Episode 14: Spelling: It’s a Literacy Teaching Opportunity

This episode can be a classroom game-changer. For many of us, spelling means a weekly word list handed out on Monday and assessed on Friday. In this episode of Literacy Talks, our experts share new perspectives on actually teaching spelling. It’s more than testing or memorizing words. Good spelling instruction can be a diagnostic window into students’ proficiency as readers and writers. Tune in and learn how spelling instruction can lead to strong, lasting literacy connections.

💬 Want more insights like this?
Subscribe to the Literacy Talks Podcast Digest for episode recaps, resources, and teaching takeaways delivered straight to your inbox!

Core Instruction and Reading Intervention. One System. One Path Forward.

From Pre-K readiness to advanced fluency, Ascend®️ gives educators a consistent, needs-based approach to literacy—helping every teacher deliver the right instruction and every student build lasting mastery, one skill at a time. Coherent literacy for lasting impact.

See how Ascend works.

Do you teach Structured Literacy in a K–3 setting?
Sign up for a free license of Reading Horizons Discovery® LIVE and start teaching right away—no setup, no hassle. Sign-up Now.

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Narrator: 0:05

Hello literacy leaders and champions. Welcome to literacy talks, a podcast series from Reading Horizons dedicated to exploring the ideas, trends, insights and practical issues that will help us all improve our professional practice in teaching reading. Our host is Stacy Hurst, professor at Southern Utah University and Chief Academic Officer at Reading Horizons where reading momentum begins. Joining Stacy are Donnel Pons, a recognized expert in literacy and special education, and Lindsay Kemeny, a Utah based elementary classroom teacher. Today's topic is spelling. And after listening to this episode, you'll see spelling instruction in a new and inspiring light. Let's get started.

Stacy Hurst: 0:54

Welcome, everybody to this episode of literacy talks. I'm your host Stacy Hurst. And I'm joined by Donell Pons and Lindsay Kemeny, as I am for every episode, and we just like to talk about literacy. Today we are going to talk about spelling. And when we hear the word spelling, we probably have a lot of different responses to that based on our roles in teaching. But I wanted to start with a quote that we've often quoted in this podcast, but it's from Steven Pinker, and he stated, language is a human instinct for written language is not. You guys can probably quote this with me. Children are wired for sound, but print is an optional accessory that must be painstakingly bolted on. And then in the article. Let's see, it's by Louisa Moats house spelling supports reading, she quoted Noah Webster, who said in 1773 guys who said this spelling is the foundation of reading and the greatest ornament of writing. Which is interesting because Steven Pinker referred to spelling as an accessory. And now Webster referred to it as an ornament. So what are your thoughts on spelling instruction? And maybe let's start with what you remember about spelling when you were growing up? How was that approached when you were a student? Donell, let's start with

Donell Pons: 2:25

you. Nice. I, my earliest memories are my mother, because she was a school teacher, I think I've mentioned before, my mother taught the early grades for second third. And she was a phonics, a person who taught phonics as well. And that was important to her. And I remember her talking about it when I was younger, and asking the principal about the teachers that we were going to have based on if they used phonics instruction, so that much my mother was very much aware of. And so maybe for some folks that was fairly progressive, because I think a lot of parents weren't aware of how things were being taught what reading or spelling instruction. And I remember, my mom, would, she and I together would do have these little spelling tests and things. But what's interesting with all that knowledge and all that discussion, you would think that all of my siblings had the same experience with spelling, but we didn't. Some of my siblings really struggled with spelling, it would be later as I learned more to discover exactly why my siblings has struggled with spelling. So isn't that interesting that even though we had somewhat of more, more understanding of spelling, so to speak, that a lot of my siblings struggled with spelling still in that environment.

Stacy Hurst: 3:35

Yeah. So when your mom was working with you on spelling, how did that look?

