Mark Weakland Literacy

 Hard to believe it’s 2018! Onward and upward into the new year. 
 
One of my recent Tweets generated some discussion about spelling word lists, so my take on a spelling word list is the topic for this blog. And I’ll follow up with a companion piece in a couple of weeks.
 
But before I launch into spelling lists, I want to point out that I’m writing this blog to coincide with the launch of my YouTube Channel, creatively titled “The Mark Weakland Channel.” The Mark Weakland Channel doesn’t feature sci-fi fantasies, comedy specials, or shows about British royalty. It will feature 5 to 7-minute video clips of me discussing topics related to all things literacy. Right now there’s only one video! But I’m learning. I’m calling my first series of videos “Development from the Drums” (because its alliterative and because I’ll be sitting behind my drum set to up the entertainment value). So please go to YouTube and listen as I yak about spelling and lay down a beat. Here’s the link: http://bit.ly/Spllist1.
 
And now, thoughts on spelling word lists, starting with my idea of a master spelling word list.
 
Within my philosophy of spelling, the master spelling list is a key component of instruction. Once created, its functions are many. It’s deep reservoir of words enable the creation of differentiated spelling lists. It provides words for modeling strategies and running activities. And it gives students many examples of just a few spelling features, thereby helping kids focus on sounds and letters, patterns, and the meaning making parts of words.
 
Here’s an important point: a spelling list is NOT the main element of spelling instruction. Neither is it the “thing” that children are supposed to learn. A spelling list is simply a tool, one of many that you will use as you teach children HOW to spell words. As teachers, we want to teach children how to spell, not what to spell. To teach them how to spell, you need words (content), teaching techniques (instruction), and activities (for student practice, from guided to independent). Also, the weekly spelling list is one of a number of vehicles that move words from the page into the “mind dictionary” or lexicon of each student. This dictionary of the mind is critical for fluent reading.
 
Because the purpose of spelling instruction is to help children become better readers and writers, it pays to have a bank of spelling words that is narrow and deep. By narrow I mean that your spelling instruction for the week does not include too many spelling features and concepts. If you have too many features in your master list, you won’t be able to repeatedly point out (through modeling, instruction, and guided and independent practice) the features and concepts that you want your students to focus on, learn, and apply in all types of reading and writing situations.
 
Here are two non-example lists. When it comes to helping children become better readers through spelling, these types of lists do not help the cause, especially for children who struggle to read and write. The first is from the 2nd grade curriculum of a big publisher basal reading series. The second is a 5th grade list, also from a well-known basal reading series. Although the 2nd grade list is more focused, both lists have too many spelling features and too few words that provide examples of each feature.

In a nutshell, these lists are too wide and too shallow, especially the 5th grade list.​ Here is my thinking about why:

• In non-example A, the word badge adds complexity to the ways that soft G is spelled, presenting the sound /j/ as the trigraph –dge. Also, the words mule, out, wash, and saw are problematic. Why are they in there? They are paired with no other words that exhibit the same spelling features. Thus, they do nothing to help children notice and remember spelling patterns. If they are review words, they are symptomatic of the “memorize and move on” mentality of many basal spelling programs. And if they are “sight” words or words for writing, they can be presented as such by putting them on a word wall, presenting them within a space dedicated to writing words, writing them into a child’s writing dictionary, and so forth.
• As for non-example B, this list is literally all over the map. It presents at least eight spelling features, including /s/ spelled sc, s, and ce; /j/ spelled j, dge, and g(i); /ks/ spelled x; and /sk/ spelled sch. This list is way too wide to effectively teach children to notice and remember spelling patterns.

 
In my next blog, I’ll expound a bit more on how you narrow a spelling list and then bring in words to create a master spelling list. And I’ll give two examples of master spelling lists.
 
If you’re interested in hearing me say what I’ve just written (but in a slightly different way, and with a little drumming), then visit my YouTube channel “Mark Weakland” and check out my video. And consider clicking the SUBSCRIBE button to become a regularly informed viewer.

In my previous blog post I discussed how spelling ability develops - through excellent instruction -  and then went on to list an outline of what effective spelling instruction is: systematic and sequential, direct and explicit (at times), focused and mastery-based, differentiated, strategy-based, and centered on sound, pattern, and meaning. In this blog, I'll flesh out each of those listed ideas, starting with what systematic and sequential means.

When we understand that instruction should be systematic and sequential, we know that powerful instruction leads to powerful learning. One type of powerful instruction is regularly and frequently following a scope and sequence that provides children practice with hearing and spelling sounds, noticing and using patterns in words, and noticing and using the meaning parts of words, at ever increasing levels of complexity. Thus, excellent spelling instruction involves a well-designed scope and sequence.
    
When we understand that instruction should be direct and explicit at times, we recognize that powerful instruction is more than teaching a spelling scope and sequence. It also involves techniques that directly and explicitly show sound-spelling relationships, such as telling and showing how the letter F stands for the /f/ sound. In the later stages of spelling development, it means we use instruction to directly and explicitly teach children to notice, remember, and manipulate patterns and meaning, such as telling and showing them how able, noble, and bridle are made up of open and consonant-le syllables, and how prefixes can be added to able to form new words that mean very different things, such as unable and disable.
    
When we understand that instruction should be focused and mastery-based, we know that we should introduce only two to four spellings for a sound at a time, and that the introduction of sound spellings should unfold from the simple to the complex. Some basal programs introduce far too many sounds in one lesson. And if ten of our first-grade students have not mastered the spelling of short vowel sounds, then we should not move those students into the next set of spelling lessons that focus on long vowel sounds. Moving children, especially those in kindergarten, first, and second grades, too quickly through a spelling sequence leads to a lack of learning, a good deal of confusion, and the chance that guessing will become a habit. All of this can, in turn, lead to bigger problems in later grades. Our initial instruction should include many opportunities to slow down, step back, focus, reteach and review, especially when we are teaching children who are in the early stages of spelling and reading development.
    
