The Why & How of Teaching Spelling Part II: Establishing Teaching Strategies By Beverly L. Adams-Gordon Copyright 2010 by Beverly L. Adams-Gordon More copies are available at www.spellingpower.com. First Edition: May, 2010 Permission to copy this eReport is given to individuals to distrib- ute at classes, conventions, or workshops as long as the entire eReport, including the Cover, author information, and catalog copy is also in- cluded as part of the copies distributed. Copying and distributing this eReport without these elements will be treated as an infringe- ment of copyrights under Federal and International Law. Magazines or Newsletter editors wishing to use all or part of this eReport may contact the publisher listed below: Castlemoyle Books P.O. Box 520 Pomeroy, WA 99347 Tel: 509-843-5009 Fax: 509-843-3183 Email: [email protected] @ 2010 by Beverly L. Adams-Gordon Establishing Teaching Strategies In the first part of this eReport, the three basic approaches to spelling instruction were discussed. Why each has an important role to play in the spelling curriculum was also explained. In addition to the basic ap- proaches to spelling instruction, there are key elements and teaching strategies which contribute to the effectiveness of the spelling curricu- lum. Research conducted over the last century and a half has given us clear guidelines as to which teaching strategies are most effective. Many of these strategies are applicable to all areas of the curriculum, while others are specific to teaching spelling. In this part of the eReport, these key strategies will be explored. Multi-level Instructional Materials The pupils differ in the time at which they need to study particular words, in the types of mistakes they make, in the amount of repetition they need to learn a given word, and the vocabulary requirements of the spelling they need to do in writing. There is a saving of time when each pupil works only with words he needs to learn. Each pupil, ideally, should start at his own level and proceed at the rate at which he makes most progress. Each child should work on his own difficulties and no others.12 While individual differences in all aspects of student growth come forcibly to the attention of those who work with students, research and experience have shown spelling to be one of the areas of the curriculum in which wide differences create instructional problems. Research by Hildreth has consistently shown that within same-age grouped class- rooms there is a wide span of spelling abilities and that the span in- creases with each year of schooling. By the fourth grade, the variation in spelling ability in any typical group will range over five or six grade levels, and it is not unusual to find a range in spelling ability equal to ten school years among students in most sixth grade classrooms. This variability in spelling is well illustrated by the performances on the Morrison-McCall Spelling Scale (which includes words ranging in difficulty from the first to the eighth grade or higher) of students in one school. Form Three of this test was given to all students at the middle of the term in grades three through six. The results showed that the students’ scores in grade three ranged from the first through the fourth grade level. In grade four, the range was from the middle of the second grade to the ninth grade. In grade five, the scores varied from the middle of the third grade to the tenth grade in difficulty. And in grade six, the students ranged from just below the fourth grade to the senior high school level. The data for this school are fairly typical of results found in schools all over the country, no matter what kinds of students are enrolled, what grades they are in, or what methods have been used in teaching them. It 3 The Why and How to Teach Spelling points to the importance of providing each teacher with a program which allows her to provide each student the appropriate instructional materi- als at the appropriate time. Such materials are found only in multi-level programs such as the Adams-Gordon’s Spelling Power program. Individualized Lists Needed Curtis and Dolch hold that typical grade lists are not good guides to the spelling words children need to study. Completely prescribed lists for the year make it impossible for children to receive drill on words they most need to practice.13 Assigning a weekly word list has definite disadvantages, if the teacher’s goal is that each student master the entire word list. It use to be assumed that when a word had been taught once, it was “finished.” Now it is known that the first teaching of a word may be only the introduction to a se- quence of systematic presentations and reviews. Although some words seem to be universally troublesome, most words vary in difficulty de- pending on a student’s ability and experience. In 1975, C. A. McGuigan14 introduced the concept of the “Add-a- Word- List” to address this aspect of learner variability. In his approach, as each word is mastered by the student it is dropped from the list and new words are added. Automatic retention checks of frequently misspelled words were built into the word lists. In addition, a series of review tests were included to assure long-term retention of the spelling words. McGuigan experimented with this approach at the Experimental Edu- cation Unit of the University of Washington with over 30 students ages seven to 13 and in public school classrooms, including adult re-educa- tion programs. Data from his investigation indicate that students learn words more quickly with add-a-word lists and have similar or even su- perior retention than with fixed word lists. Effects of the Test-Study-Test Approach If the purpose of the pretest is clearly understood and the errors made are immediately and carefully corrected by the student, and if children understand that