Donell Pons: 3:39

Yeah, so interestingly enough, I've had to think back on and a lot of it was my mother leaning into sounds. And what was interesting is my mother had an end. And this would later be something that I saw on a lot of programs, my mother would say, it sounds like but when you spell it, say it this way, that's how she would say it for some words that were, as we say, tricky, or quotes or tricky or whatever. So and oftentimes in programs you hear them say, sounds like spells like and then you pronounce it more like you would phonetically right. It's interesting. Yeah,

Stacy Hurst: 4:11

that's interesting. Lindsay, what are your early memories about spelling?

Lindsay Kemeny: 4:17

Yeah, and good for your mom. Donell, I think, um, my comment is not very interesting, because I don't really remember. Like, I have a really bad memory. Yes, I guess I do. But I don't remember anything about spelling instruction. And I also think that it was generally pretty easy for me and so maybe that's also why I don't really remember.

Stacy Hurst: 4:41

Do you remember having spelling tests or anything like anything? Do you remember going to school?

Lindsay Kemeny: 4:50

I remember I remember the day the teacher had her dog come to school.

Stacy Hurst: 4:59

Yeah, gonna,

Donell Pons: 5:01

you know, to that point kind of funny. Being the youngest child, I think parents get a little tired, right. And now being a parent of many children, I can see why I was probably doing this on my own. But to your point, Stacy, do you remember having spelling tests? Absolutely I do. And I remember my older siblings not being interested in quizzing me on the spelling list, and my mother being busy. So I had a little tape recorder, little old tape recorder, and I would tell myself, they sang the list, I would play it back and do my own spelling,

Stacy Hurst: 5:32

test, waited take initiative, you go down out

Donell Pons: 5:36

that last lonely kid?

Lindsay Kemeny: 5:38

Well, that's

Stacy Hurst: 5:40

great. My memories of spelling, I don't really have a lot, we did have weekly spelling tests. And when I think about it, I'm thinking about the actual paper that we wrote on it was sort of gray, you know what I'm talking about that it was almost like material like texture, with the lines. And it was a certain shape. I remember remembering all of that I don't remember much in the way of spelling instruction, but not here to brag, but I'm going to, we did do the spelling bee thing. And, you know, hair flip. I was the spelling bee champion in my class. And then in my grade level, and so I went to district, but I was saved by Yeah, you know, it should be a good memory, I should be bragging about that. But it's not turned into not a good memory. Because I got out on a word that I knew. You know, if you've ever had that experience, like you sit down and go, Oh, I knew that I just spelled it wrong. And it came down to me and one other girl. And she doesn't know it to this day. But all through high school. Maybe I didn't like her as much as I could have because of that, but I'm over it now. And I think spelling these are their own kinds of special. Did you guys have those?

Lindsay Kemeny: 6:52

We don't do it at my school or anything. But I, gosh, I think I was just listening to was it Lynn Stone, who was talking about how she loves spelling bees. So I don't know,

Stacy Hurst: 7:03

I think that would be terrifying for some kids. And comedians talk about it like just wanting to get out. So they purposely spell words wrong, they can sit down and do their own thing. Anyway, we digress. So let's fast forward to how you have addressed spelling instruction in the settings that you are teaching in over the years. And Lindsay will start with you because you're in a more traditional setting, and the early grade levels where that is a focus. So tell us what you've done over the years to teach and assess spelling. Okay,

Lindsay Kemeny: 7:37

well, I think historically, and I think this is really common, and we can't do this anymore, where we just give the list of words on Monday, and we test them on Friday. And we really expect the parents I feel like to teach their child and have them practice the words and without really tuning into teaching the spelling patterns, spelling rules, phonics concepts, you know, and I, I think I, you know, originally, that's what I did. And now, I teach spelling, where before, I just tested spelling, maybe and facilitated writing the words over and over. But now I teach it. And so instead of giving students a list of words, on Monday, I'm teaching the concept all throughout the week. And then they don't know what words are going to be on the quote unquote, assessment on Friday, but I don't call it a test, I call it show what you know, and try to make it really low pressure, low stakes. And if they bombed the spelling test that's on me. And so now I know, I've got to go back and and reteach that to that student. Yeah, that's

Stacy Hurst: 9:05

spelling test spelling assessment really is for the teacher should be. Yeah, good information that we can find out there about where a student is and what we can do to adjust our instruction die. Now what are you thinking of as we have this part of the conversation?

