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!

Any questions?

Miranda M.Dodd@soton.ac.uk

Natalie nwilcox@kaneshillsch.net