When we understand that instruction should be differentiated, we know that because there is a continuum of development and achievement in our classroom, a rigid one-size-fits all spelling scope and sequence is not effective for all children. In November, in a classroom of twenty-two first-grade children, there may be ten who have not yet mastered the spelling of short vowel sounds. There may also be five children who easily spell short vowel sounds and are very capable of spelling multisyllabic words. This means we should consider providing different words and different types of instruction to two or even three groups of students.
    
When we understand that effective spelling instruction is strategy-based, we know that spelling instruction should not lead children and parents to believe that the only way to spell a word is to memorize it and then recall it. Rather, we know that the best instruction involves teaching students a number of different strategies, each of which can be used to spell practiced words correctly right off the bat or get close to the correct spellings of unknown words and then fix spelling mistakes,
fine-tuning words that are “close” until they are exact.    

​​When we understand that spelling instruction should be centered on sound, pattern, and meaning, we know that spelling instruction should not lead children to believe that words are a string of letters that can be memorized through a classroom activity that sounds like this: “The word is dumbfound. Spell it! D-U-M-B-F-O-U-N-D! The word is diphthong. Spell it! D-I-P-H-T-H-O-N-G! The word is discombobulated. Spell it! D-I-S-C . . .” You get the idea. Rather than the simple memorization and recall of letter sequences, spelling is orthography, which is coming up with a correct sequence of letters to create a specific word through a process that involves hearing sounds and assigning letters to them, thinking in terms of patterns found in words, and always cross-checking what we hear and see with what the word means. Thus, our instruction leads students to understand that they can spell by listening to the sounds of a word and then applying single letters and groups of letters to each sound. Our instruction also teaches children that they can spell by remembering and applying letter patterns (or word families), such as –an, -ight, and –all, as well as inflectional endings such as –ing and –ed and common prefixes and suffixes like dis-, pre-, -tion, and –able. And our instruction teaches children, both young and old, to pay attention to meaning as they spell.
    
Finally, morphology is another important aspect of spelling. Children should be taught to identify and analyze the structure of English’s linguistic units, such as morphemes, root words, and parts of speech. When younger children get in the habit of thinking about meaning, they are more likely to spell homophones correctly, as in the sentence “Their dog was somewhere out there, lost in the forest,” or correctly spell the /t/ sound at the end of a past-tense verb as –ed, as in the words helped, fussed, and plopped. Older children can use meaning to correctly spell words related in spelling through meaning but differing in pronunciation (such as define, definite, and definition), as well as spell words that share similar sounds but are unrelated in meaning (such as adept and adapt or excel and accelerate).

Good luck with your spelling instruction! Also, thank you, veterans, for serving our country with your military service. I wish all of you a happy Thanksgiving, and I hope you’ll come back for another blog post in December!

We are now at least seven weeks into the new school year. Yikes! Where does the time go? The days are getting short but there’s still time for some last minute gardening, a bike ride, or stroll down the lane or around the block. During my strolls, my mind often meanders into areas of education: how to help principals efficiently create new literacy programs, how to help kids enjoy writing more, how to help teachers teach children to read and write. In a session yesterday at the amazing 2017 KSRA Conference (happy 50th year, KSRA!), I talked with teachers about spelling instruction. Because spelling is an overlooked way to boost reading achievement, my goal was to convince teachers that they should spend time on quality spelling instruction, as well equate quality spelling time to quality “becoming a better reader” time. To that end, I offer a few thoughts on how spelling ability does and does not develop. 

Spelling ability doesn’t develop from memorizing a weekly word list. 
The most effective spelling instruction is not a weekly routine in which you give your students a list of words, have them complete worksheets and write the words numerous times at home, give them an end of the week test where they regurgitate the words from memory, and then move on to another list of words. This “memorize-and-move-on” routine does little to help children become better spellers, readers, and writers. In my opinion, children who become accomplished spellers in classrooms that use a “memorize-and-move-on” program learn to spell in spite of the program.

This is not to say that memory does not play a part in spelling. It does. A well-developed lexicon or “dictionary” of words in the brain is a construct that is critical to fluent reading. This dictionary can be built through well-designed practices, including word study, strategy use, and a great deal of practice in reading, writing, and spelling. In the end, letter-sound relationships, spelling patterns, and eventually, entire words are committed to memory.

Spelling instruction that is mastery based, strategy based, differentiated, and centered on sound, pattern and meaning is something very different from instruction that consists of little more than introducing and then testing on a memorize-and-move-on weekly spelling list. Spelling words taught via effective instruction, a focused word list, and a repeating cycle of test-study-test are much more likely to become permanent in a student’s mind. Our ability to spell is improved when we can remember the “look” of a word. Typically, this type of memorizing occurs when we see a word (and related words) many times through repeated exposure. Practice makes permanent, and specific types of instruction and word activities lend themselves to this achievement of permanency. A weekly routine of “memorize-and-move-on” does not.

Spelling does develop from excellent instruction
If spelling ability doesn’t develop from memorizing a weekly word list, then how does it develop? Additionally, how do we know that there is more to spelling than memorizing and recalling letter sequences? And what should spelling instruction consist of if we need to teach more than how to memorize a weekly word list, week after week after week?
    
One piece of evidence about how to develop spelling ability comes from research that has shown that it is easier for children to remember predictable words than it is for them to remember irregular words (Treiman 1993). Think about it. If spelling were simply an act of memorizing, it should be just as easy for kids to memorize the spelling of irregular words, such as want, does, and said, as it is for them to spell more predictable words like list, slap, and joke. After all, every one of them is al four-letter word.
    
