Ashley Carroll
RE 5100
November 22, 2004
Dr. Morris
1a. In the example John, Sue and Hannah are each in a different developmental spelling stage. To begin with Sue is breaking into the pre-phonetic stage of spelling development. The reason I know this is because when she writes a word she is using the beginning and only sometimes the ending sounds of a word. After looking at the assessment you will notice that she only put an ending sound with half of the words, therefore I feel like she is only in the very beginning of the pre-phonetic stage. This leads me to believe that she is still not very confident in her writing. The other reason I think she is in this stage I because she is choosing to omit vowels in her words. One other thing about Sue is that even when she chooses a letter to match the sound it sometimes seems more like a guess that a logical choice.
The next student John is in the phonetic or letter name stage. I have put him here because I noticed that he is using beginning and ending consonants correctly. John is also using vowels in his words as well. Although these vowels may not be the correct ones, he is using substitutions that do more sense; o for u, I for o, e for I, and a for e. From his spellings you can tell that he is aware of short vowels but does not know what to do with long vowels, because he has used no markers like in the word side, which he spelled SID. When asked to spell the word dress, he also used the appropriate phonological substitution of JRES.
Finally, Hannah is in the vowel transition stage of spelling. She is using short vowels correctly in her words; back –BACK, picking-PIKEN, and dress-DRES. Hannah is using vowel markers for her long vowels, even though they are misplaced in the word side SIED, she is aware of the fact that they need to be there. Hannah is also aware of blends in the words back and step.
1b.After reviewing the students’ errors, I would place each student in a different level of phonics instructions so that their individual needs could be met. To begin with, I would place Sue in a picture sort where she would be focusing on beginning sounds. I feel like she is still very early in the pre-phonetic stage and she still needs to master all the sounds in her alphabet. Placing her in a picture sort would allow her to get a deeper understanding on all the sounds and therefore allowing her to move through future word sorts with more confidence. After some practice with beginning consonants I would move her into the word families sort so she could get practice with endings.
When I look at John’s spelling results I really feel like he would benefit most from phonics instruction that would be based around word families. He is still uncertain in some short vowel sounds and needs to develop his skills in this area. By working in word families he will also get to work with some of the blends and digraphs that he was not able to recognize in the spelling assessment like CK and ST.
When looking at Hannah’s spelling assessment, I put her to work in a vowel pattern sort. She is obviously aware of short vowels, but she still needs to work on long vowel patterns. This kind of sort would help her with words like FEET, SIDE and PEEKED.
1c.Hannah probably has a larger sight vocabulary and is a better reader than John because she can identify words with long vowels. She is very aware that words that have long vowels are often spelled a certain way, while John does not notice this difference and still has trouble with short vowels. Therefore Hannah is going to be able to see a word and have a better idea of how to decode it. You can also tell that Hannah is probably a better reader that John because she is spelling words like back with a CK and she is spelling dress with a DR instead of a JR; she has seen these words in books and knows that is the way the words are spelled.
2a.There is absolutely no question that phonics instruction should be offered in small group for the simple reason that all children are not created equal. In any classroom, children are always going to be in different developmental places at different times. In my own classroom, I have three reading groups, each of which receives specific phonics instruction that is geared towards their needs. A teacher cannot possibly expect students who cannot identify a beginning consonant to be able to complete a long vowel pattern word sort and for that reason students need to be taught phonics in small groups.
2b.When students are leaning how to read they often have a much harder time being able to master vowels than consonants. One of the reasons for this is that all vowels have more than one sound, while consonants usually have only one sound. Students have a hard time understanding why a vowel sounds one way sometimes and another way other times. The other reason why vowels are harder to master is that short vowels in particular do not have an orthographic representation. When you say short a, there is no letter that sounds like that, because the letter a says “a.” This is the time when students start to use vowel substitution.
2c.The short vowel patterns of CVC and CCVC are extremely common in phonics instruction because these kinds of patterns appear most frequently in our language. These simple spellings are the best way to show how our spelling system words. These words are also relatively easy for our students to pronounce. After students have a good foundation in the CVC and CCVC patterns they will be able to use those patterns to compare and contrast other patterns against.
