The weekly spelling test, an educational tradition, steeped in memorization and misery for students, parents, and teachers alike has become a relic of the past. The list of 20 words assigned across all levels of students was begrudgingly studied, splatted onto the spelling test and quickly forgotten the next week. This "tradition" was unsuccessful due to the lack of a systematic differentiated approach to phonics and spelling. Today spelling and word work instruction reflects the structure and history of language and writing.
Systematic Differentiated Approach
According to Invenizzi (2004) analytic word work could be the cure all for the phonics and spelling spelling instruction. Word work needs to a be based on:
1. Spelling Inventory - an assessment that no longer focuses on the correct spelling of the whole word, but analyzes word features and patterns along a developmental continuum. From initial consonant sounds up to bases and roots.
Words Their Way Inventory - Bear, Intermezzi, Templeton, & Johnston
2. Student writing and invented spellings are able to provide teachers with diagnostic clues to a student's current understanding of how written words work. Instruction can then be based on the features that the student correctly uses and where the students do not yet have understanding.
3. Differentiation - student's word work should then be differentiated to the student's individual level and instructed in small groups in a systematic manner.
4. Students In Action - Students are no longer passive receivers of knowledge, but active in the process of creating learning and generalization. While the teacher may give a short, direct lesson about the spelling pattern or feature, it is the students working with, manipulating, and examining how that feature applies to a variety of words. Allowing students to not just memorize the letter sequence of one word, but see how a spelling rule or pattern applies to many words. The true test is the application of the new feature to unknown words used in the students writing.
5. What does feature analysis, "word work" look and sound like for students?
Notice how the students are speaking about patterns, vowel sounds, stretching and analyzing words. While a general rule may have been taught by the teacher, the true learning takes place between partners or with the student analyzing and applying a rule to a variety of words. Students are no longer memorizing strings of letters. Students are becoming linguists understanding how language works. Yet, these words are still being analyzed without context.
While it is great that students can read and recognize patterns in isolation, the realistic and practical part of reading needs students to be able to use their phonics and decoding knowledge while reading and writing.
Phonics, Fluency, and Writing Connection
Once students are exposed to and analyze digraphs, blends, vowel pairs, patterns and rules of language, how can we ensure that they are applying it with automaticity to their reading? According to Rasinski, Rupley, and Nichols (2008) the answer lies in reading the focused feature words in the context of a performance! What is more engaging for students than getting the spotlight to show what you know? From songs to reader's theater to poetry, when students are tasked with a performance, fluency becomes a driving factor.
Raskinski et. al, suggests that rhyming poetry is a great resource for texts that are short, motivational, and contain rimes (at, ay, ight) and word features that are often taught in primary grades. Multiple exposures and repeated readings of word families and word work skills helps students to apply the phonics skill in context. Rehearsing (repeated readings) for a performance makes it a meaningful, authentic, and engaging experience.
Synthesizing these experiences by allowing students to write their own rhyming sentences or poems can give teachers an additional form of assessment to see if students are not only able to decode the skill they have been working on, but also encode the words.
Word work is cannot be an isolated set of instruction, but a component that is integrated into reading and writing experiences.
How else can teachers create authentic, engaging experiences that tie together word work, reading, and writing?
Resources
Invenizzi, M., & Hayes, L. (2004). Developmental-spelling research: A systematic imperative. Reading Research Quaterly, 39(2), 216-228.
Rasinski, T., Rupley, W. H., & Nichols, W. D. (2008). Two Essential Ingredients: Phonics and Fluency Getting to Know Each Other. The Reading Teacher, (3). 257. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSqoNVfzq7w
While it may seem logical that teachers and educational researchers are the main contributors to theories surrounding literacy, researchers and theorist in multiple disciplines wanted a piece of of the reading pie. In the mid 1960's, following the transformation and influences of of psycho-linguists (literary meaning making experiences, authentic texts, miscue analysis, valuing the role of the learner), cognitive psychologistsextended and examined the roles of motivation, perception, attention, comprehension, learning, memory, and intention towards reading (Pearson, 2002).
What is Schema Theory?
Unlike behaviorist, cognitive psychologist were more focused on how the internal workings of the mind (not outward observable behaviors) impacted the reading process. One of the most notable theories, that was developed in the 1970's is the Schema Theory. This theory explains how new information is processed and understood because of prior existing knowledge called schema. Everything that one previously learned or understands about a topic is that topic's schemata. New information is understood and processed based on what we already know. The larger and more diverse one's schemata, the easier it would be to learn additional information about that topic (Tracey & Morrow, 2012).
Shuying An (2013) describes three types of schemata including: formal schema - the structure and organization of various texts, content schema - all of the information known or related to a certain topic, and linguistic schema - knowledge about grammar and vocabulary.
How has Schema Theory Influenced Reading?
