Somehow the conversation switched to the spelling of the word <likely>. Again a mistaken theory turned into a brilliant learning opportunity - with the expert guidance of a teacher equipped with accurate orthographic understanding and appropriate tools. A student suggested there should not be an <e> in this <likely>. Again Alieda used the word sum to work through the spelling with the class. With the word sum exposing the structure of <likely>, a student exclaimed, “Oh! Of course you have to keep the <e>. You’re only adding a consonant suffix.” Alieda then reinforced the pattern for when silent <e>s are dropped with a word sum of the base <like> taking the vowel suffix <-ing>.

Again, a pattern this class has been studying is reinforced in the engaging context of solving the mystery of interesting spellings noted by smart word detectives. Look at the images of just some of the references these children have been creating and using to develop their understanding of the written word. They have an ever growing prefix, suffix and base chart (notice how many have been added by children). A vowel chart hangs at the ready. Among many uses, this chart reminds students of the distinction between vowel and consonant suffixes. Flow charts are in common use as  students practice the patterns they are learning.

Also take note of the phonological lessons that grow from this morphological investigation. The word <like> uses a ‘long <i>’ pronunciation. I presume this is why we see examples of words representing all the long vowel sounds on this same chart  paper. Also note that the only obvious use of the single, silent <e> to mark that a previous vowel “represents its name” is in the word <pipe>. How do we know that the <a> in <taking> is long? Oh, yes, we need to have access to the knowledge that the base of this word has a single silent <e> that provides a pronunciation cue even though the vowel suffix <-ing> is ‘hiding it’ at the moment. That same cue also works for <used>, but might be harder to see at first.

The Venn diagram at right shows that the word detective, problem-solving model is also applied to phonological patterns in this class. This activity flows for a theme in Real Spelling on “The phonology of <c>”. Here, the proper linguistic symbols are used to represent graphemes and phonemes. Organizing words into groups according to whether they use the <c> grapheme for the /s/ or /k/ phonemes generates the motivation for the word detective work to discover the pattern.

Alieda Nuvoloni teaches a Grade 1/2 class at St. Marguerite and has been using the Real Spelling tool kit for a few months.


Alieda had set up one of her regular practice edits for her class on the chart paper shown at right. You can see a number of planned errors that the children were able to correct. However, the most exciting orthographic investigations turned out to be the unplanned ones. A student noticed the spelling <bodies> in this text and thought that they found a mistake when they realized that the base
had to be <body>. The student suggested that the spelling should be <*bodyes> (The asterisk is a symbol used to mark a misspelling).


Alieda honoured the child’s excellent thinking by writing down the hypothesized spelling. The class then framed their thinking about this spelling with a word sum. They had recently worked with the patterns for changing <y> to <i>. They had flow charts in the room that they could use to remind them of the pattern. They referred to the relevant flow chart, and saw that in this case there was no good reason to keep the <y> in the base, so it had to change to <i>. This proved that the spelling in their teacher’s text was correct.


Notice how the use of tools such as  the word sum, and practiced language such as base and suffix, provide such  support for this kind of exploratory analysis. These students have been taught these patterns, tools and terms. Now they refine that understanding through practice in a relevant context. Further, in this class, making a mistake is celebrated as a learning opportunity with no sense of embarrassment.

 

Grade 1 Word Detectives in Kingston!

WordWorking with “Sound” and Spelling in a Grade One Class

WordWorks was hired to inservice three teachers at John XXlll Catholic school. While Pete was teaching a Grade One class on the pattern for when to use <c> for /s/ or /k/, a student offered the misspelling <*saycl> for the word <cycle>.

Follow the links below for...


  1. •An article from Pete Bowers about understanding the source of this student’s misspelling, and the wider instructional implications of correctly or incorrectly analyzing this type of spelling error

  2. •A video and audio clip response to Pete’s article from Melvyn Ramsden that clearly illustrates the phonology and phonetics of what schools call the ‘long i’ sound.


Click here for his analysis of this error, and to see why Pete calls this a “brilliant mistake” that shows a student who is very attuned to pronunciation. Don’t miss Melvyn’s excellent video and audio response follows at the bottom of the page.

After Pete Bowers taught just one word structure lesson in her class, Grade 3 teacher Irene Malinowski (who also attended Melvyn’s two day workshop) jumped into making morphological word webs with her students. These few images are enough to reveal the intellectual engagement and the simple joy of discovery we give students as they learn how to link meaningfully related words and build a generative foundation of word knowledge.

Grade 2 and 3 Word Detectives!

  1. A Grade 2 teacher helps students understand when <c> represents /s/ and when it represents /k/.

Copyright Susan and Peter Bowers 2008

Click here to link to classroom videos.

WordWorks & Real Spelling in Primary Classrooms

Scenes from Grade 1 Classrooms:

Anchor charts and spelling investigations into morphological, phonological and etymological patterns...

Click here for a tutorial clip from Real Spelling explaining content and function words, and the spelling conventions that will help you identify them.

Instead of a typical “word wall” this Grade 1 class has a “word structures wall”. High frequency words are not listed here in alphabetical order to memorize. Instead they are among the words used to illustrate patterns they are studying.

Consider at the integration of morphology and phonology instruction illustrated in these three images taken from a classroom in Ghana during my last visit.

A matrix for the content word <know> reveals the meaning/structure connection to <knowledge> despite the pronunciation change. This matrix also sets up teaching of the homophone principle which contrasts the spelling of the function word <no>.

Since this class already had worked with the base word <know>, I knew (not new!) that they were ready to study the grapheme <n> and <kn> for /n/. They were quite comfortable with the statement that <kn> can only be initial.

Since I was showing them a digraph, I continued with another phoneme /k/, which can be represented by a number of graphemes, including the digraph <ck>.

This is from a lesson I taught using the Real Spelling Theme from Kit K Theme D on the phonology of <c> . This is one of the themes Melvyn has posted as examples of the 84 teaching themes in the Tool Box. Check it out at this link!

Can you sort out the pattern this Grade 1 class is investigating about bases ending in a final /l/ pronunciation?

One of the pictures in the slide show from my last Ghana workshop provides the answer if you are curious!

Click either of the images below for an introductory document on the integration of handwriting and spelling / word study instruction.

The image at right is from a Grade 1 class investigates the why the two <e>s in <been> do not contradict the convention that the <ee> digraph always represents the long <e>. Click here for a Newsletter describing this investigation.

Grade 1 morphological matrices, word sums and webs!

Below are a series of images from a Grade one work from teacher Sarah Smith at the International School of Beijing. Note the excellent us of Smart Boards.

The images below show use of creative use of our WordWorks book “Making Word Webs from the Word Matrix” Consider all the critcal thinking and vocabulary development encouraged by sorting words according to structure and meaning. Again, the Smart Board proves to be a useful tool for Structured Word Inquiry - as does old fashioned cutting and gluing paper!

Here the teacher has created their own forms to help students investigate and explain the meaning and structure of complex words. Wonderful stuff!