3a.In the writing process students prewrite, draft, revise, edit and then publish. The word revise literally means, “to see again,” and during this time students are looking at their piece, with the help of a teacher, to see what they could improve on. Revising occurs when students reread what they have written, participate in writing groups, and make changes in their pieces based on suggestions they have received. There are basically four types of revision that a student will make: additions, substitutions, deletions, and moving things from one place to another.
In the editing process, students are basically proofreading their pieces. During this time they are looking to identify and correct errors in spelling, capitalization, and punctuation. When students are editing there are getting their piece ready for its final form. The overall goal for this phase of the writing process is to fine tune the piece of writing and get it into its most readable form.
As far as which of the two, revising or editing, is more important, I think that editing is the more important of the two. Students need to understand that no matter how much time they spend on a piece of writing, if the reader cannot read the piece, then it was all written for nothing. Students need to be aware of using things like punctuation and capital letters because those are regular conventions of modern language. Without punctuation and proper use of capital letters a piece of writing is not going to work because the reader will not b e able to tell where sentences are beginning and ending. Editing is definitely more important than the revision process because if you are not bale to read what you have revised, then what was the point of writing in the first place?
3b. Handling students spelling errors in mid-first grade must be done very carefully. In my class, I hold my students accountable for words I know that we have gone over. These words include spelling words, words on the word wall, or even words that are written around the room. If one of my students comes to me with the word my spelled MI, then I am certainly going to ask that they correct it simply because I know that we have read that words, had it on our spelling list, put it on the word wall, and even written it correctly before.
If a students approaches my during a writing conference, and I saw that almost all of his words were misspelled, I would only select a few that I thought we should work with, because I do not want to discourage that student from writing. I would also look at the errors they were making, and if they were putting MT for feet, then we would certainly go back and look at that word again. Together we would make sure that the student was selecting letters that made sense in their writing, like FT for feet instead of MT.
3c.When Judy Brown said that “contextual reading and writing become practice fields that serve to automatize spelling patterns in memory” she was saying that reading, writing, and spelling are all interrelated and the instruction of these three areas also needs to be taught in the same way. As a teacher, if you are allowing for individualized spelling instruction within your classroom, you should also be teaching reading and writing that way. For example, if you have a reading group that is working on word families, the books these students are reading should also be similar and focus on word families. Also when students are writing, the teacher should make sure that he or she holds them accountable for spelling words that they have studied because they have been exposed to them. Allowing the three areas to be tuned into the students’ needs will allow the students to store those words and concepts deeper in their memory.
4. In all honesty I have really enjoyed this course and I feel like myself, as well as my students, have benefited from all the information I have received. Ever since my first class at ASU with Beth Frye, I have been extremely interested in developmental spelling stages. There is just something about being able to look at all the research about a topic and then waling into my own classroom and being able to see exactly what they are talking about. It is simply fascinating to see this theory in real life. Now, more than ever, when I look at where my students are developmentally in their writing and spelling, I ca decide, in that instant, where I need to take them and where they need an extra push. In this area of developmental spelling in particular I have felt a lot more confident in what I am doing with my students that I did in the beginning. When I began teaching this year I was slightly uneasy about my techniques, but once I started taking this class, I was reassured that what I doing, really was the right way to do it.
Another portion of this course that has really influences my teaching is with our discussion on guided reading and how it should be taught. This Winston-Salem/Forsyth County School selected a few schools to pilot a guided reading program, and our school was one of them. We are all required to set aside 30 minutes a day, each day to have guided reading groups in our classes, and we also get help from our primary reading teacher and our reading teacher so that our whole class if doing guided reading at the same time. When I first began doing my guided reading lesson plans I was not sure how much writing or phonics I needed to include in each lesson. However, after being in class for our discussions about guided reading I was able to fine-tune my lessons and my students have really benefited. I suppose that the best things about discussing guided reading in class was that I had another perspective to take back to my school. I was able to compare some of the things that our curriculum coordinator was saying to what you were saying and I was able to make sense of it all. There is certainly much more than just those two things that have influenced my thinking about reading and writing, but I do feel like those were the most influential during this semester.