But we know from experience that the first set of words (want, does, and said) is more problematic for children to spell. Some four-letter words are easier to spell than others! If your teaching career has been anything like mine, then you have seen more than your fair share of wunt, duz, and sed. If memorizing a letter sequence were all there was to it, then it should be just as easy for me to spell silhouette and ricocheted as it is for me to spell cannonball and instruction (all ten-letter words). In the interest of full disclosure, it took me three tries with my spell-checking program to spell ricocheted. Cannonball and instruction were not a problem. Spelling is difficult for me, so if I am really interested in learning how to spell silhouette accurately every time I write it, I should learn a strategy for remembering it and then practice employing that strategy as I spell the word multiple times.

Research has also shown that children have a limited visual memory for letter sequence. I was surprised to learn that when spelling, a child holds only two to three letters in sequence (Aaron, Wilcznski, and Keetay 1998). Thus, visual memory does not account for how our students spell four- and five-letter words, let alone multisyllabic words.
    
Because children don’t typically spell by visually recalling a string of letters, memorizing a standardized weekly word list does little to help children learn how to spell. So what does? What type of instruction helps kids learn how to spell? At the most basic level, spelling ability develops from excellent instruction. More specifically, the most effective spelling instruction is:

•    systematic and sequential;
•    direct and explicit (at times);
•    focused and mastery based;
•    differentiated;
•    strategy based; and 
•    centered on sound, pattern, and meaning.

In my next blog, I'll write more about what each of these bullet statements means and looks like in the classroom.

The Dolch Sight Words list was developed by Dr. Edward Dolch in the 1930s and 40s. An educator by trade, Dr. Dolch analyzed the children’s books of that era and identified the most frequently occurring words, such as came, get, walk, when, brown, will, could, and thank. As a Title I reading specialist, I spent a fair amount of time encouraging struggling third grade readers to memorize dozens of ‘sight words’ from Dolch’s famous list. 

But defining ‘sight words’ as words on Dr. Dolch’s list doesn’t do justice to what ‘sight words’ really are, or more importantly, how they function in the process of reading. As I’ve come to a new understanding of sight words, I have come to a new understanding of how best practice spelling instruction greatly increases the rate at which words (not just Dolch words but all words) can be learned and stored in the critical lexicon or word dictionary of the mind.

In my last post I said that research shows that mature readers read words in four ways: by decoding, by predicting, by analogy, and by sight. Unlike reading words by decoding, analogy, and prediction, reading words by sight does not involve some round about way of figuring out a word or some aspect of part-to-whole reading (sound-letter, patterns, roots, affixes, etc.). Rather, reading words by sight is about knowing a word immediately, no matter its length. When we read a word by sight, we pull it directly, in its entirety, from memory. The truly amazing part is that when we read by sight, each word we see immediately and effortlessly activates in our memory the word’s spelling, pronunciation, and meaning. These components are not experienced piece by piece. Rather, they are experienced as one wonderful bundle of looking-saying-understanding. 

To draw an analogy, look at the picture. 

​When “cat” popped into your mind, that knowledge didn’t slowly blossom or come to you in pieces, first as your seeing a set of eyes, some whiskers, a nose, and a pair of ears, and then coupling that with the thought that it is some kind of animal, it’s a mammal, and so on. Rather, it came to you all at once, instantly, directly. This is because a cat is identifiable by sight. We perceive it and understand it just like we instantly perceive and identify (or read) words such as dog, fish, and cucumber. By the way, the picture is of our cat Pawpurr, now almost 22 years old!
​
So aside from Pawpurr the cat,  how does all of this relate to spelling? According to Linnea Ehri and Sandra McCormick, the processes that are at the heart of sight word learning are connection-forming processes. “Connections are formed that link the written forms of the words to their pronunciations and meanings," they say. "This information is stored in the reader’s mental dictionary or lexicon... These connections are formed out of readers’ general knowledge of grapheme-phoneme correspondences that recur in many words.” (p. 341). In other words, connections between letter units (graphemes) that symbolize sound units (phonemes), help us store words in memory. Now think: what subject teaches children to make connections between sound units (phonemes) and letter units (graphemes)? What subject helps children connect more complex sound units to more complex letter patterns? What subject connects meaning units (morphemes) with letter patterns, both long and short? It’s spelling, of course. 

Because they are so well spoken, I’ll quote Ehri and McCormick once again: “Spelling of words are like maps that visually lay out their phonological forms. Skilled readers are able to compute these mapping relations very quickly when they read words…When readers acquire working knowledge of the alphabetic spelling system, they can build a lexicon of sight words easily as they enounter new words in their reading” (p. 343).

Spelling is important because it builds the mental dictionary that a reader uses every time he or she reads. The more words a child has stored in her mental dictionary, the better the chance that she will be able to add more words through reading and to read more fluently. So it makes sense to teach spelling, it makes sense to teach it regularly, and it makes sense to connect spelling to reading and reading to spelling.

One mistake I made as an educator was to try and cram Dolch sight words into the heads of struggling readers without giving them more practice on noticing and then generalizing the specific patterns found in each word. In other words, I should have taught not only the sight word brown, but I also should have connected it to down, gown, town, frown, clown, and even downtown. Then I should have given my students opportunities to notice how these words work, spell these words,  and read these words alone and in sentences.

By teaching connections, strategies, and activities in spelling, we can help all students build a robust brain dictionary, critical for reading success.


