GET SET FOR LITERACY

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A structured approach to spelling

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The importance of explicitly teaching spelling

Reading Rope Model

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The Cognitive Foundations Framework

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The Simple View of Writing

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Why are words written down

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Moats, 2008

Written language is not merely speech written down. The major goal of the English writing system is not merely to ensure accurate pronunciation of the written word — it is to convey meaning.

Function of spelling

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To represent sense and meaning. An important part of the ‘sense’ of a word is its history.

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Spelling of words contains an inbuilt history. Words with common histories are likely to share common elements of meaning as well as orthography (e.g. two)

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Early stages of spelling

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Rebecca Treiman, 1998

For young children, spelling is a creative linguistic process rather than a learned habit involving rote visual memorisation. Young children create spellings for words based on their knowledge of language and their knowledge of print. They do not simply memorise letter sequences.

How words are learnt

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Rebecca Treiman, 1998

Memory for spelling patterns relies on and is facilitated by an understanding of linguistic concepts, including speech sounds, sound-letter correspondences, word origins, and meaningful parts of words. The primary mechanism for word memory is not a photographic memory, as many believe; it is insight into why the word is spelled the way it is.

Proficiency with language

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Moats, 2008

The correlation between spelling and reading comprehension is high because both depend on a common denominator: proficiency with language. The more deeply and thoroughly a student knows a word, the more likely they are to recognise it, spell it, define it, and use it appropriately in speech and writing.

Pathway to orthographic mapping

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Teacher knowledge

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• Phonology – rule system of how phonemes are sequenced and uttered to make words.
• Orthography – a writing system.
• Morphology – study of meaningful units of language.

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• Semantics – study of word and phrase meaning.

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• Syntax – rule system governing sentence formation.

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Teacher knowledge – speech sounds

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Spoken words are made up of two key types of sounds: consonants and vowels.

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• Consonants are speech sounds that are formed when airflow is obstructed by either the lips, teeth, or tongue.
• Vowels are speech sounds that are open and unobstructed. The vowel is the nucleus of the syllable as every syllable includes one vowel sound. The vowel sound makes articulation of words possible (e.g., cbdrp cannot be easily articulated).

Teacher knowledge – orthography

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Pathway to orthographic mapping

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Kilpatrick, 2015

Scope & Sequence

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• What you are teaching (scope) and the order you are teaching it (sequence)
•  Gradually builds the complexity of students’ knowledge and skill (cumulative)

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Orthographic mapping

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Kilpatrick, 2019

Three forms of a word:

1. The sounds
2. The spelling
3. The meaning

Orthographic mapping

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Kilpatrick, 2019

Orthographic mapping

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What we know about familiar words

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Units of analysis:

• Word (snowing)
• Morpheme (snow-ing)
• Syllable (snow-ing)
• Phoneme (s-n-ow-i-ng)
• Grapheme (s-n-o-w-i-n-g)

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Spelling is predictable

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Joshi et al., 2008

There are three types of information that, once learned, make spelling much more predictable:

1. Word origin and history,
2. Syllable patterns and meaningful parts of words,
3. Letter patterns.

Word origin and history

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Knowing the origins of words can be helpful in pronouncing and spelling them.

Syllable patterns and meaningful parts of words

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• There are 6 types of syllables found in words.

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• Meaningful parts of words are called morphemes – more on this later.

Syllable types by occurrence in the English Language

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sarahsnippets.com

sarahsnippets.com

sarahsnippets.com

Schwa

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• Non distinct vowel found in unstressed syllables (wagon circus trumpet).

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If the vowel can’t be heard clearly, then we most likely have a choice of six single letters. In descending order of commonality, they are:

a, e (roughly equal)

i

o

u

y

Letter patterns

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Joshi et al., 2008

English has certain constraints on how letters can be used, for example:

• C takes a, o, u K takes the other 2
• No word in English ends in v or j.

Illegal letters

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The Illegal Letters are the five letters that are not permitted to be at the end of a word in English. They are ‘i’, ‘j’, ‘q’, ‘u’ and ‘v’. There are historical reasons for the Illegal Letter rule, usually to do with typographical or phonetic clarity.

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That is not to say that words don’t end with the sounds commonly associated with those letters (‘fly’, ‘badge’, ‘unique’, ‘glue’, ‘have’). It’s just that our rules don’t allow ‘i’, ‘j’, ‘q’, ‘u’ or ‘v’ to represent those sounds in that position.

