Second Student Survey

      This week I have constantly had at least 4 students absent each day. For the past three days, I have been trying to give each student a post-assessment. All but one student has taken the assessment. Today, I gave my second student survey. I have four students who have yet to take it. Ha ha! I think having students absent is just part of the action research journey.

     As I said above, I gave my students another survey. Based on the short responses I received on the first survey, I gave my students more instructions and directions when filling out the survey. However, I was clear not to give them ideas or suggestions. Overall, the students did not a much better job of answering my questions by adding more details. They were not perfect, but much more beneficial to me than the original survey. Below you will find some student responses I found interesting as well as my commentary.

First question: What strategies do you use to spell words when you write?

• Student #3 said"I put my hand under my chin and say the word out" - This student's group has been working on syllables. I am very impressed he wrote down this strategy as he has been struggling with syllables. I have been working with him on it.
• Student #8 said "I know how to spell a word because I sound them out and read." He is the first student to make the connection among reading and spelling. According to Reed (2012), “[p]roficiency in spelling actually supports reading” (p. 5). This student is a strong reader and enjoys reading. Student #21 falls into the same category. He scored 100% on both the pre- and post-assessments. In fact, I am always having to tell this student to put down his book and listen to my instruction. Ha ha. Ness (2010) states researchers “now understand the synchrony among reading, writing, and spelling development; the way in which a student spells a word provides important information about how the student reads words” (p. 114). When I think about my class as a whole I do see my stronger readers as my stronger spellers. I want to dive further into this topic to see what kind of data I have to support this theory.
• Student #17 said, "I sound out the words. I also think how the word is spelled and I write it." She is trying to pull spelling from her memory. She is thinking of spelling as rote memorization.

Second question: When you don't know how to spell a word, what do you do?

• Every student but one mentioned sounding out the word. Student #7 has been professionally tested and literally does not hear sounds phonetically.
• Student #4 said, "sound out the word, spelling carefully so I don't mess up" - This student puts a lot of pressure on himself to do well. He is upset when he gets a grade lower than an A.
• Student #11 said, "When I don't know how to spell a word I sound it out and then break it into smaller words so its easier to remember." I found this response interesting as it leans towards the implication that spelling is memorization.

Third question: What spelling patterns have you studied?

Here are some of their responses based on their spelling groups.

• Pink Group: aw, au, oddball, ou, ow
• Blue Group: past, present, nothing, -ing, -ed
• Orange Group: magic e, 1st, 2nd, VCCV, oddball, VC/V, V/CV
• Yellow Group: silent g, h, k; pre-, mis-, dis-

Articles cited:

Ness, M. K. (2010). Examining one class of third-grade spellers: The diagnostic potential of students' spelling. Reading Horizons, 50(2), 113-130.

Reed, D. K. (2012). Why teach spelling?. Center On Instruction.

Pre-Assessment and Post-Assessment

     It is hard to believe that I am nearly finished collecting data. Since we only have a four-day week, this week is perfect to give each of my students a post-assessment and another survey. Today, I decided to give the post-assessment since I knew it would take the longest to gather specific data. Unfortunately, I had four students absent today. I thought cold and flu season was suppose to be wrapping up in early March. 

     For the post-assessment, I gave the exact same assessment used for the pre-assessment. I chose this assessment because I am using the Words Their Way spelling program. --> Schlagal (2002) states “[t]here are very few programs that engage students in activities designed to help them perceive, manipulate, and automatize the orthographic generalizations illustrated in the word lists” (p. 53). Based on the results I have so far from the post-assessment, I believe that Words Their Way is one of these programs mentioned by Schlagal. Students were able to manipulate and begin understanding the orthographic patterns as they developed through the defined spelling developmental stages. Each week students were given a spelling list of words following specific orthographic patterns. Throughout the week, students completed a variety of activities to better understand these patterns.   -->

Below you will find the results of my pre-assessment and post-assessment:

Pre-Assessment

Post-Assessment

During my analysis, here are a few ideas I noticed (It is extremely important to remember that 4 students have yet to be tested and will change the post-assessment results): 