Citations
Ehri, L. & McCormick, S. (2013). Phases of Word Learning: Implications for Instruction With Delayed and Disabled Readers. In D. E. Alvermann, N.J. Unrau, & R.B. Ruddell (Eds.), Theoretical models and processes of reading. (6th ed., pp. 339–361). Newark, DE: International Reading Association

As part of my summer reading, I've been tackling chapters from the sixth edition of Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading (ILA, 2013), edited by Donna Alderman, Norman Unrau, and Robert Ruddell. The material is dense but fascinating. One chapter, Phases of Word Learning: Implications for Instruction With Delayed and Disabled Readers, is a favorite because it speaks to my current interest in how specific types of spelling instruction help struggling students become better readers. Authored by Linnea Ehri and Sandra McCormick, the chapter spends some time describing and explaining what the spelling-reading connection is and provides clues as to how we might use knowledge of this connection to help struggling readers. 

According to Ehri and McCormick, any word encountered by a mature reader can be read in one of four ways: by decoding, by predicting, by analogy, and by sight.They also say that our goal as teachers is to enable students to read words in each (and every) one of these four ways. I agree. Carefully crafted spelling instruction can help us reach this goal, especially when it comes to reading by decoding, analogy, and sight. What exactly reading by sight is and how it connects to spelling is an especially absorbing and interesting topic, and this will be the focus of my next blog. Stay tuned! For now, however, I’ll say a bit about the connections between spelling and reading by decoding and analogy.
​
Decoding and its connection to spelling
A decoding or word attack strategy enables a reader to read unfamiliar words. At its most basic level, decoding involves looking at letters, knowing their sounds, holding and blending those sounds in your mind, and then saying them in pronunciations that are recognized as real words. Now think about how spelling (encoding) works at its most basic level. It's the same thing, but in reverse. We teach students to say a word and “stretch it out to hear the sounds." Then we ask them to assign letters they know to the sounds they hear. Finally, we teach them to check their spelling by “reading through the word” to see if the letters they have written (and the sounds the letters make) blend back together to form the word they meant to write. 

More advanced alphabetic knowledge is put into play when readers engage in more advanced decoding. For example, in advanced decoding readers recognize clusters of letters (gl, dr, tch, dge, er), affixes (pre, sub, ment, ful, ly), syllables (De, cem, ber), and spelling patterns (int, eed, oy, oint). Each of these clusters is paired with a cluster of individual sounds that are thought of as a whole. Once again, think about spelling instruction. In spelling, we ask children to think about a word part, syllable, or word family. Each family that is said, such as /ait/, is then paired with possible spellings, such as A-I-T, A-T-E, or E-I-G-H-T. Through spelling instruction we giving children the opportunity to understand how decoding works and we do it from the opposite end, so to speak. In effect, encoding becomes decoding and spelling becomes reading.

Analogy and its connection to spelling
Analogy is another way a reader might try to read an unfamiliar word. When a reader reads by analogy, she recognizes how the spelling of an unfamiliar word is similar to a word she already knowns. To read by analogy, a reader accesses in her memory a known word similar to the unknown she is trying to read. Then she changes her pronunciation of the known word to accommodate the new word. Consider the word dariole. If you used your knowledge of the word oriole to help you pronounce the new word, then you were reading by analogy. Student readers might not know the word cigarillo, but if they recognize the word cigar and think of the word brillo, they can use the strategies of sight and analogy to come up with the new word. By the way, a dariole (noun) is a French cooking term. It is a small, metal, flowerpot-shaped mold in which an individual portion is cooked and served.

When it comes to reading by analogy, the connections to spelling are strong. Spelling by analogy is an excellent strategy to teach children. Connect the spelling by analogy strategy to the reading by analogy strategy and you have done your teaching job well. Here’s what that connection might sound like in a classroom. “Let’s say I want to write the sentence ’The man yelled,”Halt!” And let's say I don’t know how to spell the word halt. What do I do? I stop and think. Do I know a word that sounds like halt? I know salt. And I know how to spell it. S-A-L-T. Words that sound alike are often spelled alike. Therefore, halt is probably spelled H-A-L-T. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the strategy of spelling by analogy. And by the way, the strategy of spelling by analogy is just like the strategy of reading by analogy. Let’s say I don't know how to read this word: H-A-L-T. What can I do? I can ask myself, Do I know any words that look like this word? Do I know a word that has almost the same spelling? I do! Salt. I can see this word in my mind and I know it looks almost like the word I’m trying to read. I know how to say salt, so I’ll just take off the /s/ sound of the S and put in the /h/ sound of the H. The word is halt. There, I just read it!”

The dictionary in the brain
When we teach spelling using master lists that contain many examples of words that share patterns, we help students notice how words relate to one another and we help grow the all important dictionary in the mind. Why is this dictionary important? It’s important because it’s a central part of the reading process, especially when students are reading by analogy and sight. Words that begin as spelling words - dew, crew, view, grew, stew, mildew - become words useful for reading the sentence: His nephew viewed the mildewed cashew with alarm.

Here in the mountains of western Pennsylvania spring is busting out all over, with dogwoods and honeysuckle blooming, peepers peeping in the wetlands, and returning hummingbirds busily buzzing about as they search for nectar to sip. Spring also signals the fast approaching end of the school year. So I encourage teachers reading this post to give one last spelling inventory before field trips and assemblies take over and you finally wave goodbye (happily, sadly, and/or thankfully) to the last kid as he skips out your classroom door.

I first wrote about spelling inventories back in September of 2015. Then I asked teachers to consider giving them to gather information that would help start the year. Now, I ask that you consider them as a bookend assessment that can help provide closure to your year, as well as kick start the next year for another teacher.

Spelling inventories are “big picture” assessments, designed to give teachers information about students’ broad knowledge of orthography, which is the spelling system of our English language. More specifically, they give information on students’ ability to apply the alphabetic principle, remember and use conventional spelling patterns, form words based on tense and spelling conventions, and apply word meaning, all in service to correctly spelling words as they write. 

