Stacey Rhoney
RE5546
Word Study
Word Knowledge Development Action Research Plan
Implementing Word Study To Enhance Spelling Instruction In The Classroom
After teaching first grade for three years, I have come to realize that the spelling instruction that I am providing in my classroom is not working. It is evident that my students are not remembering their words from week to week and they are not applying the spelling patterns they have learned in their spelling and writing. My students do fairly well on spelling tests until about December. Then some start falling behind. As Judy Brown states in her article, “the low spellers tend to fall further and further behind (Brown, 2005). This is usually the time of year when my class seems divided between “who has it” and “who doesn’t”.
Unfortunately, it is very difficult for teachers these days to teach students on their individual levels because of the diverse groups found in the classroom. Traditionally, teachers have taught spelling in whole groups and out of the same text or from the same list of words. I would like to implement a word study plan that is geared to all students and their individual instructional levels in my classroom, to improve spelling. The word sort approach that I would like to implement was developed at the University of Virginia in the 1980’s(Brown, 2005). “Word sort is an inductive, child-centered activity in which students group and regroup words according to common spelling features” (Brown, 2005). Using word study with my students will teach them word families and patterns that will stick, when it comes to applying word knowledge in reading and writing and hopefully their word knowledge will improve overall.
Literature Review
During my research of word study and spelling instruction, I was able to find many positive reasons for implementing word study into a classroom. Although most of my research found was strictly about word study, I also found some specific information on spelling instruction in the classroom. I was able to find very few negative reasons for implementing word study in the classroom.
First of all, the most important research that I found stated in Bloodgood’s article is that, “what children learn from one aspect of language arts is used to explore and develop others” (Bloodgood, 1991). This just reiterates the fact that “spelling, reading, and writing are interrelated, with growth in one area leading to growth in other areas, particularly when children are given opportunities to study words and read text at the appropriate difficulty level”(Brown, 2005).
Another article emphasized three reasons for including word study in a Language Arts Program. First, word study provides for the integration of word-level skills within the context of reading and writing. Second, word study imitates the basic everyday learning processes of comparing, contrasting, and categorizing. Third, word study is hands-on, student centered, developmentally appropriate, and fun (Invernizzi, 1997).
A research study was done with teachers and preservice teachers that were enrolled in university reading and language arts courses to identify positive and negative aspects of implementing word study. First of all, the teachers were aware that the word study activities would most likely meet the diverse needs of all the students. Also, the preservice teachers enjoyed the hands-on, interactive, discovery-learning approach that word study provides to students. A few negative aspects of implementing word study were; time constraints on preparing materials, finding time to fit it into a daily schedule, teachers’ insufficient knowledge of word study, and teachers were also worried about parents not understanding word study and the fact that they would be more familiar with the traditional way spelling that has been taught over the years (Bloodgood, 2004).
The book Words Their Way does an excellent job of listing some common advantages of word sorts and using them in a word study program. First of all students work with words that they can already pronounce by teachers doing the assessment and becoming familiar with what the students’ know and what they need to work on. Second, word sorting focuses on decoding words the analytic way instead of the synthetic way as in most phonics programs, where the students are expected to sound out all sounds in all words within a sentence. Another way in which sorting differs is that sorting does not rely on rote memorization of rules as in phonics programs. The last advantage of sorting mentioned is that it is efficient. Children study and see more examples of words and patterns in a shorter amount of time (Bear, 2004).
As Morris concluded in his article (1995), “Although multi-level spelling instruction is called for throughout the elementary grades, from a prevention standpoint it is particularly advantageous in grades one and two”(Brown & Morris, 2005).
Action Plan
After discussing with colleagues, reading research, and listening to Judy Brown’s lecture on implementing word study into her second grade classroom, I have sketched out a plan that will help me implement word study into my classroom during the upcoming school year. I found Judy Brown’s article most helpful in organizing my classroom for word study implementation (Brown, 2005).
At the beginning of the school year I plan to assess my students on spelling as a whole group. I always do this at the beginning of the year as part of our reading assessment. I will use these tests to detect spelling errors that my students’ have and also I will use them to determine spelling patterns that they know in order for me to group them into the correct word study groups. The students will be grouped according to their instructional spelling levels and by patterns they need to learn. “The reasoning behind this placement is that students at diverse stages of word knowledge read differently from one another and need to attend to different features in their word study”(Bear, 1989). Generally I have found that students’ spelling levels and reading levels go hand in hand. Since my students will be used to meeting for reading groups, I plan to implement word study in my reading groups. Several articles that I read mentioned that it is always a good idea to start out with two or three groups, maximum when implementing word study. At first I plan to have a high, middle, and low group. Throughout the year I plan to adjust the number of groups and the make up of the groups if and when it is necessary. These reading/word study groups will be in addition to my reading and writing instruction. I plan to do away with the Saxon phonics lists of spelling words that I have been using and use lists from various resources that consists of the same patterns and word families in each group. I will follow a set routine each week for my word study/spelling activities. There will be time set aside each day in our reading groups to work on word study activities. On Mondays I plan to give a pre-test to everyone. This will be done whole group, but each student will be given words that are on their instructional level from one of the lists of words called out. Students will be given word activities for each night (Monday-Thursday) for homework to practice the patterns and families of the week. On Tuesdays we will do word sorts in our group and then students will go back to their seats and sort on their own and record sorts in a notebook. There will also be time set a side during the week for the students to work as partners on various word activities. Wednesdays will be game day. Thursdays there will be an oral spell check with students and students will perform word hunts. On Fridays the weekly spelling test will be given. Approximately every six weeks review tests will be given to see if groups need to be adjusted or to see if something needs to be taught again.
Rationale
My rationale for implementing word study in my classroom to enhance my spelling instruction is simply because what I am using now is not working. It is time for a change. The current spelling instruction that I am using comes from our Saxon Phonics program. Each week the students are given a list of twelve spelling words. Some words on the list come from the sound or rule learned from that week and some do not. The lists are very inconsistent and for the most part the words usually have nothing in common. Word families are not taught in the phonics program at all. There are no review tests or lists provided with the program. The program does not provide any daily activities or homework to go along with the spelling words for each week. Up until now I have been incorporating my own activities such as writing the words three times each, or making sentences. The phonics program we use is very intense for first graders. After a few lessons, the Saxon spelling introduces two and three syllable words. This is simply too much, especially for below grade level students. Each year I usually have about two children on grade level when they come in and the rest are below. After a few weeks of the Saxon spelling most of the students are lost. The students are usually able to “tap out” the words for the first few weeks, but after that their scores usually drop below 80%. I think implementing word study would help my students tremendously. Implementing word study groups would allow me to work with students on their word knowledge levels and provide specific instruction of word families and patterns that they need to learn to be successful spellers, readers, and writers. The research shows that word study instruction works and it allows for more student-centered activities and hands on learning to take place. I like teaching the Saxon phonics program and I think the students learn a lot from it, but there is still a need for a word study program that incorporates sorts with word families and patterns that the phonics leaves out. I also think it is a good idea to review blends, digraphs, and rules in the word study groups that are taught in the phonics program. After taking some courses for my graduate degree I have come to realize that spelling is a developmental process. I think that students’ word knowledge would be improved if I included a daily word study plan with my phonics instruction, reading instruction, and writing instruction. After all, these three areas of instruction working together play a very crucial role in order for a student to be successful.