•  Pre-Assessment: 4 students were in the Within Word Pattern spelling stage; Post-Assessment: 2 students are in the Within Word Pattern spelling stage (I am thinking only 1 more student will fall in this range when tested tomorrow.)
• Pre-Assessment: 6 students were in the Early Syllables &Affixes spelling stage; Post-Assessment: 2 students are in the Early Syllables &Affixes spelling stage
• Pre-Assessment: 7 students were in the Middle Syllables &Affixes spelling stage; Post-Assessment: 5 students are in the Middle Syllables &Affixes spelling stage  
• Pre-Assessment: 1 students were in the Late Syllables &Affixes spelling stage; Post-Assessment: 4 students are in the Late Syllables &Affixes spelling stage 
• Pre-Assessment: 1 students were in the Derivational Relations spelling stage; Post-Assessment: 2 students are in the Derivational Relations spelling stage  
• 4 students dropped in their total score consisting of feature points and words spelled correctly.
• #10 dropped 6 points!
• #12 dopped 3 points.
• #14 dropped 2 points. 
• #15 dropped 1 point.
• 2 students' scores (#18 and #21) remained the same on the pre-assessment and post-assessment. #21 received 100% on both assessments. 
• #5 made the greatest gain by increasing 10 points! He moved up to Middle Syllables and Affixes spelling stage from Early Syllables and Affixes spelling stage.
• #8 and #9  both increased by 7 points!

     Overall, I am extremely pleased with how my students' scores were illustrated on the post-assessment. For the students whose scores decreased, I will look further into their actual spelling of individual words as well as specific features. 


-->

Schlagal, B. (2002). Classroom spelling instruction: History, research, and practice. Reading Research and Instruction, 42(1).

-->

Bear, D. R., Invernizzi, M., Templeton, S., Johnston, F. (2004). Words their way. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education.

 

Field Notes

     
      The picture above shows a portion of my field notes during the following activities: word sort, no-peeking sort, word hunt, speed sort, and assessment. These activities were chosen carefully after reviewing numerous amounts of literature. In one article Massengill (2006) states “memorization alone does not seem to [be] an effective enough method for learning words, which is the try goal of spelling (p. 422). Other articles I found supported Massengill's comments. Thus, I knew that when I chose these activities I needed students to focus on the orthographic patterns being studied that week in spelling. Reed (2012) states “[w]ord sort activities can reinforce the orthographic patterns” (p. 16).  Word sort allows students to work with me to determine which pattern each spelling word follows. No-peeking sort allows students to complete the sort by sound. Students are not able to memorize the sort because they are not looking at the individual word. The word hunt activity allowed students to find words following the orthographic pattern being studied that week in a variety of text, including their reading books. The speed sort allows students the opportunity to sort their words at a timed pace after studying the patterns for a few days. Finally, the assessment allows for students to show their knowledge of the spelling patterns.

     When looking at my field notes, I recognize that they provide extremely thin descriptions if any description. My students had a difficult time understanding the activities the first couple of weeks. Thus, I was having to walk around and help each group and student complete the activities. Luckily the last couple of weeks, the students are beginning to understand the activities and complete them independently. This independence has allowed me to walk around and observe more students at work. When analyzing the data, I will not rely heavily on my field notes, but may use them to help guide my commentary.

Massengill, D. (2006). Mission accomplished…it's learnable now: Voices of mature challenged spellers using a word study approach. Journal Of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 49(5), 420-431.

Reed, D. K. (2012). Why teach spelling?. Center On Instruction

Quantitative Data

Each Friday, my students take a spelling assessment on the words they have studied for that week. In the beginning, I was giving the assessment as a whole group. By calling out four different group's words, the assessment was taking me over 45 minutes to give. The past couple of weeks I started having my aide give one group's test and then I would call back the other three groups one at a time to the back table. Without looking at the data, I thought my students were performing better by taking the spelling assessment at the back table. They were asking for less words to be repeated and appeared more focused during the assessment. However, I knew that these generalizations were not sufficient and decided to put my students' scores on a single sheet of paper for analysis. My analysis for the data can be seen in the following picture.

I am a little concern that all of my students were not scoring as well as they had the first week. After much thought, I am beginning to wonder if the students are having to work harder to learn their words since the words are in their developmental stage. I am going to keep this idea in the back of my head as I analyze more data. My last spelling assessment will be given this Friday. I am curious to see how my students perform due to the snow day today and not being able to work with their spelling word patterns...only time will tell.

Spelling Sentences

     I am the first person that will tell you I am a Nervous Nelly. Ever since I was little, I have always over-analyzed numerous situations in which most people do not give a second thought. During this journey of my action research project, I am having a difficult time "trusting the process." As I begin to analyze more and more data, my comfort level does start to increase. Since I am looking at how students can become better spellers to improve their reading and writing, I decided after talking with my professor to have students write sentences using the spelling patterns being studied that week. I had done this experiment a couple of weeks ago when I interviewed two students. This time I decided to have all my students complete this task. Overall, I am pleased with the results. The one thing I will change for next time is to give the groups who are working on suffixes, the root word in which to add the suffix. I had a few students misspell words such as shove and doze. However, my point was not if the students could spell the root word last week, I was curious to see how the groups could manipulate the word to add the suffix -ing and -ed correctly. Below you will find four samples taken from this activity along with my notes.