Given at the end of the year, a spelling inventory is an easy and efficient way to gain information about what your class generally knows about how words work, as well as what your class has mastered over the course of the year. It also provides specific diagnostic information that can be used to help individual students in specific ways. Finally, it helps you to understand your students’ overall reading and writing achievement. Because she states things succinctly (it took me four tries to correctly spell that word, by the way), I’ll quote Marcia Invernizzi: “…qualitative spelling inventories assess children’s developmental spelling knowledge that in large measure determines the quality of their reading and writing” (Invernizzi, p.17).  Thus, spelling inventories go a long way in explaining how and why children read and write as they do.

If you pass along the information you gain from giving an inventory, teachers in the next grade up will surely thank you, for the information provides insight into the skills of the students who will roll through their door next year. For example, if you're a second grade teacher who gives an inventory next week, you may find that five students still have not fully mastered the hearing, reproduction, and spelling of the short /a/, /i/, and /e/ sounds. Or if you're a fifth grade teacher, you may find that six students lack control of the ture and sure spellings for the /cher/ and /zhur/ sounds found in words like capture, posture, treasure, and leisure. Once you have this information, pass it along to the third grade and six grade teachers. And take a moment to reflect on the scores and decide if there’s something different you want to do with your instruction and activities next year. 

There are many inventories out there, including Sylvia Green’s Primary and Elementary Word Analysis (Green, 2016), which functions as both a spelling inventory and a phonics inventory, Richard Gentry’s Monster Test (Gentry, 2007), most appropriate for kindergarten children but also used during the first half of first grade, and complex primary and intermediate elementary inventories from the Words Their Way spelling program (Bear, et al, 2015), among others. Of course, you can simply go to the “File Cabinet” tab of this web site and download one of the inventories I have created! At the bottom of this post you can see pieces of two of them.

I created spelling inventories for my upcoming book, Super Spellers: Seven Steps to Transforming Your Spelling Instruction (Stenhouse, fall of 2017). Feel free to download any or all of them. Then assess your students with one. You can even report back to me on how the inventory worked for you. Operators are standing by to take your call! (Okay, not really, but it is fun to say).

By the way, when compared to other inventories, my inventories have the added advantage of coming in two distinct forms. Also, the long form inventory words are cross-referenced with the seven syllable types. Finally, my short form inventories are super easy to score, and they come in two forms, one for the whole class and one for the individual.

To wrap things up, the reasons for giving any specific spelling inventory are generally the same: determining the encoding skills of students, finding out what word features students have control of, determining the spelling stage of each student, and crafting classroom instruction that meets students at their developmental levels. Regardless of which inventory you start with, you can always move to a more or less complex one that fits your level of knowledge and comfort. 

I encourage you to find a spelling inventory that you like and understand and then give it to all of your students before the end of the school year. Best of luck with you spelling instruction and your end of the year activities, and keep your eyes on the prize of summer vacation!

Citations:

• Palmer, J.L., and Invernizzi, M. 2015. No More Phonics and Spelling Worksheets. Heinemann: Portsmouth, NH. 
• Bear, D.R., Invernizzi, M.R., Templeton, S.R., and Johnston, F. 2012. Words Their Way: Word Study for Phonics, Vocabulary, and Spelling Instruction. Boston: 5th ed. Pearson.
• Gentry, R. 2007. Assessing Early Literacy with Richard Gentry: Five Phases, One Simple Test. Portsmouth: Heinemann.
• Green, S. 2016. Sylvia Green’s Informal Word Analysis. March 10. Retrieved from http://lincs.ed.gov/readingprofiles/MC_Word_Analysis.htm.

Like the swallows of Capistrano, National Poetry Month has returned, along with this spring's flowers, showers, and long evening hours. Springtime and poetry go together like daffodils and sunlight. Robert Frost wrote of spring in A Prayer in Springtime (Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today…), as did William Shakespeare in the poem Spring, (When daisies pied, and violets blue, And lady-smocks all silver-white, and cuckoo-buds of yellow hue do paint the meadows with delight…). Many other top notch poets have waxed poetically of spring, too.

I have never written a springtime poem, but then again I am not a “real” poet, merely a clever rhymer with an odd sense of humor and occasional flashes of insight. At the moment, I have little time for even witty word play, but I did want to contribute something for National Poetry Month, and so I dug though my computer files and found a number of kid poems that didn’t make it into my 2010 children’s poetry book, The Delicious Chocolate Donut (And Other Off-Kilter Poems). When I read the poems, I could see why they didn’t make it. Suffering from weak rhymes, clunky rhythms, and subject matter too weird for popular consumption, these poor poems were analogous to the Charlie-in-the-Box and the Spotted Elephant on the Isle of Misfit Toys.

​Upon second thought, though, a few poems seemed worthy of something more than perpetual banishment in the “unused” folder of my digital filing cabinet. And because spring is a season of rebirth and renewal, I figured, hey, why not uncover a few of them, give them a little light and love and polish, and put them up on the blog? So here they are, giving regular readers of this blog (are there any out there?) a break from my usual spelling posts and providing teachers looking for weird, off-kilter poems with those very things.

Feel free to copy and use them in any way you want. You can also download a PDF of the four poems from the file cabinet of this web site. Creatively labeled “Four New Poems,” they’re sitting in the right hand column at the top.

A brief word of explanation about the poems is in order. The first was inspired by Sundays dinners cooked by my mother-in-law, Betty Good. For years and years, almost every Sunday, Betty (a home economics teacher) prepared a delicious and extensive old school Sunday dinner (not supper) for her family, consisting of meat (often turkey), potatoes, gravy, two or three vegetables from the garden, rolls, salad, and dessert (typically cake and/or pie and/or ice cream). I have very fond memories of those dinners. This poem is written for two or more voices, which kids love to read and teachers love to have on hand. The second poem for little ones and is meant to be accompanied by lots of motion and activity. The third poem is simply odd, as is the fourth and last poem, which features a fun illustration by Mike Owens, the talented illustrator/animator who illustrated my Delicious Chocolate Donut collection.