alert, conscientious correction of the test con- tributes greatly to the elimination of errors, the corrected test is by far the most efficient learning procedure.15 Research (first conducted by Kingsley in 1923) has repeatedly shown that the test-study-test plan is the most effective for the study of spelling. Research has produced about twice as many investiga- tions favoring the test-study-test versus the study-test plan. The test- study-test plan involves the use of the following procedures: a pre- test of a list of words is given the student, the student then studies the words missed on the pretest, and a final test is given to verify that he has learned the words. This approach enables the student to get full recognition for words 4 © 2010 by Beverly L. Adams-Gordon the spelling of which he has already learned in another context, and thus enables him to concentrate upon those difficulties that have been identified by the pretest. Limiting a student’s study to his identified needs is more efficient; and it generally produces a more favorable attitude toward his instructional program. The debate regarding the test-study-test plan vs. the study-test plan has often been centered not on its effectiveness but on at what grade levels it should be used. In 1931, Gates16 concluded that the test-study- test plan was most effective with students beyond grade three only. Investigation summarized by Ernest Horn in 196017 concluded that the test-study-test method is superior with all classes and at all grade levels. However, many educators (including this writer) express con- cern that students in the lower grades (kindergarten through grade two) will benefit more from the study-test method, because of their limited writing vocabulary. Students who are likely to misspell every word on the pretest will profit emotionally from a method which al- lows them to study the words prior to any testing. Immediate Self-Correction In 1947, Thomas Horn concluded through scientific research that add- ing the simple immediate-self-correction step to the test-study-test plan produced significant gains in spelling achievement.18 His findings are consistently reaffirmed by studies, most recently in 1980 by Fitzsimmons and Loomer.19 Horn’s immediate-self-correction step requires the teacher to provide the student with the correct spelling immediately after he has attempted spelling the word. Research has shown that the self-corrected test is the most efficient single learning procedure in spelling instruction and study. On the ba- sis of such findings, it is difficult to justify having students exchange spell- ing papers or to have the teacher correct them.20 One of the reasons that the immediate self-correction step is so effec- tive is that with 44 sounds in the English language and approximately 250 ways to write them, the student will often puzzle over the appropri- ate spelling for the sound he hears. The immediate self-correction gives him the answer immediately after he has puzzled over it. With the self- correction process, everyone learns from his mistakes; some learn to avoid them, others to repeat them. Notes on the Immediate Correction Process: Many teachers may be concerned that the self-correction process forces the student to con- centrate on his errors. Their natural reaction is to feel that it is best to keep the student from seeing his error to prevent him retaining a faulty visual impression of the word. To refute this philosophy, Gillingham and Stillman make two very good points: “First, a poor speller is usually a poor speller because he does not retain clear visual images of words, so he will not likely remember the appearance of the wrong spelling. Sec- ond, people do not go through life with a patient mentor always at hand 5 The Why and How to Teach Spelling to obliterate the wrong and substitute the right.”21 They add that the self- correction process “will be a greater boon to train them into more and more knowledge and skill in detecting their own mistakes.” The value of the immediate self-correction, when combined with the other procedures in the Adams-Gordon Spelling Power program, should not be underestimated. According to research done by Tho- mas Horn and others, the effect of the immediate self-corrected test is the single most important factor contributing to success in spell- ing study. It alone will contribute 90 to 95 percent of the achievement resulting from the combined effects of the pronunciation exercises, corrected test, and study sheet work.22 The success of self-correction as a learning tactic may be related to three factors. First, students may feel more personally involved with their own learning when they correct their own work. Second, the im- mediacy of feedback during the self-correction may influence learn- ing. . . Finally, the discrimination involved in correcting one’s own spell- ing may result in closer attention to misspellings.23 “Reinforcement” is the term used by psychologists, and other spe- cialists in the learning process, to explain the extra-strength learning which occurs when students find out immediately whether they are right or wrong. When a student finds out immediately, while the elements of the problem are fresh in his mind, his knowledge is “reinforced”: if he finds he is right, he becomes positive; if he finds he is wrong and checks at once to find out why he was wrong, he can sort out the points of the words that puzzled him and becomes sure of them. For example, suppose you ask him to spell “buoyant.” He starts to write but hesitates; “Is it b-u-o or b-o-u or maybe b-o-i or even b-o-y?” After deciding about that, he puzzles further, “And is it e-n-t or a-n-t?” Having then written the word one way or another, he wonders whether he has spelled the word correctly. By confirming the correct spelling immedi- ately, while he still remembers