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
91% 91%
99%96%
87%
94%
89%85%
93%
85%88%
90% 91%
75%
83%
69%
57%
47%
98% 98% 99%97%
95% 94%91%
94%98%
94% 93%
98% 97%
74%
86% 85%
77%
62%
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
120%
CC DL MA LBu AJA OB JB GM FB LD Lfu EM LJ AR LC LF TC LB
% o
f w
ord
s in
Sta
nd
ard
Fo
rm
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.
17%
15%
68%
Total Miscues Time 1
% Morphological Strategy % Visual Strategy
% Phonology Strategy
18%
16%
66%
Total Miscues - Time 2
% Morphological Strategy % Visual Strategy
% Phonology Strategy
• The % of morphological, visual or phonics miscues has remained similar across
both pieces of writing.
• This indicates that children are still largely reliant on phonics strategies when
spelling unknown words.
• However, given that the research did not examine correctly spelt words, there is
nothing to say that children may have applied alternative strategies to spell
unknown words and spelt them correctly.
• 75% of errors that occurred while children were applying a morphological
strategy, occurred as a result of the child spelling the root word incorrectly – their
application of the morphological rule, was, in fact, correct.
• This indicates that children do have a good grasp of the morphological spelling
strategy.
36
9
3
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Root word spelt incorrectly Rule not applied Rule applied to an irregularword
Breakdown of errors identified in the morphological category - Time 2
• When using a
phonics strategy,
63% of errors
occurred when
children misapplied
their phonics skills
(the word they spelt
was not a correct
phonetic
representation of
the word they were
trying to spell).
• Does this indicate a
need to develop
alternative
strategies further?
63%
7%
13%
6%
11%
Breakdown of errors identified in the phonics category - Time 2
Phonemes not represented accurately Misunderstanding of pronunciation
Visual principles not applied Phonetic principles not applied
Morphological principles not applied
7%
37%
56%
Strategies identified in observations during the teaching process
Phonological Visual Morphological
• 56% of observations recorded during the teaching process
related to the child’s understanding of morphological
processes. This indicates that children as young a six can
have a good understanding of morphology (contradicting
alternative research conducted by Larkin and Snowling,
2008).
• Only 7% of observations related to phonics. This is
surprising, given that phonics is the first strategy children use when they begin writing.
25
37
32
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Phonological Observations Visual Observations Morphological Observations
Observations of Spelling strategies recorded during the independent writing process
• Children are able to utilise and explain phonic, visual and
morphological spelling strategies in their independent writing.
• Results support the idea that distributed learning is more beneficial than massed
(Seabrook et al, 2005; Shapiro & Solity, 2008; Hattie, 2009; Solity & Vousden,
2009).
• Classroom-based interventions should provide opportunities for pupils to
revisit learning several times a week – children are more likely to retain what
they can recall frequently (Shapiro & Solity, 2008).
• The study supported the idea that generalisation is an effective teaching
component – pupils demonstrated that they were effectively able to apply
morphological strategies to spell unknown words (Haring et al, 1978), following
exposure to explicit modeling during the teaching process (Carnine and Becker,
1982).
• In some cases, principles were generalised to irregular words – the teaching
of exceptions is also a vital component.
• The children were not required to take part in any extended writing activity as
part of the teaching process, and yet still, the intervention was successful in
increasing accurate spelling. This is supported by Nunes et al (2003).
• Word-study investigations took place in small group situations – I would suggest
that these sessions were effective because children were able to scaffold each
others thoughts (Vygotsky, 1986) and widen their thinking skills (Becker & Selter,
1996), which they could then utilise later in their independent writing.
• The success of the intervention also supports the idea that a key aspect of
successful literacy teaching is interactive whole-class instruction (DfEE, 1998;
Shapiro & Solity, 2008) which, if achieved well, can generate a very high level of
attention, engagement and active participation by pupils.
• No control group – could children have made similar
progress without exposure to the teaching model?
• Study took place in a real-life classroom, not in a tightly
controlled situation.
• Enthusiasm/competence of teacher (Hattie, 2009)
• How would the teaching model work on a whole school
basis?
• What are the implications for SEND children?
• How do we improve spelling consciousness further?
proofreading/editing vs self-correction/monitoring
Looking across the group Interviews so far with 6 teachers (+1 postponed)
teaching Y1 to Y6 who have been working on spelling
Summaries agreed
Coded (QDA Miner)
Memos and themes
Attitudes to spelling “The children have gained a love of spelling and spelling
principles…. It has helped the children realise that it is not a rule and then breaking it. It takes away children being frightened and feeling they don't want to play and gives them more ownership. Early in the year, they didn't want to try moving things around in words. Now they do.” (Emily)
“Children care about their spelling.” (Eleanor) “The use of a whiteboard has been a real comfort for them….
Now children take pride in their spelling…. They know spelling is an important life skill. ” (Lily)
“The children are more aware of the importance of spelling. They are not just using phonics… They are using a wider vocabulary and are more engaged and enthusiastic. They like showing off the words they can use.” (Leila)
Improvements All interviews showed greater improvements in
children’s spelling than normal
Often improved attitudes and understanding of how spelling works for teachers and children
Improved proof-reading and editing including with KS1 children
Children better able to verbalise their understanding of spelling
Move to using a wider range of strategies (‘overlapping waves’, Devonshire, Morris and Fluck, 2010/2013)
Key factors appearing to improve spelling Time spent explicitly teaching it – raising the profile of
spelling Engaging children through active tasks Improved teacher subject knowledge Looking at spelling across the curriculum Focus on talk and investigation Making connections and links between words
Use of ICT to engage children Use of whiteboards to try out spellings Linking handwriting and spelling Looking at spelling within work on high quality texts Moving from ‘rules’ to ‘principles’ (Ramsden, 1993)
Challenges Teacher subject knowledge
Making time for spelling
Gaps in children’s learning
Contextualised teaching of spelling
Securing spelling of root words
Supporting children with SEND
Where next? Conference Monday 5th February 2018
Expanding group – schools, teachers and children
How can we most effectively and simply show progress in spelling within children’s writing?
How can we best help teachers develop the subject knowledge and confidence needed?
What happens when spelling teaching becomes routine rather than a particular development focus?
Incorporating and linking with other research on spelling, including in Australia!