Syllable types provide an easy way to manage the dozens of word features presented in a typical spelling scope and sequence. So let's look at syllable types!

Usually, a spelling scope and sequence is organized loosely around the developmental stages of spelling and the word features associated with each stage. For example, the scope and sequences used with 1st graders, who are developing the ability to match letters to the sounds they hear, typically concentrate on CVC patterns, consonant blends, digraphs, and CVe patterns. In contrast, a scope and sequence for third graders, who are developing the ability to notice and use patterns in words, usually contains lessons on frequent and infrequent vowel sounds and spellings, inflectional endings (where plurals and tenses are formed), and special consonant spellings like soft c and soft g, as well as suffixes, prefixes and homophones. As the stages of spelling development progress, more and more spelling features are added. Take a minute to look over the scope and sequence of any spelling program, grades one to five, and you will see dozens of spelling features listed.

Because these many features are not organized into a few broad, easy to understand and teach categories, they can present real difficulties for both teachers and students. First, a weakly organized scope makes it harder for teachers to answer these questions: what features have my students mastered, which features need to be retaught, which features do my students have control of when they write, and which features are my students seeing and controlling when they decode as they read?

Second, when teachers have an overwhelming number of spelling features to think about, they may lose sight of these big picture reasons for teaching spelling: spelling is for building the brain dictionary, spelling is to enable fluent writing, spelling is for strengthening decoding, and so on.

Third, a focus on the minute details (dozens of features) gives teachers and students the false notion that English spellings are unruly, nonsensical, or impossible to predict.  Finally, a weekly stream of loosely categorized features makes spelling harder for children to learn and teachers to teach. For example, if you were asked to teach third graders to recall, in any order, the numbers and letters of these two sets - [2, 7, 3, 5, 1, 6, 8, 4] and [B, e, h, T, e, h, C, n, g, e, a] –would it be easiest teach and remember them as unorganized strings of numbers and letters or would you teach them as organized groups: 2468-1357 and Be The Change? Obviously, the latter. 
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It pays to organize, through categorization, large sets of information into smaller subsets. Fortunately for us, a handy method for categorizing spelling exists. It’s called syllable types. Syllable types are an overarching instructional strategy. How so? They categorize all syllables into seven categories, thus reining in the number of spelling features and the breadth of a typical spelling scope and sequence. With only seven types of patterns to think about, your spelling instruction can be more focused and powerful. And when children master the knowledge and use of the syllable types, they have a master plan (a strategy) for decoding during reading and encoding during spelling. 

I regularly talk with teachers who gush enthusiastically about using syllable types to teach phonics and spelling in their classrooms. I think we all get so excited about them because syllable types draw attention to all that lies at the heart of spelling: sound, pattern, and meaning. And when students’ attention is drawn to the heart of the matter, they are in a much better position to use strategies, to build a dictionary in their brains, and to become more fluent readers and writers.
 
Teaching spelling via syllable types drives home the encoding-decoding, spelling-reading connection. It allows you to completely align your phonics scope and sequence with your spelling scope and sequence. Equally important, it improves a struggling student’s ability to read and spell multisyllabic words because it is one tool (breaking words into syllables) that provides repeated practice in two areas, spelling (encoding) and reading (decoding).

One thing before I move on: Researchers and writers present differing views on spelling nomenclature. For example, some folks call ar, ir, and or patterns “vowel-r syllables,” while others call them “r-controlled syllables.” Likewise, there are differences in opinion about how to classify patterns such as ore (store) and air (stair). Are they r-controlled? Or is one a vowel-consonant-e syllable and the other a vowel team syllable? I mention differences of opinion because I present syllable types as seven in number, while spelling experts such as Louisa Moats and Barbara Wilson present them as six. But in the grand scheme of spelling and reading, these differences are minor. The important point is to organize spelling features into categories of syllable types and then teach them well, over time, in spelling, reading, and writing.

Teach what a syllable is
If you are going to organize your spelling around syllable types, I suggest you first teach what a syllable is. Begin with the idea that a syllable is a word or a part of a word that has at least one vowel in it. The vowel in every syllable causes your chin to drop when you say the vowel sound. Once your students have basic understanding of what a syllable is (a word or a word part that causes a chin to drop because it has at least one vowel in it), introduce the syllable types.

Variations on a theme
Of course, nothing is ever easy in teaching. For example, ind and ild are closed syllables, but they are exceptions to the rule because they make a long vowel sound (bind, find, mild, wild). For each syllable type, there are exceptions. Now you may be thinking, “Exceptions in each category? Spelling is so confusing!” While I cannot deny that exceptions add complexity to the simplicity of just seven syllable types, I would maintain that when you tell students “we are going to group all of our spelling patterns into seven basic types,” you have focused a sprawling topic, making it much easier to understand and making it much easier for children to notice commonalities and differences between its many parts.

To further illustrate this point, the figure below shows the thirty-seven high-frequency  phonograms,  often used by 1st grade teachers to teach phonics and spelling, grouped by syllable type.  You can see how each falls into one of three syllable types: closed, VCe, and vowel team. 

By the way, this sequence of syllable types – closed, VCe, and vowel team – is an appropriate sequence of instruction for students in grade one, keeping in mind that those who do not master the closed syllable type will need to be instructed until they do. Open syllables and r-controlled syllables can be added in the second grade sequence. By the end of third grade, students will be ready to begin to organize spelling words around all seven types.
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Use syllable types across space and time
The seven categories of syllable types can be taught by teachers and used by students between and across grade levels. They give an entire school one organizing principal, thus providing a common language for all teachers of reading, writing, and spelling. At the same time, syllable types provide an organizing framework that all students can use to better understand the workings of spelling features in every spelling stage, from consonants, digraphs, and short vowels in the early alphabetic stage, to long vowel teams and variant vowel teams in the patterns within words stage, to roots, affixes, and inflected endings in the meaning stage. 

