LITERACY-BASED DISTRICT-WIDE PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT Aiken County Public School District January 15, 2016 LEADERS IN LITERACY CONFERENCE

Who Cares About Spelling? Stephen Kneece, M.A., CCC-SLP LEADERS IN LITERACY CONFERENCE

Why do I care about spelling? I’m a Speech-Language Pathologist and I LOVE language! Following graduate school, I worked in the Knowledge of Orthographic Learning Laboratory at USC. I have used spelling analysis and intervention to effectively improve student’s overall literacy abilities.

Why do you care about spelling?

Why should you care about spelling? The spelling system of English makes sense! (most of the time) The spelling system not only represents sound, but it also represents meaning. Effective spelling instruction powerfully supports the nature and development of the reading process. Spelling Instruction provides a bridge to vocabulary instruction. Establishes a powerful framework for students’ vocabulary expansion by focusing on the structure as the key to detecting and understanding similarity of words Spelling assessment can be a useful tool to inform literacy interventions. (We can identify the problem!)

Vocabulary Review Phoneme: Smallest unit of sound in a language Grapheme: A letter Morpheme: Smallest meaningful unit of language

Cracking the Code Spelling is a window into a child’s individual language system. There are 5 linguistic components that contribute to a child’s ability to spell. Understanding these components can inform our assessment and instruction of literacy. 5 linguistic components of spelling: Phonemic Awareness (PA) Orthographic Knowledge (OK) Semantic Awareness (SA) Morphological Awareness (MA) Mental Graphemic Representations (MGRs)

Phonemic Awareness (PA) The explicit attention given to individual sounds within words. Allows an individual to think and talk about sounds. One of the strongest early predictors of an individual’s spelling ability. Two important measures of PA: Segmenting Blending

What do you know? stop

What do you know? break

What do you know? establishment

Orthographic Knowledge Commonly known as “Phonics” Includes the rules for translating speech into print Students who can select appropriate letters to represent sounds are demonstrating orthographic pattern awareness.

What do you know? What is a common orthographic pattern for long vowels?

What do you know? What is a common orthographic pattern for the /k/ phoneme at the beginning of a word?

What do you know? Cape Kite Cookie Key Cup Kyle

Semantic Awareness The appreciation for the meaning of words and its effect on spelling. Once a written word is connected to that word’s meaning and retained in an individual’s memory, the better the person is able to represent the correct word to relate appropriate meaning in text.

What do you know? It is important to play dead when you run into a bare in the wild.

What do you know? They were exhausted after reaching there destination.

Morphological Awareness (MA) The recognition, understanding, and use of word parts that carry meaning. For example, root words, prefixes, suffixes, and grammatical inflections (e.g., -s or –es for plurals) are all morphemes which can be added or taken away from a word to alter its meaning. Different types of morphemes: Base (root) – a morpheme in a word that gives the word its principle meaning. Inflectional morpheme – a suffix added to a word that indicates tense, number, possession, or comparison. Does NOT change essential meaning. Derivational morpheme – an affix added to a word to create a new word or change the word class.

What do you know? jumps

What do you know? magician

What do you know? antidisestablishmentarianism

Mental Graphemic Representations The ability to store and use mental graphemic representations (MGRs) is a significant and unique contributor to spelling and reading development. MGRs are “pictures” in our mental lexicon of words and morphemes that allow us, if sufficiently learned and stored, to write (and read) fluently. Clear and complete MGRs allow a child to quickly spell/read a word, thereby freeing up attentional and cognitive resources for other skills. MGRs are CRITICAL for writing (and reading) skills to progress.

What do you know? What are some of your “fuzzy” MGRs?

So, how can that help me? Student’s misspellings offer insight into their linguistic awareness skills and allow teachers to categorize developmental strategies and to reflect a child’s developmental level of spelling knowledge. Having a better understanding of the linguistic components of spelling, reading, and writing can help us identify problem areas and provide prescriptive instruction to our struggling students.

Spelling Assessments Norm-referenced: The Test of Written Spelling-5 (TWS-5) Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement-3 (KTEA-3) Wide Range of Achievement Test-4 (WRAT-4) Woodcock-Johnson IV Achievement (WJIV-A) Criterion-referenced: Spelling Evaluation for Language and Literacy-2 (SPELL-2) Words Their Way – Spelling Lists The Next Step in Guided Reading – Spelling Lists

Linguistic Analysis of Spelling scabble / scrabble PA

Linguistic Analysis of Spelling stap / stop OK

Linguistic Analysis of Spelling hole / whole SA

Linguistic Analysis of Spelling watcht / watched MA

Linguistic Analysis of Spelling dreem / dream MGR

Take Away Activity: Sound Strings

Elkonin Boxes – Sound Boxes

SPELL-Links

SpellTalk

Want to know more?