what parts of the word troubled him, his knowledge of the spelling of “buoyant” and words like it will be much surer. “Hard Spot” Identification Is Not Advised It is important not to confuse the effectiveness of the self-discov- ery of errors made possible through the immediate self-correction procedures with the concept of pre-marking “hard spots.” Several studies have been made of the value of using diacritical marks, pre- marking hard spots with colored pencil, writing words in separate syllable form, or calling attention to incorrect forms. The first such study was conducted in 1927. After studying 4,000 pupils and over 500,000 words, Tireman24 concluded that pre-marking “hard spots” actually lowered spelling scores. In a later study by Gates25, it was shown that prior identification of hard spots in words was impracti- cal because different students experience different “hard spots.” 6 © 2010 by Beverly L. Adams-Gordon Horn’s work with self-corrected tests has suggested that one of the reasons the self-corrected test seems so beneficial is that the student discovers his own “hard spots.” Schonell’s26 recommendations that the student discover his own common errors by underlining them with a colored pencil seems to confirm this philosophy. Multi-Sensory Study Approach Required Research by Hildreth and others has shown that there is a direct cor- relation between learning style or modality and spelling ability. Spell- ing is primarily a sensory-motor habit. The correct spelling of a word is both learned and recalled by repeated motor reactions to certain sen- sory stimuli. Most successful spellers depend upon one of their senses to tell whether the word is right or not. Most good spellers can tell you whether the word “looks” right or wrong. Their memory is predominantly visual. They have become suc- cessful spellers because traditional instructional approaches have been limited to visual approaches. (Most evaluations of spelling ability also favors the visual learner.) Poor spellers tend to have poor visual recall. They learn best through other sensory input. Some learn best through auditory impressions. They depend on remembering the sounds of the letters being recited in or- der. Still others learn well by recalling physical or tactile impressions. Individuals in this last group would recall the spellings in terms of lip and throat movements (by saying the letters) and the movements of the hand in writing the word. Tactile learners are aided in learning the spell- ing of words by the stronger sensation of “feeling” or touching the shapes of the words. Armed with this information, it would be easy to assume that one should determine the student’s learning style and then teach in an appropriate manner. This would be a mistake. First, it would be impractical to create a separate spelling curriculum for each student. Furthermore, it is im- portant to remember when discussing the application of learning style theory that while each person has a predominant learning style, we all learn through all of our senses. Additionally, it should be remembered that dominant modality also has developmental factors. For example, Piaget and others found that very young children learn through audi- tory avenues; early elementary ages tend to be kinesthetic and con- crete; while older students tend to rely on their abstract reasoning or analytical powers along with visual recall. Finally, using an exclusive learning style could possibly result in the neglect of other important skills. For instance, proofreading is primarily a visual task. To develop this skill, a strong emphasis should be placed upon visual discrimination in the presentation of words for study. This emphasis should be both on building visual discrimination skills and utilizing such skills. In this regard, presenting words in columnar form is more efficient than presenting them in context. A child should be taught to observe the whole word in isolation, to observe the word syllable by 7 The Why and How to Teach Spelling syllable, and to note any peculiar combinations of letters. Developing auditory discrimination, needed for accurate pronunciation and appli- cation of phonetic principles, is also very important. Because each person’s optimum learning style varies, as we have seen, spelling study must include procedures which help all learners succeed. The multi-sensory testing and 10-Step Study steps developed for use in the Adams-Gordon’s Spelling Power program are those accepted as being the most effective for the systematic study of spell- ing words. What is more, the Adams-Gordon’s Spelling Power program’s proprietary steps were designed to incorporate all these research-proven approaches and strategies. There is no other program that uses this stream-lined approach to facilitate efficient use of both parent and teacher time and energy, because it was developed espe- cially for the Adams-Gordon’s Spelling Power program. Spelling Rules Should Be Taught Earlier in this eReport, the work of Hanna, Hanna and Hodges27 was discussed. Their gigantic “computer-based study” at Stanford Univer- sity, which involved the analysis of 17,000 words, proving the value of teaching students phonetic principles. This research was not limited to phonetic principles; it also included linguistic principles which affect the proper spelling of words, for instance, the rules for adding suffixes to words. This research showed that phonetic generalizations and lin- guistic principles cover one or more elements of 85 percent of the words analyzed. Not only did this landmark study show that rules apply to at least some part of many words, they showed that the exceptions to these rules were less frequent than had been previously thought. Another of the valuable outcomes of this research was learning that there are 46 rules and lin- guistic principles which