It seems to me that any strategy, routine, or method of organization that crosses classrooms and grade levels holds forth the possibility of greater and longer lasting student learning. Simply put, when students experience and use a strategy, routine, or method year after year from a multitude of teachers, they are much more likely to master that strategy, routine, or method and consistently apply it in variety of settings. If a school were to embrace the teaching of syllable types, by the time students got to fourth grade they would have had three years of exposure to the this organizing principle, surely a strong foundation. 

Even in the final stage of spelling development, where the focus is meaning rather than pattern, syllable patterns can still be referenced and explored. For example, the figure below shows how multisyllabic words are made up of combinations of syllable types. As syllable types are introduced over time – in a classroom, between classrooms, and between grades – students can explore longer and longer words made from a mixture of short syllable types. This exploration of and exposure to multisyllabic words increases their ability to successfully read and write hundreds, if not thousands of words.

My August and September 2016 blogs were devoted to the idea of teaching children strategies for  spelling unknown words. Specifically I discussed spelling by analogy (using a word that you know as template for spelling a word you don’t know) and spelling by sound (hear the sounds, assign letters and patterns that make those sounds). Today's offering is See the Word Inside Your Head, the strategy accomplished spellers use most often. 

Some children develop the ability to “see a word inside their head” naturally. Others do not. To encourage students to build and use a repository of stored words in their brains, teach them to study spelling words using the steps given below. Then, when it comes time to spell words independently during writing (or on a test), remind students to use these steps: see the word in your mind, write the word, and check the word. As teachers, we hope that by intentionally using “see-write-check,” students will later generalize the strategy into the automatic ability to visualize a word, write it down, and then check it against the word stored in their brain dictionary.

I have seen variations of the “see the word” strategy in core-reading programs for a couple of decades now. My most recent encounter with it was while perusing the stand-along spelling program Spelling Connections, published by Zaner-Bloser. Spelling Connections presents a three-step strategy for studying spelling words. Here is my two-step variation.

1. Say-See, Hide-See 

• When studying your word, first say the word. Then say the letters in the word. As you say the letters, group the letters into patterns that you know.
• Put the word into your brain. “Use the smart phone in your mind and snap a picture! Post it! Can you see it?”
•  Hide the word you are studying. This means cover it with your hand, close your book, close your eyes, or turn your paper over. 
• See the word in your head (look at the picture you posted). See the letters that make up the word.

2.  Write, Check (and Correct)

• Write the word. As you write, think of the letters and patterns that make up the word.
• Check your spelling against the spelling in the book or on your paper. If you made a mistake, correct it.
• Then look at the correct spelling and say the correct spelling, chunking it into groups and patterns like you did before. 

Here is an example of how I might model my use of this strategy and use a think aloud to explain its workings:

• MW: This week’s lesson is about words with the e-r ending. What is this week’s lesson about, everyone?
• Students: Words with the e-r ending.
• MW: I am going to model how I use our spelling study strategy to study some of the words you might have your list. So listen as I think out loud.
• MW: [Pointing to the word speaker on the white board]. My first word to study is speaker. Our strategy says, “Say-See.” I’m looking at the word. Now I’m going to say the letters in the word, and as I say them, I'm going to chunk them into patterns I know. sp-eak-er.  Speaker.
• MW:    [Covering the word with sheet of paper]. Next, our strategy says, “Hide- See.” I’ve hidden the word and I’m closing my eyes. I’m seeing the word spelled out in chunks in my mind. [Closes eyes and silently mouths, sp-eak-er, speaker.]
• MW: Next, I write the word. [Writes the word on the board.] Finally, I check the word. [Uncovers the original word.] Let’s see: sp-eak-er, speaker. Perfect! I have nothing to correct.

An easily constructed “flip folder” provides opportunities for students to practice the strategy “see the word in your head.” The activity, which can be done independently or with a buddy, is designed for instant error correction. A student spells a word and then checks it for correctness. If the word is misspelled, the student corrects it before moving on to the next word.

To make a flip folder, you need a manila folder, a marker, a set of word cards, and stack of blank slips of paper. The activity’s routine mirrors the two-step word study strategy outlined above. Here is a brief description of the routine, which is also presented in the pictures below.

• The student picks up a word card, says the word on the card, and visualizes the word in his head.  While teaching this step, encourage students to see the patterns in the words.
• The student lifts the left flap and places the word card on the folder. He hides the word by putting the flap back down. Then he visualizes the word in his head.
• The student picks up the right flap, puts a blank slip of paper down, and writes the spelling word. Then he lifts the left flap and checks to see if his spelling is correct. If the spelling isn’t correct, he corrects this error. (You’ll notice in pictures that the word is not spelled correctly and the student has not yet corrected the error
• The student removes both slips, sets them aside, and starts the process over.

The more students read and write words, the better the chance they have of moving words into their brain dictionaries. But remember: while one child may easily store a word in his brain, another may not, even when repeatedly exposed to the word. If you have students who cannot easily store and see a word inside their heads, then encourage them to use other strategies, ones that play to their strengths, such as spelling by analogy, thinking about word meaning, and even circling the word and using a spell checker to correct it.

Word ladders (also known as word-links, laddergrams, and doublets) involve morphing one word into another by changing one letter, or set of letters, at a time. Each change creates a new word, and each new word is a rung on the ladder. Starting with the word at the bottom of the ladder, it may take a speller five, six, or seven or more words to reach the target at the top. In this way, a HEN is changed into a FOX: hen, pen, pin, fin, fix, fox!