Student 11 is in the blue group. His group was studying how to change the root word when adding the suffixes -ing and -ed. As you can see, he misspelled dozing. However, this student gave a detailed description as to how he knew to spell these words based on the patterns being studied.

Student 13 is part of the pink group, which is studying the same sound ou and ow can make. She recognizes that spelling activities help her become a better speller. The activities she listed above are the assignments students are currently completing for homework.

Student 12 is also part of the pink group. When writing her words, she took the time to sound out the words and recognized that the underlined words had the same sound she studied for that week.

Student 21 is part of my yellow group, which is studying prefixes un- and re-. He is a strong speller and always states he listens and sounds out words to spell. However, he does not recognize that this is a spelling strategy.

     Student 12 works hard to improve her spelling on a daily basis. She is quick to sound out words. Based on her remarks, she continues to use sounding out sounds and syllables as her main method for spelling unfamiliar words. She even goes so far as to make the connection of sounds heard to the current week's spelling patterns. Invernizz & Hayes (2004) state “that the process of comparing and contrasting orthographic features not only teaches the spelling of specific words but also encourages students to make generalizations about the spelling consistency of other words within a given category (p. 224).  Student 12 is recognizing that when she hears the ow sound that it could be spelled using the letters ow or ou. She made that generalization independently when writing this sentence. Student 13 made a similar correct generalization, however, she stated her generalization was made based on daily spelling activities.

     Student 11 made drew accurate conclusions when spelling the underlined words related to his spelling patterns. Schlagal (2002) states “[s]orting and manipulating these lists of words by their patterns provides a powerful dimension of interest and focus to a week’s instructional sequence and can help children to see and understand the orthographic structures they are studying” (p. 54). Student 11 immediately recognized and was able to clearly state the specific spelling patterns he was studying for that week and how these new words fell into the categories. Even though Student 21 stated it was due to sounding out sounds. I do believe he is seeing and understanding the specific features he is studying each week. However, I believe that he is subconsciously translating these new features into his writing.

     Both of these articles strongly support my decision to differentiate spelling among my students as well as choose lists that focus on specific features. With much practice, students are beginning to translate these spelling features into their writing. For more information on these articles, I provided the citations below. I am excited to interview my two students this week and ask more detailed questions.

Invernizzi, M., & Hayes, L. (2004). Developmental-spelling research: A systematic imperative. Reading Research Quarterly, 39(2), 216-228.

Schlagal, B. (2002). Classroom spelling instruction: History, research, and practice. Reading Research and Instruction, 42(1).

Thick Description

       Pictures are worth 1,000 words. That statement could not have been more true for a student on Thursday. Unfortunately, I did not have a camera. It was just after lunch on Thursday and students were going to complete a speed sort to practice their spelling words.

     Student #13 is in the pink spelling group. She is a quiet girl, who lately has been having trouble focusing on class assignments. Her mother is extremely concerned about her spelling abilities. This student is aware of the comparison her mother makes between her older sister and her. Her older sister loves school and does very well. My student loves to hunt, draw, and play with her friends. She loves enjoys coming to school, but could do without the instruction part. Ha ha! However, she continues to try her best. 
      As she pulls out her spelling words, I notice she is struggling to find her headers and bold words. She asks me what will happen if she does not sort her words correctly. I respond that she will be given the opportunity to fix her mistakes until she sorts them correctly. Based on her lack of response and facial expression, I could tell this was not the response she wanted to her. She finally sets up her bold words and headers to be ready for the sort. The student looks around the room. Her hand is in her bag ready to grab the next word when I say go. I say, "Ready, set, go." She grabs her first word. I watch her lips as she sounds out her words to decide if it the word goes in the "ow," "ou," or "oddball" column. She continued to sound out each word and think about the placement of the word before setting the word in the column. This is the same student who is too shy to sound out her words quietly on Mondays. I was beaming as I was watching her! I continued to walk around the room and check students as they finished. Finally, she finished sorting her words. She looked over her words one more time, then she raised her hand. I walked over to her desk and looked at her words. She had sorted her words correctly! I was impressed she had found her oddball words correctly as she had struggled a little on Monday to tell the difference between through and though. She started smiling the second I told her her sort was correct. I told her she could put her words away since she finished. I am not sure that small smile left her face the entire time she cleaned up her words and waited for her classmates to finish. In the end, her team ended up winning the spelling sort.