying instead on the initial letter and the context in which the word appears, to "read" the word. Or it may be that the letters used to spell the word don't conform to his knowledge of letter-sound correspondences, so they are hard for him to remember.

When a student has trouble figuring out a plausible spelling of a word he can say, it may indicate that he has trouble hearing each separate phoneme, or that he lacks sufficient knowledge of letters that represent those phonemes, particularly vowels.

When students have not mastered the system of letter-sound correspondences, they often try to compensate by using reading and spelling strategies that may make things worse. For example:

When he reads, he will tend to guess an unfamiliar word based on context cues and by reading just some of the letters in the word. As a result, he doesn't notice or remember much about the other letters.

When he writes a word, he represents a few sounds correctly but he overlooks other sounds, and he sometimes adds extra letters unrelated to any sounds in the word. If he repeats and remembers his misspellings, it may be harder to learn the correct spellings.

These problems often characterize the spelling struggles of a student with LD. If the student persists in using these ineffective strategies as he moves through the grades, it will severely limit his development as a reader and a speller. Even if the student is receiving remedial reading instruction, unless spelling instruction is emphasized as well, he may improve in reading but his spelling difficulties may still linger.

Memorizing the spellings of irregular and long words

In languages with a higher degree of spelling regularity, such as Spanish, it is much easier for a student to figure out the correct spelling of an unfamiliar word. But in English, a speller must encounter, notice, and pronounce specific words to remember how to spell them. As noted earlier in this article, the same phoneme may be spelled one way in some words and another way in other words, for example, the long /a/ sound in "mail" versus "male," or the /s/ sound in "sit" versus "city."

It is especially hard for a student to guess the spellings of longer words correctly. One reason is that a long word may contain letters that are not heard in its pronunciation. A common example is the "schwa" vowel in unstressed syllables, which is pronounced like the sound "uh," for example, the last two syllables in med-i-cine. It is harder to remember these letters when they do not represent their proper, distinctive sounds. Other cases of letters that are not heard in pronunciations are doubled consonants, for example, those in "di fficult" or "de ss ert"; and vowels that precede "r" within a syllable, for example "ar" in "collar" and "or" in "color."

There are strategies a teacher or parent can use to help students remember the spellings of some longer words, for example by:

Creating special ways of saying the words by pronouncing each syllable as it is spelled. This allows a student to hear more of the letters and gives him a better match between letter and sound for connecting the spelling to a pronunciation in memory. For example, the normal pronunciation of chocolate is "choc-lut," but a spelling pronunciation might be "choc - o - late."

Helping a student to "flag" unexpected letters in memory, that is, to add a footnote in memory signaling that a particular letter is silent, for example, the "t" in "listen," the "w' in "sword," the "l" in "talk." One way to do such flagging is to single out and discuss the strange letter, as would be done in Step 5 of the "Storing Words in Memory" exercise above.

Pointing out to the student other words that have the same silent letters or letter patterns in words that the student already knows, for example, "talk," "walk," and "chalk"; or "should," "would," and "could." Finding groups of words with the same pattern and even the same silent letter across patterns helps the student identify a source of spelling regularity, which aids memorization.

Finally, spelling should always be included as part of vocabulary learning because research has shown that spellings help a student secure the pronunciation and meaning of a new vocabulary word in memory ¹. To take advantage of this, a teacher or parent should not only provide a definition but also should show and analyze the spellings of a new vocabulary word when a student asks about its meaning.

How parents can help

To summarize, in the primary grades, spelling instruction should provide a foundation for remembering spellings that includes:

knowing how to divide a word into its phonemes

knowing the basics about how a letter or pair of letters corresponds to a phoneme-the "letter-sound system"

learning about regularities in spelling

Young students with LD need these foundational skills to remember spellings of simpler words that predominate in their reading and writing lessons. As a student advances through the grades, the words he needs to spell become more complex. Without a solid foundation and without continued instruction in word spellings and regularities, a student will have difficulty sustaining strong spelling skills as he progresses through school.

Parents can help their children become better spellers. Of course, how much help you can provide depends on your own spelling skills. It is not unusual for the parent of a child with spelling problems to have those problems as well. If this is your situation, you may want to encourage the school to increase efforts to help your child build spelling skills or you may request that the teacher provide spelling exercises for your child to practice at home. Or you might seek help for your child from a private tutor with expertise in spelling instruction.

If your child's school does not teach spelling as part of comprehensive literacy instruction, you might join with other interested parents to persuade the school or school district to include explicit, systematic instruction in spelling in its literacy curriculum throughout the elementary grades.

References

Rosenthal, J. & Ehri, L. "The Mnemonic Value of Orthography for Vocabulary Learning." Journal of Educational Psychology,(in press).
Reviewed January 2010

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Learning to spell - a challenge for elementary students with LD | Parenting

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When a child struggles with spelling, his writing is much slower than his thinking. This makes it hard for him to clearly express his knowledge and ideas in written school assignments. Spelling is especially difficult for students with learning disabilities (LD), so it is important that schools provide explicit, systematic spelling instruction on a regular basis throughout elementary school for these students.

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Students leveled high and low in second grade seem to have a difficult time remembering how to spell words we've gone over since the beginning of the year.

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Students who are higher readers have better spelling and have less mistakes while writing, but still make mistakes that should not be happening at this point of the year.

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Most students do very well on their spelling tests each week but do not remember to apply that spelling to their writing.

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A lot of students write quickly and focus on their ideas of the writing and not so much their spelling.

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Some students can be called out on their spelling mistake and correct it themselves, while others cannot fix their spelling mistakes.

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Students understand the rules that go along with spelling, but do not apply the skills while writing.

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By second grade, is it ok that they are sounding it out correctly, or by now should they have the spelling down for certain words?

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Is it pure laziness for not spelling words correctly or is there an underlying issue that causes so many students to not remember how to spell a lot of words?

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B. Zander and R. Zander(pg. 163)
"Make a new distinction in the realm of possibility: one that is a powerful substitute for the current framework of meaning that is generating the downward spiral."

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Why do so many students struggle with spelling memorization?

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Keeping everything confidential and relating to students by a number or different name

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How can I get students to memorize the rules and the spelling of words even after a spelling test?

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Does students behavior really effect their academics?

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What strategies or techniques should be used to get the spelling of words to stick better in students' heads?

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Should we be using different strategies from a younger age to get better spelling memorization before second and third grade?