have few or no exceptions and apply to the larg- est number of high frequency words. (Some of the rules used in the study, while stable, affect so few words that it would not be economical in terms of instructional time to teach them.) Their research also suggested that word selection and organization according to these key linguistic principles can be an aid to spelling study. Knowing these principles and rules can help the student to de- velop the ability to spell an unstudied word and probably spell it right because the pattern has been learned. Linguistically oriented spelling material lends itself well to various teaching strategies not peculiar to linguistics: for example, the induc- tive approach, arriving at patterns or generalizations from observing words in word lists, not just mechanically memorizing them, and a “spi- ral curriculum,” or teaching the same principles over and over but with ever-increasing ramifications.28 In relation to the value of the direct teaching of spelling rules, Horn 8 © 2010 by Beverly L. Adams-Gordon states that “the only spelling generalizations that should be taught as rules are those that apply to a large number of words and have few ex- ceptions.” The following generalizations, in addition to the basic pho- neme-grapheme relationships (especially vowel sounds), are those that most linguistic experts agree are profitable for your student to learn. 1. When spelling words of one syllable ending in a single consonant, preceded by a single vowel, double the final con- sonant before a suffix beginning with a vowel. (lag, lagging; plan, planned) (Adams-Gordon’s Spelling Power Group Rule 34.) 2. When spelling words of more than one syllable ending in a single consonant, preceded by a single vowel, double the final consonant before adding a suffix if: 1) the syllable pre- ceding the suffix is accented, 2) the last syllable ends in a con- sonant with one vowel before it, and 3) the suffix or ending begins with a vowel. (occur, occurred; prefer, preferring, prefer- ence; repel, repellent; travel, traveled, traveling; but admit, ad- mittance) (Adams-Gordon’s Spelling Power Group Rules 32, 33, and 34.) 3. Final y, preceded by a consonant, changes to ie before adding an s. (army, armies; fly, flies but turkey, turkeys; attorney, attorneys because a vowel precedes the y) (Adams-Gordon’s Spelling Power Group Rule 32.) 4. In adding a suffix to a word ending in silent e, retain the e if the suffix begins with a consonant, but drop the e if the suffix begins with a vowel. (Adams-Gordon’s Spelling Power Group Rules 26, 27, 32, and 34.) 5. Add s to words to form plurals or to change the tense of verbs, but es must be added to words ending with the hissing sounds (x, s, sh, ch). (glass, glasses; watch, watches, check, checks) (Adams-Gordon’s Spelling Power Group Rule 30, 31, and 32.) 6. When s is added to words ending in a single f, the f is changed to v and es is added. (half, halves; shelf, shelves) (Adams-Gordon’s Spelling Power Group Rule 31) 7. In the ei, ie combinations (pronounced e as in feel) i comes before e except after c. (believe, receive) The most common exceptions to this generalization are contained in this sentence: “Neither leisurely financier seized either weird species.” (This rule is not specifically taught as a group rule, but is associated with Adams-Gordon’s Spelling Power Group 7.) 8. Use an hyphen in compound numbers from twenty-one to ninety-nine, and in specific fractions: twenty-five dollar bills ($25), twenty five dollar bills ($100) (the hyphen prevents con- fusion) three-fourths, four and two-thirds, thirty-hundredths, thirty-one hundredths). The hyphen should also be used in 9 The Why and How to Teach Spelling compound nouns such as son-in-law. (Adams-Gordon’s Spell- ing Power Group Rules 36, 38, and 39.) 9. The letter q is always followed by u in common English words. (queen, quite) (Adams-Gordon’s Spelling Power Group Rule 21.) 10. No English words end in v. (glove, love) (Adams-Gordon’s Spelling Power Group Rule 23.) 11. Proper nouns and most adjectives formed from proper nouns begin with a capital letter. (America, American) (Adams- Gordon’s Spelling Power Group Rule 35.) 12. Most abbreviations end with a period. (etc., Nov.) (Adams- Gordon’s Spelling Power Group Rule 41.) 13. The apostrophe is used to show the omission of letters in contractions. (he’s, don’t, it’s, ain’t) (Adams-Gordon’s Spelling Power Group Rule 37.) 14. The apostrophe is used to indicate the possessive form of nouns but not pronouns. (boy’s, dog’s, its, theirs) (Adams- Gordon’s Spelling Power Group Rule 40.) There are some exceptions to these generalizations (that is why we usually call them generalizations and not rules), but they are sufficiently universal to aid spelling instruction. The Adams-Gordon’s Spelling Power program provides for instruction and review of the phoneme-grapheme relationships of vowel sounds in groups 1 to 20, 25, and 29 and spelling generalizations in groups 21-24, 26-28, 30 to 46 of the Adams-Gordon’s Spelling Power Flow-Word-Lists. However, you should provide more di- rect instruction on each spelling “rule” to your student before he en- counters it the first time on a Flow-Word-List. Foran makes the following conclusions regarding such instruction: 1. Only one rule or skill should be introduced at a time. 2. A rule should only be taught when it is needed. 3. The teaching of rules should be integrated whenever pos- sible with the arrangement or grouping of the words in the lists. 4. Once the generalization has been introduced, it should be systematically reviewed and applied. Both in original teach- ing and in reviews, emphasis should be upon the use of the rule rather than upon the mere memorization of the verbal state- ment. 5. Spelling generalizations should be taught inductively rather than deductively whenever possible. 10