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).