Readers analyze text based on their own individualized schema about a topic and text structure.There may not be one right answer to a comprehension question. .A shift from a focus on phonics to a focus on comprehension and text structure began to take take place. If readers have little or no prior knowledge of a book's subject, comprehension and enjoyment of the book will be diminished. Readers must be able to connect new information from the text with their network of prior knowledge. New information is then either assimilated or accomodata into one's schemata. Reading becomes an active process of constructing meaning. (Anderson and Hite, 2010).
What strategies are derived from schema theory?
(Anderson and Hite, 2010)
Use of picture and word walks before reading to activate prior knowledge and generate predictions.
Webbing, vocabulary building, graphic organizers, anticipation guides, and previewing
Use of partner texts to build and supplement prior knowledge about topics are necessary in order to meet the Common Core demands of increasingly complex text.
Questioning and making connections (text to self, text to world, text to text) while reading
Establishing a purpose for reading
While the above strategies all of some reliance on the teacher or classmates helping students to activate background knowledge or generate new knowledge about vocabulary, Anderson and Hite, also suggest strategies that students can use to independently access text features to activate and built prior knowledge. These include:
Starting at the end of the book where glossaries, maps, indexes, and appendices can aide in previewing and predicting content.
Read the covers to scope out summaries of the story and biographical information of the author.
Finish at the front of the book by examining the title page, author, and publication date. Look at any included illustrations that may contribute to the story's theme.
Strategies in Practice
This video clearly demonstrates how a teacher is scaffolding the reading groups prior knowledge by questioning what vocabulary readers will find in the book based on the title and front cover of a leveled reader. It appears that each child is also completing a partner reading or integrated project related to the topic. Not only do certain students refer to their own prior knowledge about the topic, but they also interact with the other students and point out how classmates' project topics and presentations connect to book they are about to read.
However, this discussion could have gone further in depth about the text structure and features within the book that allow the reader to make predictions beyond the title and cover page. I question, once the students had the book in hand if they previewed the features and organization of the book. Activating the formal schema will allow the reader to understand the text structure and use design features to further their understanding of the topic.
How can teachers balance the need of providing and activating background information in regards to both content, relevance, and text structure? How should young readers begin to independently navigate the pre-reading process without the support of peers or teachers.
Going a Step Further:
Literary Theory Lens: Transactional Reader Response Theory
What is Transactional/Reader Response Theory?
While schema theory emphasized the reader's active role and background knowledge in constructing meaning from a text, the work of Louise Rosenblatt, Transactional/Reader Response Theory, takes the idea a step further. Pearson (2002) describes the that, "meaning is something that resides neither in the head of the reader (as some had previously argued) nor on the printed page (as others argued). Instead, Rosentblatt contends, meaning is created in the transaction between reader and document" (p. 18).
The way readers respond to or understand a text is going to be different based on the differences in the amount and kinds of background the reader has a on the topic. According to Rosenblatt, there are two main types of reading response: Efferent response and Aesthetic responses. Reading is a continuum of moving between the efferent responses (bringing facts from the text to world) and aesthetic where we engage our personal responses into the text (Galda, 2013).
Efferent responses are fact oriented and requires that readers step back and remove their personal beliefs while reading to obtain facts. Essential to the efferent response is understanding and what remains after reading including inferences, conclusions, and opinions generated.
Aesthetic responses are what the reader is experiencing while reading. It includes sensory, emotional, and personal input that the reader experiences during reading. This response is different for every individual (Tracey and Morrow, 2012).
What reading strategies are derived from Transactional Reader Response Theory?
(Galda, 2013)
Making personal connections to a text.
After reading individualized reader's response questions that evoke personal feelings and thoughts about a text that may not have a correct answer.
Literature response circles and book clubs
Reader's Response Journals
Using authentic literature that sparks enjoyment and motivation
SSR and DEAR
Allowing students to read for pleasure without teacher directed purpose for reading.
Strategy in Practice
The teacher in this video first models how she makes connections to the story and how this helps her make predictions and understand how characters are feeling. I wonder if this lesson could have been more beneficial if the teacher had allowed students to describe what the character was feelings and then explain how they knew. Students could then share an experience when they had felt similar to the character.
How explicit does modeling of making connections need to be? Can this be a skill that young readers learn through discussion and reflection? Are aesthetic based responses enough to demonstrate reader understanding?
References:
Anderson, N. A., & Hite, C. E. (2010). Building
comprehension for reading novels: The prereading- schema building process. New
England Reading Association Journal, 45(2), 26-31.
Galda, L.G. (2013). Learning From Children Reading Books: Transactional Theory and the Teaching of Literature. Journal Of Children's Literature, 39(2), 5-13.
Pearson, P.D. (2002). American reading instruction since 1967. American reading Instruction (Special ed., pp 419-486). Neward, D.E. International Reading Association
Shuying, A. (2013). Schema Theory in Reading. Theory &
Practice In Language Studies, 3(1), 130- 134. doi:10.4304/tplss.3.1.130-134
Tracey, D. H., & Morrow, L. M. (2012). Lenses on reading
: an introduction to theories and models. New York : Guilford Press, Ã2012.
