spelling, working with teachers to understand and develop practice - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

A project to explore and improve teaching and learning of spelling, working with teachers to understand and develop practice Dr Miranda Dodd - University of Southampton Natalie Wilcox – Kanes Hill Primary School, Southampton

What are the challenges in teaching spelling?  Development of English spelling over centuries?  Do we teach and/or test?  NC word lists?  Moving from phonetically based spelling to other strategies?  Teacher subject knowledge?  Understanding the most effective ways to teach spelling?  How does it fit into the wider picture of English teaching?  Ensuring children apply their learning?  Others?

Terminology  Phonemic awareness  Awareness of individual phonemes or sounds  Phonological awareness  broader awareness of different ways of breaking up oral language e.g. words, syllables, rhymes  Grapheme  how we write down phonemes  Morpheme/morphology  units of meaning – prefixes, root words and suffixes  Orthography  how the language is written down e.g. common letter strings, doubling of consonants, punctuation  Etymology  word origins and their link to meaning

What sources have you found? What has been published recently?

Older studies  Peters (1967, 1985)  Spelling as a visual skill – it looks right  Awareness of building blocks of words  Importance of handwriting  Look, Cover, Write, Check  Ramsden (1993)  ‘Rescuing Spelling’ – a good support for teachers  O’Sullivan and Thomas (2007)  Children need to be explicitly taught a range of strategies for learning spelling  Importance of the learning environment  Nunes and Bryant (2006, 2009)  Value of morphological teaching for older children (9+)

Investigation and talk  Martin (2014) – generating enthusiasm for language and spelling  Taking a book as a starting point rather than a spelling rule and looked at the range of possible learning (Adoniou, 2014)  Look, Find (morphemes), Say (sounds), Write, Check (Herrington and Macken-Horarik, 2015)

The importance of morphology  Work on morphological understanding with 5-7 year olds improved spelling, word-reading and comprehension (Abel and Werfel, 2014)  Grouping words by morpheme/etymology e.g. (nat- = source/birth/tribe) so leading to ‘nature’ and … natural, naturally, unnatural, native, naturalistic, nation, nationwide, nationality (Herrington and Macken-Horarik, 2015)  Looking at root words, prefixes and suffixes in words with explicit instruction about the changes in spelling improved reading, spelling and vocabulary (Good, Lance and Rainey, 2015)

A range of strategies  Teachers and children need to know about phonological, orthographic, morphological, etymological and visual strategies (Adoniou, 2014)  Explicit teaching of morphology, phonology, etymology and orthography, children gradually refining use of ‘overlapping waves’ (Devonshire, Morris and Fluck, 2010, 2013)  Range of tasks helpful e.g. segmenting words into phonemes, word- building tasks, word sorts and children generating ‘rules’, direct teaching of root words and related words, word ‘relatives’ (Abel and Werfel, 2014)  Spelling consciousness and spelling performance are related - strategy instruction valuable (Cordewener, Verhoeven and Bosman, 2016)

Collecting evidence of impact  Spelling test (commercial or home produced) administered before and after project  Word correct?  Morpheme correct?  In sentences or just individual words?  Children’s, parents’, teachers’ views on spelling e.g. through questionnaires/discussions/interviews.  Analysing children’s spelling in their writing – what is correct, what errors are there?  Discussion with children about the strategies used before and after (could be a small sample)  Other ideas?

This study examined the immediate and sustained effects of a multi-strategy approach to teaching spelling on the ability of 18 year 2 children. Children were engaged in a teaching model that ensured exposure to visual, phonological and morphological spelling strategies, as well as a ‘word - study’ approach. Independent writing was analysed before and after exposure to the teaching model, and observations were collected during the teaching process and the independent writing. The overall effects of the study indicate that the multi-strategy teaching model is effective in promoting accuracy in spelling during independent writing. Furthermore, observations indicate that, following exposure to the multi-strategy approach, children are aware of the visual, phonological and morphological spelling strategies available to them.

