Until just over a hundred years ago, the teaching of spelling and reading in the United States was very closely related. For the time of the earliest colonization in America until the late 1800s almost every child learned to read via a spelling book and most children memorized the spellings of lists of words preliminary to approaching connected text. Around 1890 there was a great literature movement and the old spelling books were discarded as being outdated relics of rote learning.
Skip ahead eighty or ninety years. Much research since 1971, beginning with the work of Charles Read at the University of Wisconsin and expanded by Edmund Henderson and his students at the University of Virginia, has centered on how children learn to spell developmentally. This research revealed that knowledge of the American spelling system serves far greater purposes than the majority of 20thcentury educators generally believed. Correlations have been found between spelling development and reading readiness, between spelling and accuracy and fluency of reading, and between spelling and comprehension. We now know that spelling and reading are intricately connected but that the influence of spelling on reading is greater than the influence of spelling on reading
Let’s consider four essential elements for beginning reading success. These are 1) left to right progression, 2) phonemic awareness, 3) letter-sound knowledge, and 4) concept of word. All other prescribed elements can be in place – a child’s having been read to throughout pre-school years, having a wide range of experiences, having excellent language ability, being physically coordinated, etc. – but unless a child masters the four basic elements, s/he will not learn to read. All of these elements develop naturally in the process of systematic spelling instruction.
There are three aspects of good spelling instruction. The first of these is dealing with high-frequency words. There is a definite place for graded word lists and these should be posted for children to see, either through word walls or other means the individual teacher chooses to use, i.e., personal dictionaries which children have at their work stations. A second element involves thematic words, those used around holiday times or from specific subject areas. The third aspect is the spelling system. From the spelling research it has been determined that all learners go through the same sequence of spelling development whether they be first graders or adults who did not learn as children. This system should be taught in a developmentally appropriate manner.
What, then, are some qualifications for a good spelling and/or word study program.
1) Is it developmental? Does it follow the known sequence of natural spelling acquisition? Does it begin at a level that is comfortable for the child? Is it carefully sequenced, introducing new concepts built on skills previously taught and recycled?
2) How does it address phonemic awareness? Phonemic awareness is the knowledge of, and ability to discriminate between, sounds in spoken words. Does it take phonemic awareness beyond just hearing the sounds and into letter/sound relationships? Using slow pronunciation, stretching out words like a rubber band, helps children recognize the separate sounds. Once the child can distinguish the different phonemes (sounds), does it apply the major graphemes (letters and letter strings) that relate to those phonemes?
3) Does it teach the spelling system or does it rely on lists of high-frequency words? Most spelling programs of the recent past have relied on teaching children to spell the most frequently used words in our language. Such programs (with 25 words per week for 30 weeks, plus a review lesson every six weeks) limit a child’s spelling instruction to about 750 words per year. Teaching the spelling system increases their learning to thousands of words in the same time frame.
4) How does it treat sight words, words that don’t fit regular pronunciation patterns? Are these words just incorporated into weekly work or is there a clearly defined place in which these are taught? Many of these words are simply variant pronunciations of regular spelling patterns (keen, seen, teen, been; laid, maid, paid, said) and can be taught as such.
5) Does it provide activities through which ALL children can learn? In other words, is it multi-sensory? How many senses are involved in a particular activity? Does it emphasize handwriting along with spelling. Using fingers on texture while saying letter names and sounds helps to lock in the concepts of letter shapes and the sounds they represent. Rather than seeing first and attempting to copy, sometimes it’s better to have the child hear the word, say it slowly, write it, and compare his/her written form to the correct one.
6) How does it provide for extending the spelling lessons? Are there provisions for extending daily and weekly work beyond just spelling and into process writing and grammar instruction? Does it provide opportunities for children to do process writing, and learning through sharing their pieces? Does it provide opportunities for children to read words in connected text that they’ve learned through their spelling lessons?
7) What kinds of assessments are provided? Do the assessments help us understand where the child is developmentally and provide knowledge of specific areas for remediation? It’s important to evaluate the children’s progress. Look for what they’ve spelled right rather than what is wrong and move ahead from there. What part of the word needs help? Always remember to look at the entire process rather than isolated portions. Most importantly, take each child from where s/he is to what s/he can become as a good speller and reader.
In the process of writing words, children can be taught left to right progression. By using patterns of the language, phonemic awareness develops as children slowly pronounce words before writing them. If spelling lessons are carefully planned, letter/sound knowledge is built in a sequential fashion. Even the concept of word appears to develop faster in students who are first taught to write them as individual entities rather than relying on learned phrases as “wnsupnutm”, (Once upon a time), as we often see in primary writing
For a long time we have looked at spelling as an outgrowth of reading. Perhaps it’s time to think about “Learn to spell first; then learn to read and write faster,” not in terms of rote learning from earlier days but, rather, with an eye toward enhancing our students’ natural sequential developmental processes.
The Spel-Lang Tree: Roots answers all of the above questions in a positive way by teaching the spelling system and moving into connected activities of sentence construction and grammar.