Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Why:
The children in my class have great ideas to write with but lack the
phonological knowledge required to assist them to spell. This is
evidenced through the Pseudo word test, testing of the Essential Word
Lists and by classroom observations.
Children appear to know most letter sound links but are not using this
knowledge to assist them to spell fluently when writing.
Some of the group are showing strong progress now in reading and
these skills are not yet transferring into their writing. They appear to
compartmentalise them as two separate tasks and have not yet seen
the links between the two.
Target group of students:
L L-E
O S -E
L V-M
T T-M
E J J M
TJM- M
How the students were selected:
Students were identified through the data from end of year 2014 and
were included into the school wide goals for 2015.
Students were identified by observation by teachers, previous data and
current assessment- Pseudo Word Test and Essential Word Lists.
Inquiry Process:
I began to prepare the class for this inquiry by using Pseudo word test
(Joy Allcock) and testing the Essential Word lists to establish their prior
knowledge in spelling.
These tests were selected based on their prior use in the school, my
knowledge of the tests and the direct reference to the Essential Word
lists in the NZ National Standards for Reading and Writing in the
Literacy Learning Progressions (Learning Media).
My previous inquiries into raising student achievement in writing has
shown that with regular practise, use and exposure to the HFW
students were then able to transfer these into their writing with
ongoing support and reminding of the links between words they read
and writing them. Particularly the overt demonstration of what we read
and how it is spelt when we use it for writing. This needs to be ongoing
and explicit during reading and writing.
Term 1:
I implemented Jolly phonics and began to remind and strengthen letter/
sound links with the children as a whole class.
I created a wall of words that children were encouraged to take and
use and copy during for writing tasks, alphabet, blend and diagraph
word mats were available to students and writing interest words were
brainstormed for writing tasks or children were assisted to isolate and
identify chunks of sound while writing with the teacher. A deliberate
act of teaching was pushing the use of imaging. When you read the
word what does it look like?
To build spelling fluency I also shared the Essential word lists in the
homebook and this was used by some of my families to support their
childrens learning independently.
When first tested it was obvious to me that students were not used to
independent testing so this I believe was reflected in the results to
some extent.
The baseline data for the beginning of 2015 was:
This evidence was gathered in March.
There was some progress made during the term and when the test was
used again as a diagnostic test for this inquiry.
Term 2:
Once the class was once again settled after the school holiday break I
started to teach the spelling games associated with practice
opportunities for this inquiry and laminate the practise sheets around
discrimination, word building using chunks and identifying HFW.
I also sourced on the internet, word matching and bingo games around
short and long vowels that proved to be engaging with the students
however they proved difficult to keep organised based on the students
lack of self management when playing games. I suspect this is partly
due to not having been required to be self-managing previously and
some children are still very young. Next step was to teach them how
we wanted the games played and looked after.
These resources were used as practise opportunities and met the
varying levels of ability within the diverse classroom, with reading
levels ranging from emergent to blue.
The data on the left hand side of the graph represents the pre
intervention results and the data on the right hand side represents the
post intervention results.
Conclusion:
My conclusion is that children of any age benefit from the explicit
teaching of spelling supported by daily practise and instruction four
times a week.
Two of these children are Year 1 children and the other four children are
Yr2 children.
Beg
Data
Oakley
Linkin
LincolnM
Tiare-M
Ererangi
M
TJ-M
Ess List
Ess List
Ess List
Ess List
1
2
3
4
90%
65%
36%
0%
80%
55%
23%
0%
90%
100%
25%
60%
0%
30%
0%
0%
90%
100%
90%
95%
40%
66%
0%
0%
Yr 1 students
M = Identified as Maori
Ess List
Ess List
Ess List
Ess List
End data 1
2
3
4
Oakley
100%
90%
63%
38%
Linkin
100%
85%
56%
38%
LincolnM
90%
70%
23%
8%
Tiare-M
100%
70%
46%
28%
Ererangi
M
100%
95%
56%
64%
TJ-M
90%
85%
100%
96%
Yr 1 students
M = Identified as Maori
Has this transferred into their writing?
For all of the students involved in the inquiry I would certainly
conclude their spelling of HFW has improved from the intervention and
their willingness to attempt other words has been noticed and
identified through results in their UWS pre and post intervention.
I have noticed the ability in more students to their writing fluency (the
ability to add length to their writing).
Given the age of my students I believe the intervention has had a
positive effect on their ability to transfer the learning into their writing.
Parent voice:
Petrina Toimata: Originally Petrina was concerned about the lack of
spelling coming home and at an interview on 17/9/15 when given the
results of testing pre and post intervention was delighted.