• progress made in spelling is not as marked as progress made in reading (DCSF, 2009) • the need to improve children's spelling ability is a key government agenda - National Curriculum (2014) sets out clear expectations for each year group • relatively little robust evidence about what constitutes effective teaching of spelling (EEF, 2017) • not clear which approaches lead to better spelling in full texts (EEF, 2017)

• teaching model which draws upon phonics, morphology and visual aspects of spelling • Word-study approach based on allowing children to draw out spelling principles for themselves and creating a climate of interest and involvement (Alderman, 2011; Bear et al., 2012 ; Martin, 2010; and O’Sullivan and Thomas, 2000) • Investigate, hypothesize, generalise approach developed from Martin (2010). • Visual strategies included – handwriting, classroom resources, spelling challenges (Martin, 2010).

What is the effect of a multi- strategy approach to teaching spelling on children’s ability to spell accurately? • Year 2 were chosen as participants • previous research has shown that children aged 6 years should be entering the morphological stage in spelling. • Spelling rules taken from Year 2 National Curriculum • Model set out expose children to different spelling strategies, as well as engaging them in the spelling process. • Secondary research questions: • Following exposure to a multi-strategy approach to teaching spelling, do children demonstrate an awareness and understanding of spelling strategies available to them? • Following exposure to a multi-strategy approach to teaching spelling, which spelling strategies are year 2 children able to employ when writing independently?

Method: Writing Analysis • Adapted from O’Sullivan and Thomas (2000) • Two pieces of writing from each child were analysed – one from before the intervention (Time 1) and one for after the intervention (Time 2). • Every miscue was recorded, and later coded, by the strategy the child had attempted to use to spell the word (morphological, visual or phonics). • Each miscue was further analysed to determine the type of error which had occurred: • expleined – the child has correctly applied the morphological strategy to spell this past tense verb, but the error has occurred when they spelt the root word incorrectly. • hampster – the child has correctly used their phonics sounds to write the word they are pronouncing, but the error has occurred because they are pronouncing it incorrectly. • war – the child has correctly used visual recall of the word ‘war’ (we can determine that it is visual recall because it doesn’t follow phonics rules), but the error has occurred because they have used the incorrect homophone.

Method: Observations • Adapted from Wade (1990). • A way of confirming the speculations suggested by the writing itself (Weiner, 1994; Templeton and Scarborough-Franks, 1985) • Observations regarding children’s view of the strategies they are using, were recorded by the teacher/researcher and the teaching assistant during the teaching process, and later, at the writing stage. • Responses were later coded according to the strategy the child had described. • For observations occurring during the writing process, responses were further coded by a description of the response: • ‘wonderful is on the wall’ = use of classroom resource = visual strategy • ‘we can't say gooder, that's not a word’ = meaning = morphological • When a comment fell into two categories, it was coded in both: • ‘there are 2 fs in fluffy because it has a short vowel sound’ = comments relating to the appearance of words = visual • ‘there are 2 fs in fluffy because it has a short vowel sound’ = comments relating to specific sounds = phonics

120% 99% 99% 98% 98% 98% 98% 97% 97% 100% 96% 95% 94% 94% 94% 94% 93% 93% 91% 91% 91% 91% 90% 89% 88% 87% % of words in Standard Form 86% 85% 85% 85% 83% 77% 80% 75% 74% 69% 62% 57% 60% 47% 40% 20% 0% CC DL MA LBu AJA OB JB GM FB LD Lfu EM LJ AR LC LF TC LB Child % of Words in Standard Form Baseline % of Words in Standard Form Post-Model

• 17 out of 18 children improved or matched their % of correct spellings in their second piece of writing. 1 child did not – but they had been absent for the teacher input in the second piece of writing. • In the cases where children had only matched the % of correct spellings, the % had been high in the first piece of writing. • The most significant gains were made amongst the lower ability pupils.