I believe that
knowing spelling stages of individual students can help a lot in the classroom.
Knowing where each student stands will help me teach each student to my best
ability. I did my inquiry with a fourth grade classroom in Knox County. I gave
the class the elementary spelling inventory from Words Their Way.
In the Journal of
Child Development, Whitehurst and Lonigan wrote an article about emergent
literacy and the proposition that emergent literacy consists of two distinct
domains: inside-out skills (like phonological awareness and letter knowledge),
and outside-in skills (like language and conceptual knowledge). It claims that
these two domains come into play at different points during reading
acquisition, and inside-out skills includes emergent spelling with letter
knowledge and phonological awareness. Letter knowledge and phonological
awareness are what spelling helps to produce. Phonological awareness is a term
that refers to the understanding about words and sounds in words. Spelling can
help students understand that sentences are made of words and words are made of
syllables, which are constructed by letters.
I do not believe
that weekly spelling lists help students become better spellers, but I do
believe there are ways that we can use lists to our advantage as teachers. By using
the spelling inventories in Words Their
Way we see what stages of spellers students are. Our students will not all
be on the same spelling level no matter how many spelling tests we give, so
these inventories give students the opportunity to tell us what they understand
and which patterns they have mastered. One of my favorite spelling quotes I
have heard is “We do not make every student try out for the basketball team
every week, so why should we make every student try out for the spelling team
every Friday.” We, as teachers, need to find out what patterns students are
struggling with, and give them proper instruction to bring them up to grade
level.
For the most part,
the classroom I gave the inventory to was pretty consistent. Once I graphed all
of the students on the Classroom Composite sheet given in Words Their Way, I was able to clearly see the patterns of all the
students. There was only one student in the classroom that missed a considerable
amount of basic skills like digraphs and blends. If I were the teacher, I would
give this student some supplementary materials to help with these patterns. I
was also able to see that this class probably has not covered Harder Suffixes
and Bases or Roots because almost every student missed these skills.
According to Farrall, spelling and decoding
are two sides of the same coin; they both rely on the same underlying skills,
thus connecting spelling and reading further. (Farrall, 295.) This chapter says
“While spelling is more challenging than decoding, most children with weak
decoding skills are also impaired in their ability to spell words with
accuracy.” If teachers become more familiar with their students spelling
patterns – they will have the ability to further understand difficulties in
reading. Another thing that connects spelling and reading that this chapter
talks about is the concept of sight reading, which is a process by which
letters and letter combinations are mapped to sounds.
Spelling lists
test more of a student’s memory, than if they truly know how to spell the
words. The spelling inventory I gave has continued to tell me that we need to
teach our students patterns and not rules for spelling. I definitely want to
use this inventory in my future classrooms so I am able to help and teach each
student in ways that aid them most.
References
Farrall, Melissa Lee. (2012), Reading Assessment: linking
language, literacy, and cognition. Chapter 14, Pgs. 295-297. Hoboken, New
Jersey: John Wiley and Sons, Inc. Print.
Whitehurst, G. J.
and Lonigan, C. J. (1998), Child Development and Emergent Literacy. Child
Development, 69: 848–872. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.1998.tb06247.x
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