Members of the MiddleWeb Discussion List and other interested
teachers are joining together to explore the Writing Workshop
and other ideas about supporting young adolescent writers and
readers. Juli Kendall, a reading-writing teacher/coach in Long
Beach, California, is helping moderate the discussion. Last year,
Juli kept a weekly journal from her Reading Workshop.
This year, Juli is continuing her journals, but this time she's
focusing on her Writing Workshop. Find out more about our project
at our Reading/Writing Workshop homepage.
You'll find Juli's background article here.
Links to many of the tools created by Juli and her colleagues
are embedded in these journals. Most often, when you click on
them, a PDF file will begin to download. You'll find a list of
the downloads here.
If you'd like to join the daily discussion that parallels Juli's
Journals, find out how here.
"Spelling Counts!" says the computer-generated banner on the wall of our classroom bungalow. It's not a challenge but a commitment we try to keep everyday.
That banner really should say "Spelling help available here" because almost everywhere else spelling has become so much more than a mere convention. Our clothes, friends and accessories may reflect who we are, but our spelling often determines how others see us. That's why we look it up in a dictionary or the thesaurus, use word processors and spell checkers, seek help from friends and colleagues. We want our spelling to look good because that makes us look and feel good.
Faced with the importance of spelling in our lives, how can we teach our kids to improve their spelling as a part of Writing Workshop? Here's the plan we use.
1. Do a spelling assessment
In our class, we start with an initial "Spelling-By-Stage Assessment" from page 38 in the book, Words Their Way: Word Study for Phonics, Vocabulary, and Spelling Instruction by Donald Bear, et. al. The assessment consists of 25 words divided into sets of five. Each group of words represents a spelling stage: Preliterate, Early Letter-Name, Letter Name, Within Word Pattern, Syllable Juncture and Derivational Constancy.
This book also includes examples of lists for content area spelling assessments, as well as ones in Spanish and French.
2. Evaluate student's developmental spelling levels
After the assessment is given, we score the tests using the "Ranges of Development Based on Number of Words Spelled Correctly." (Bear, p. 43)
Words spelled correctly Range of Development
0
PreliterateLetter
Name
(0
students)
1-5
Letter
Name-Within Word Pattern
Examples:
ship/sipe, when/wen
(5
students)
5-10
Within
Word-Syllable Juncture
Examples:
chase/chas, float/flote
(16
students)
10-25
Syllable
Juncture-Derivational Pattern
Example:
inspection/inspecktion
(4
students)
We use the results for grouping in spelling instruction and as a pre- and post- assessment to look at growth over time.
3. Provide word study with grade level words
as well as words at students' developmental spelling levels
Kids should always be given an opportunity to learn their grade level spelling words as well as words from their reading and writing. Guiding Readers and Writers by Fontas and Pinnell (p.33-35) has a great section on how to do word study using a system with spelling partners. It continues for five days in a Buddy Study Cycle. This process includes a mini lesson, selecting spelling words, learning and using effective word study techniques, and making connections, it ends with an assessment to document learning.
4. Do spelling strategy lessons for small groups
We use the lessons in Words Their Way to provide strategy lessons for small groups at their developmental spelling levels. According to the assessment, we'll probably have five groups for spelling. One will be at the Letter Name-Within Word Pattern Stage, three will be at the Within Word-Syllable Juncture stage, and one will be at the Syllable Juncture-Derivational Pattern stage. We'll try to meet with each group at least once a week.
5. Manage spelling during Independent Writing
In addition, we have some ideas for managing spelling during Independent Writing. The key to success with this is having lots of different ways to support spelling during Writing Workshop. No one way seems to work for all kids. Flexibility is the secret. We've used four different approaches to scaffold learning. Usually, at least one of them will work for a student.
A. Post-its ("Give it a try.")When kids don't know how to spell a word, we encourage them to get a post-it and try writing the word or phrase in three different ways. Then we ask them to choose the one they think is closest to the correct spelling. Often the one they choose is correct. If not, we write the word correctly on the post-it and talk to them about how close they were and how much of the word they figured out on their own. We try to provide alternatives to "Look it up in the dictionary" because we want our kids to become more independent in their ability to spell. (See Juli's sample Post-its in this 500k PDF file.)
B. Ask 3 and then me.
Kids ask three other students how to spell a word before they are allowed to ask the teacher.
C. Use the list of the 500 most frequently used words.
Appendix 4 of Guiding Readers and Writers contains a list of "Five Hundred Plus High-Frequency Words" including "Spelling Demons." We give each student a copy to place in his or her Writing Workshop work folder. This acts as a spelling reference that they can use during writing.
D. Keeping a personal spelling list (Writing Workshop folder)
Everyone gets a copy of a Personal Word List (small PDF file) to keep in his or her Writing Workshop work folder. Kids can add the words they need to know how to spell for their writing or for general interest. This gives them an additional reference for spelling during writing.
What else can we do?
Aside from spelling lists and weekly tests, what can we do to help kids learn new words? in The Power of Reading, Stephen Krashen analyzes the research and writes about what works. He sees a strong connection between reading and spelling.
Studies showing that reading enhances literacy development lead to an uncontroversial conclusion: Reading is good for you. The research supports a stronger conclusion, however: Reading is the only way, the only way we become good readers, develop a good writing style, an adequate vocabulary, advanced grammar, and the only way we become good spellers.
If this conclusion is true, if reading is the only way, it means we have to reconsider and reanalyze what we are doing when we attempt to teach language directly with drills and exercises. All we are doing when we teach language this way is testing. Traditional language arts instruction, in other words, is merely a test, a test that privileged children, who grow up with books, pass and that less fortunate children fail.
[From The Power of Reading, Insights from the Research by Stephen Krashen (Libraries Unlimited, Inc., 1993) p. 23]
So, we'll be sure to keep our kids reading since it has even
more benefits than we knew!
Read next week's journal
Read last week's journal
Read Juli's backgrounder about her work
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