Donell Pons: 9:20

Yeah, just working with older students. Typically, what I see are people who have struggled their entire lives with spelling, this has been a beast that they gave, they cannot tame, and a burden, a real burden. And spelling comes with a lot of anxiety about exactly how you wrangle it what you do with it. And there's almost a sense of disbelief that they'll ever be able to spell with any consistency and any sort of confidence. And it's interesting too, because as Lindsey you've described it so well what they experienced in school is not really being taught to spell it seemed to them and because To the way that it was being shown to them, it seemed to them that either you came with it and you're born a speller so I hear this a lot. Some people are born good spellers, other people are just born poor spellers. I hear this all I even hear teachers tell it to me that oh, thank heavens, I was born a good speller. So it's just really interesting. That's what you start to think that's what you lean into when you don't understand exactly how we acquire spelling and and how you should teach spelling. And so I hear a lot of that from adult students. What's interesting on the adult end is that because they're older students, we do a lot of analyzing, and we turn it more into the analytical process of looking at how words are spelled that that to my students is something brand new is that you start to look at words analytically. And we're going to look at the word and discuss it. Yeah,

Stacy Hurst: 10:49

take it apart. That is great. And we're going to talk about that in a bit what to do when we're doing so when we're teaching spelling. But what I'm hearing you say to Darnell, is that it becomes part of their identity,

Donell Pons: 11:01

right? Yeah, absolutely. It's the story. Their narrative is I'm a poor speller.

Stacy Hurst: 11:05

Yeah, and I don't know. Conversely, if those of us who haven't really, traditionally struggled with spelling that much, I don't know that I identify as a good speller, even though I won a few spelling bees, just to brag again. Yeah, it's really interesting.

Donell Pons: 11:24

But have you noticed Stacey, you probably at least, maybe you haven't thought of yourself that way. But you get called a good speller, if you can come up with spellings for words. And it's interesting, in a group of adults, somebody becomes the speller, if you're able to spell so I've even worked in groups in work settings, and in community settings, where we're doing documents together. And if you get designated as the speller, so that happens to you almost,

Stacy Hurst: 11:50

yeah, that makes sense. And then I'm also thinking, what is the relationship between reading and spelling because reading, I think any of us, I really do think the grand majority of us barring some neurological oddity, are much better reading than we are spelling, meaning we're more accurate at reading words than we are spelling words. And I know there's still some words I struggle with. But I could recognize them in print. So in our instruction, as we address that, what I've seen over the years is that teachers, you were talking Lindsay about that Monday to Friday cadence that we get in, and the thing I heard the most from teachers was, you know, we go through these words all week. And on Friday, they pass the test. And then on Monday, they use the same words in their writing, and they spell them incorrectly. So we know that really, it was a working memory assessment, not a spelling test. And I think that happened so much over the years in education, that teachers just kind of stopped attending to it. I don't see weekly spelling tests as often as I used to. And that might be part of the reason. But I'm thinking also about some things that teachers say in response to that. And maybe teachers and parents, I just people, let's just say people that we have spellcheck, we have AutoCorrect. And so really, how important is spelling? What are your thoughts on that?

Donell Pons: 13:23

I got a quick Yeah, that adult group, I mean, because then I get to see people whose parents and teachers told them that it would be fine. You just have to use spellcheck. So now they've been living with that. And that is a really poor substitute for being able to spell and I don't have one adult student yet who has said to me, Oh, I'm alright. I have spellcheck. I have every adult students say to me, at some point, spellcheck is a really poor substitute for being able to spell because oftentimes you can get close to or an approximation, it's it is not it. There's enough ways to have error. When you're relying on spellcheck. If you really can't spell that it makes life very difficult. And there's enough times when you're out and about, you need to write something down to jot this, you need to remember even an address. And if you had the spelling, it would be so much easier to remember. It impacts so many things beyond. Oh, I can just look it up on spellcheck.