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Knowing the Illegal Letters and their solutions gives learners reliable strategies for tackling the ends of words.

Lyn Stone – Spelling for Life

Spelling for life

Language changes over time – speaking is used more so has changed more than writing. This means that our spelling hasn’t yet caught up with our speaking.

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Lyn Stone – Spelling for Life

Word families

Develop a sense of word-connectedness

• Form (is) – way in which the words are spelled.
• Feature (has) – words related by common features (
• Function (does) what the word is doing in the sentence and how it relates to

other words (syntax), that is, what part of speech it is. Related to morphology and syntax.

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Pattern to establish

Words don’t exist in isolation. They can always be connected to other words

through their form, feature or function.

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Syllables vs morphemes

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• Two different ways of looking at chunks in words

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• Syllable:

A unit of pronunciation

One vowel sound, with or without surrounding consonants

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Morphology

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The study of words, how they are formed, and their relationship to other words.

Teaching morphology supports:

• Word reading
• Spelling
• Reading comprehension

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Etymology is the study of the origins of words. It can be useful to teach etymology alongside morphology. Knowledge of the origins of words can help to explain (or make memorable) knowledge about their meanings and spellings.

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Morphemes

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A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning in a word.

Can be:

• Free – the word has a meaning on its own (dog, happy)
• Bound – needs to be attached to another part (dogs, unhappy)

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Affixes – bits added to a word

• Prefix (un) – attached before a word
• Suffix (ed) – attached after a word

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• Compound word = base + base (rain + bow = rainbow)

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Base word vs. root word

• Base – a free morpheme to which affixes can be added (usually Anglo-Saxon origin). Has meaning on its own.
• Root – a morpheme that cannot stand alone but is used to form a family of words with related meaning (usually Latin origin). Primary form of a word.

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Prefix – added to the beginning of a word

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• Unhappy

Prefixes

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When working with prefixes it is important to recognise their role in changing the meaning of the base word. Be clear that prefixes do not affect base words. Just like with compound words we just 'glue' the bits together to make the new word.

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Exploring prefixes and meanings can be entirely oral - just talking about words and what they mean. It is not expected that children will write or remember all these words.

Suffix – added to the end of a word

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• Happiest

Suffixes

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Inflectional suffixes: endings that do not change the part of speech (s, ing, ed, er and est). For example, sing and singing are both verbs.

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Derivational suffixes: endings that do change the part of speech (ly, er, al, ion). For example, train = verb, trainer = noun.

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Suffixes have an impact on spelling

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Adding suffixes to short vowel syllables.

• When we add an ending to a short vowel syllable, we need two consonants after the first syllable to 'protect the vowel' and keep it short.

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run big damp jump fetch crush fish long hop skip sit fill drink miss

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Add the endings: -ed, -est, -en, -er, -ing.

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(If the first syllable has just one consonant on the end, we must double the final consonant before adding the suffix: for example, run → running, runner

But, if the first syllable has two or more consonants on the end, we do not need to add any more consonants: for example, fish → fishing, fished).

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Suffixes have an impact on spelling

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Adding suffixes to long vowel syllables.

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When we add an ending to a long vowel syllable we must follow certain spelling rules:

• drop the e before ing (bake + ing → baking)
• keep just one e when adding an e suffix (bake + ed → baked)
• keep a y ending when adding ing (cry + ing → crying)
• change y to i when adding an e suffix (cry + ed → cried)

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rain bright line wave fake try float please smile take reach hope cry chase

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Add the endings: -ed, -est, -en, -er, -ing.

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Teaching activities

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Create a morpheme deck

Teaching activities

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Teaching activities – word matrix

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Teaching activities – word webs

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Spelling for consonant sounds

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Analysis of writing to inform teaching

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Phases of the alphabetic principle

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Ehri, 1987; 2015.

Analysis of writing to inform teaching

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Teaching

Apply

Review

Teach

Practice

Assessment

When testing students’ spelling, it’s important to go beyond simply marking words right or wrong. The assessment should be an opportunity to evaluate students’ understanding of sounds and conventional spelling patterns. The kinds of words that students miss and the types of errors they make are important in evaluating their spelling achievement and their understanding of language structures.

Explicit teaching of spelling using The Code

• Determine existing knowledge through assessment – use the word checks to establish what list/year to start with.
• Group students or consider whole class teaching. Children significantly behind where they need to be will need daily practice.
• Use assessment to monitor progress.
• Continue to teach HF/Heart words, making sure to show children how to map the word.

The Code Lesson structure

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