I first heard of word ladders, and began using them, while teaching in 3rd grade classrooms. Later I learned Tim Rasinski made them popular with his Daily Word Ladders books for teachers (Rasinski, 2012; 2008). But while researching my upcoming Stenhouse book, Super Spellers, I discovered Lewis Carroll was the one who invented them!

Carroll, best known as the author of Alice in Wonderland, was also an eminent mathematician and a renowned puzzle creator. In 1877 he created a word puzzle that he dubbed the doublet, a name likely inspired by the witches’ incantation in MacBeth: “Double, double, toil and trouble.” Vanity Fair published Carroll’s doublets in 1879 and they quickly became all the rage. Below are five of his doublets (can you solve them?). Also shown is a word ladder that is actually climbable! While visiting a botanical garden in New Zealand, my wife, Beth, and I climbed these etched granite steps, took a picture from the top, and wrote down the solution to the doublet BODY and SOUL in our scrapbook. 

​Word ladders help children notice sounds, especially inner vowels. To change one word into another, students must listen to sounds and decide on letters. Unlike Carroll, who gave puzzlers no clues regarding the ladder rungs, you can explicitly tell your students what each word on a rung is. Over time, as young children and struggling readers write each word in the ladder, they notice patterns within words and between words. If desired, you can also discuss the meaning of the words that make up a ladder.  In this way, SPELLING becomes VOCABULARY!
    
There are plenty of word ladder activities available for purchase from Tim Rasinski and others. Below you can see one of Carroll’s classic doublets (with its solution), plus one I dreamed up: turn a CHORE into something you LIKE. But you can create these word sequences yourself. While I like to create ladders in the spirit of Carroll’s doublets, the words on either end don’t have to be tied together by a common theme. Also, once students become accomplished at completing word ladders, you can put them to work making their own. It’s a real accomplishment when a child authors a word ladder that becomes part of a literacy center. 

​I have used word ladder activities with large groups of kids, but I also have guided children through them in small groups during guided reading time, where I used a word ladder as a word study activity. Once children can competently recreate the routine on their own, they can complete word ladders with a buddy during independent work time. 

I suggest you have students write their word ladder sequences on paper.  A whiteboard or iPad will work but the written words need to be relatively small. Paper is probably best if your ladder is longer than five or six words. Students should never erase the previous word. The point is to create a sequence that students can look through to see the relationships between the words. 

Let’s say you created a word ladder that changes hen into fox through the sequence I outlined in the first paragraph. To teach this word ladder, start with the word hen. Say the word and have the kids repeat it back to you. You may even want to have the students stretch that word and zap it so they can hear the sounds in the word. I think highlighting inner vowel sounds is especially important because I’ve found that these are the sounds hardest for students to hear, reproduce, and associate with correct letter combinations. After students have written their starting word, you write the word and have your students check their spelling against yours. Next, follow this little routine: 

• Teacher: Change one letter in hen to make the word pen. Write the word pin above the word pen.  [Pause while the students write. Then you write pen above hen, modeling the segmenting of sounds, the writing of each letter, and the re-reading to check the word.] 
• Teacher: We changed the first consonant. Now lets change the vowel. Change pen into pin. [If need be, stretch the word with the students. Then repeat the steps of pausing while they write, modeling the correct spelling, and checking of the word.]
• Teacher: Repeats the process for fin, fix, and fox.

Here is an example of what a teacher might say during a word ladder designed to focus on pattern and meaning, rather than just individual sounds and letters. The words come from one of my ladders: make a CHICK CHEEP (the solution is chick, chin, chip, lip, leap, cheap, cheep).  After a teacher briefly reviews the ee and ea vowel teams, and after she leads the class through the first four words (chick, chin, chip, lip), her instruction might sound like the following:

• Teacher: Change the vowel in lip to make the word leap. Write leap above the word lip. [Pause for student thinking and writing. Write the word leap.]
• Teacher: Now replace the beginning consonant with a digraph to make the word cheap, which means inexpensive or doesn’t cost much money.. [Pause for student thinking and writing. Write the word cheap.]  
• Teacher: The word cheap, ch-e-a-p, means inexpensive or doesn’t cost much money. Now change the vowel team of this word to create a new word that sounds the same but has a different meaning. I want you to change cheap into cheep, the sound a chick makes. “Cheep, cheep!” [Pause for student thinking and writing.]
• Teacher: How are cheap and cheep alike? How are they different? [Discuss with students]. 

Once you start moving into this type of word ladder, Patricia Cunningham’s Making Words books become a wonderful resource. There are probably a dozen or more of these books on the market, and they address many grade levels. While not exactly word ladders, each lesson follows the basic process of swapping sounds and letters in and out of words to make new words. Each Making Words lesson draws on the letters of a relatively long target word, such as oatmeal, to create sets of smaller words that follow patterns, such as eat, meat, team, meal, ate, mate, late, and so on. 
    
Word ladders and making word activities are not only opportunities for children to hear sounds, assign letters, notice patterns, and think about meaning. They are also opportunities for you to conduct formative assessment. As you walk among the working students, notice who is confused about patterns or sounds and who is not. Explore their thinking process by saying, “Tell me why you put this letter here” and asking, “What pattern are you thinking about right now?” Carry a clipboard and piece of paper with you and you can take note of the children who require re-teaching, as well as list the areas in which they need additional instruction

• Rasinski, T. (2012). Daily Word Ladders: 80+ Word Study Activities That Target Key Phonics Skills to Boost Young Learners’ Reading, Writing & Spelling Confidence.  Scholastic Teaching Resources.
• Rasinski, T. (2008). Daily Word Ladders: Grades 1–2: 150+ Reproducible Word Study Lessons That Help Kids Boost Reading, Vocabulary, Spelling and Phonics Skills. Scholastic Teaching Resources.