Stacy Hurst: 14:13

Yeah. And let's talk about that for a minute too. In the in the article that I referred to already, how spelling supports reading, and why it's more regular and predictable than you think by Louisa Moats. That was written a long time ago, I think back in the 90s is the first time I remember maybe 2000s. But she did say that spellcheck and autocorrect is not really consistent. It's only correct 30 to 80% of the time, and I thought, okay, that's probably an old statistic. So let me do some digging and see if that's changed. Well, it's improved a little bit. But when you think about, but this range is still there, there isn't. We can't say that, you know, soundly, it's better. But when you think even if it was 90% accurate, you're still missing one word out of every time And that really interferes with what you're trying to communicate. So and you have

Lindsay Kemeny: 15:04

to get the spelling close enough in the first place to have it recognize what you're trying to spell.

Stacy Hurst: 15:09

So exactly, you have to leverage some amount of spelling knowledge even to use that technology. But I will say that if you want a good laugh, if you're ever having a down day, just Google autocorrect mistakes and just have fun, because there are a lot of

Donell Pons: 15:26

I was gonna say, those students with dyslexia, their biggest complaint is you get approximations, and you might shoot out six. And if you have dyslexia, the dyslexic students, like that's the worst thing possible, is because now you have six that look really close to each other. And that's like a nightmare scenario.

Stacy Hurst: 15:42

Oh, goodness. Okay. So let's talk about just really quickly. And then I do want to spend a lot of time talking about what we should do and what we shouldn't do when we're teaching spelling, and then talk about some things that might cause us a little bit of grief when we're doing that. So let's talk about the relationship between spelling and other aspects of language. Like, let's start with phonemic awareness. Lindsay, what do you have to say about that?

Lindsay Kemeny: 16:13

Well, you know, I love looking at students spelling, because that really gives you a little peek into what's going on in their, in their mind and their brain, you know, it's like this little window. And you can see students who have a phonemic awareness weakness by looking at their spelling, and you can see the ones who are not attending to the sounds in the Word, and that the ones who are basically memorizing, you know, this letter string without connecting it to the sounds, you know, so you see, a student who spells went W N, E T, while they're not attending to the sounds and the words. So it's, you can get so much information from just looking at that spelling and being Oh, okay. Yes. Or oh, my goodness, it's, it's hearing the blends in and they're not, we need to do more work with blends, because that's harder to hear than just a CVC word. Right. And so that kind of can tell me where where I need to gear my instruction for that student.

Stacy Hurst: 17:21

Yeah, great. And that tells I mean, it makes sense. That's kind of what are our languages? anchored on? Right, those phonemes? And the combinations of those Donelle, do you have anything to add to that?

Donell Pons: 17:35

No, I would just totally agree with Lindsay, even the adult students, it looks much the same as what Lindsay was describing with younger students. And in fact, I think the adult students because they've struggled for so long with spelling have maybe even have have less of a connection between the sound and spelling, I think they've just given up entirely. And they think it's this whole mystery thing that occurs. It's really, it's really sad in a way to see that because their strength oftentimes in being able to coach and get them really tuned in to speech and sounds that has been completely abandoned as a way of being able to spell it's like a complete disconnect between the two, which is interesting.

