Thursday, April 2nd, 2009 - Final Report

There have been several successful outcomes due to our study group's actions that include:

1. As was mentioned in the February 26th post, the 6th grade team had been using Words Their Way as the basis for their spelling curriculum. Since then they have given another "placement" test and have found some students to show progress such that they have moved up in their developmental level. Given a total of 79 students, 42% went up, 41% stayed the same, and 18% went down in level. The 6th grade teachers plan to pretest the current 5th graders so that they will have a sense of where to start with them at the beginning of the next school year.
   
2. Another success is that our building's Literacy Leader has become a proponent of incorporating this approach throughout the grade levels.
   
3. Currently, the fourth grade team at the middle school is in the process of establishing the use of Words Their Way as the basis for their spelling curriculum for the remainder of this year and beginning of next year. Each classroom teacher, including myself, the special education teacher, will work with one group of students @ a specific developmental stage based on the results of administering the "Elementary Spelling Inventory". When reviewing their "Classroom Composite", the 4th grade teachers seemed to identify some correlations between what skills their students have shown in the classroom to what features the composite identified as deficits for the individual students.
4. The HS 12:1:1 teacher stated that, prior to our study group, she had given up on spelling, believing that if her students had not learned to spell simple words by HS then it was not going to happen. However, she has found the Words Their Way approach to give her students the opportunity to study words in ways they have never done before. Her students are taking ownership because of the process of thinking about, sorting, and analyzing words. They are engaged and enjoying the benefit of a hands-on approach to phonics, vocabulary, and spelling.

Articles read by study group members which support the Words Their Way approach:

1. Harris, L.A. (2007). Adolescent Literacy: Wordy Study With Middle and High School Students. TEACHING Exceptional Children Plus, 3(4) Article 4. Retrieved (date) from http://escholarship.bc.edu/education/tecplus/vol3/iss4/art4
2. Malatesha, J.R., et. al. (Winter 2008-2009). How Words Cast Their Spell - Spelling Is an Integral Part of Learning the Language, Not a Matter of Memorization. American Educator - A Quarterly Journal of Education Research and Ideas, Vol. 32, No. 4.

Web sites found useful in coordination with the Words Their Way approach:

1. spellingcity.com
2. HendersonEdSoft.com
   

Meeting, Thursday, March 19th, 2009

As special education teachers working in middle and high school levels we have found our students to demonstrate spelling levels that range from the beginner level, or "Letter Name - Alphabetic Stage" through the transitional level, or "Within Word Pattern Stage". Based on "Spelling Stage Expectations by Grade Level" as stated in Table 2-3 on page 44, we find that the identified grade levels of Kindergarten through Second to be an expected match. Thus, the remainder of our readings focused on Chapters Five and Six which target these levels. We also referenced the supplemental texts that correspond to these levels and found the examples of sorts provided within them to be appropriate.
Those of us that make use of a direct instruction approach in reading decoding and fluency in our classrooms (SRA's Decoding Strategies) find these sorts to correspond well to the word attack skills targeted in our reading curriculum.
There is a wide range of activities provided in the primary and supplemental texts that are motivational for our students and provide good opportunities for them to practice independence in learning as well as are beneficial and easy to implement from a teacher perspective. One such activity is "Word O" which asks students to take a word from the sort and add, delete, or substitute letter(s) to make a new word (ie, substituting "b" for "st" in "stone" makes "bone"). You can see how students might relate this to games like "Boggle". From a teacher perspective, not only are students working on generalization of patterns, but they are also working on vocabulary development. Another activity is "Word Hunt" which asks students to find words that match patterns used in their sorts from a variety of text (ie, books, articles, etc.). For students, this is similar to the word searches that they love to complete. From a teacher perspective, this is another way that the students work on generalizing the patterns they are learning to everday experiences.
One of our members provided us with a sample of worksheets being used by our general education teachers at the 6th grade level. They include a weekly schedule, activity sheet, and expectations for activities.

February 26, 2009 Meeting

Today we discussed Chapter 3 entitled "Organizing for Word Study: Principles and Practices". This chapter emphasizes that sorting words into categories is the heart of word study. It is based on the premise that categorizing is the way humans make sense of the world. It's the way we find order and identify similarities. Also, word sorting is an active process. It has students search, compare, contrast, and analyze in order to organize and make generalizations about spelling so that they can then apply them to new words. The chapter discusses organization of instruction at length and within this discussion looks at word study as an extension of the Reading Group. This process of sorting spelling words at an appropriate developmental level works well in a Readers' Workshop environment. Our 6th grade teachers, who teach reading in a workshop environment, have established using this approach across the grade level. All students are placed in the appropriate developmental group based on the results of the placement test. Each group meets for 20 minutes daily. So far, the teachers have found this approach to spelling to be beneficial and appropriate for their students. I have been using this approach with students with reading and writing disabilities and not only see success with them in my special education classroom, but often see them generalize their learning to spontaneous writing in the regular class settings. The chapter also discusses 3 basic types of sorts that include sound, pattern, and meaning sorts. Finally, ten principles of word study are given which can be summarized in 4 words "Teaching is not telling (James, 1958)".

Thursday, February 5, 2009 meeting

We discussed chapter 2, "Getting Started: The Assessment of Orthographic Development". The chapter clearly outlined the process of the informal assessment and its benefits. It was agreed that through this process classroom teachers can easily access what particular orthographic features individual students know and what they need to study. By inputting the results of relatively brief spelling inventories into a computerized program teachers can easily obtain a feature guide for each student that they than use to analyze so as to group students for instruction. It is clear how this assessment can also be used to monitor students' growth over time. As special educators, this informal assessment based on a research-based developmental approach makes sense for not only our students, but all students. Some comments we have heard from our regular education colleagues trying this program out this year are that it is beneficial, individualized, and appropriate for their classes.

Thursday, January 15, 2009 Meeting

Today we continued our discussion of Chapter 1 entitled "Developmental Word Knowledge". We compared it to the article entitled, "How Words Cast Their Spell" published in American Educator, Vol. 32, No. 4, Winter 2008-2009. This article supports the "Words Their Way" approach to teaching language. Both text and article agree that spelling is a linguistic process and not just a matter of rote visual memorization. Both agree that the spelling of words can be predictable when position of letters within words, meaningful word parts, and the history of language is considered. They also agree that knowledge of the alphabet and phonological awareness is a basis needed to ensure success. As the ability to demonstrate such knowledge is dependent on a developmental level of understanding, then for success to be achieved it is agreed that a developmental approach to teaching spelling is best.