Stacy Hurst: 18:16

Yeah, I would imagine that would be interesting to see. So in their mind, it really is a working memory exercise, and I just have to memorize the string of letter names. Okay, so my next question then is related to spelling with the phonemes. And that is we had a conversation briefly about this. Yesterday, I think, what is typically called the invented spelling, I prefer to call it temporary spelling. And Lindsay, you had a lot of thoughts about that. Do you mind sharing those with us again? Yeah,

Lindsay Kemeny: 18:46

you know, I can see the students, I think it's an important process that students need to go through. They need to be able to sound out and phonetically spell words. And we shouldn't just skip that process. Because what I see is the students who have a phonemic awareness, weakness in my classroom do not want to do the work of sounding out and matching a grapheme or letter that they're writing with each sound. They just say, How do you spell this? How do you spell this? How do you spell this? And then, you know, you can see where teachers are the parents just spell the letters for them, then they're never strengthening those letter sound correspondences. Right. So I want my students to sound it out. And there's that great term, estimated spelling, who said that was at Gen Hasbrouck, who came up with that term. But I love that I was like, oh, I want to use that. It's it's, it's this here's your estimated spelling and then I can go back and oh, this was great. You represented all the sounds, but let me show you how we spell the sound a in this word, and then I can go back and correct it. But I do want students to go through that, you know, especially the younger they Are or the ones with the weak phonemic awareness, I want him to go through that process of that invented spelling. And I don't want them to never write because they're going to spell the word wrong.

Stacy Hurst: 20:11

Yeah, they have this perfectionistic idea that every word has to be correct. And I teaching first grade, I had the same experience with this. In fact, I, what I feel like the way I was taught to teach spelling, invented, spelling was encouraged which to a point, it should be just like you said, Lindsey, but I do prefer the term temporary spelling, because it highlights the relationship between spelling and phonics and phonemic awareness, we're not just teaching spelling in isolation, our words aren't just coming from, you know, the story we read this week, or, you know, holiday words, or something like that. We're tying it to phonics instruction. So an example that I frequently share with other teachers that came from my classroom. At the beginning of the year, during my writing instruction, we were having students, we focus on writing format, so we were just having them label things in the room. And we had a prize box. And so some of my students labeled that pris, box PRI Z box. And so, as a teacher, that really annoyed me, every time I looked at it, I felt like, oh, I don't know, that's, you know, so incorrect. But by the time we taught the Silent E rule, I was able to say, No, we have something in our room that's been labeled from the beginning of the year, what do we need to change? If I had to do that over again? I will, I don't know. What do you guys think? Because in my mind, I always had this internal struggle between there seeing incorrectly for a long time. And that's what led me to say, you know, when it's presented, when it's published, or it's whatever you want to call it, it needs to be correct. It could be edited. And I could have just said, you know, what, we're gonna learn about this later. But going to add an E right here, we'll talk about why. But I do feel like we should not model incorrect spelling and when we're talking about invented or temporary spelling, but we should model phoneme grapheme mapping, right? Thoughts.

Donell Pons: 22:10

Yeah, so I would totally agree with correcting and having a correct model for the students. And in fact, I've had some of my students with dyslexia, they say, I don't want to see anything, that's incorrect. Because they struggle so much between words that are of the same length that might have the same, you know, number of letters, but in different order. That's been a real struggle their whole lives. And so that to them is very important to have the correct representation in front of them. And I like both of you saying temporary and estimated, I think you said, for my adult students, they like to think of it this way, how much of the word can I get correct on my own now that I have the skills to be able to put sound to symbol, and typically, even for challenging words, they're getting 85 90% of the word spelled correctly. In their mind, they always thought I might be lucky if I'm getting five, or maybe 10%. And to see that over and over again, to see that your average is 85 to 90, but most of the time 100% on a lot of the words, that's a mind blower to the students to see that I can get that close by using the appropriate skills, right, of being able to map a sound to a symbol in order to spell a word. Yeah. And

Lindsay Kemeny: 23:23

I would say, if you had something labeled in the classroom like that, Stacy, then I definitely would have corrected that. So that they weren't looking at preaches the whole year. And getting that in their head. But you know, if it was a kindergarten student, and it was their writing their own writing, you know, was yeah, I, I don't think we need to correct every single little thing for a five year old, because that would be overwhelming.

Stacy Hurst: 23:49

Yeah, and kind of a motivation killer, right? Like, you know, point of writing is to get out what you're thinking and feeling. And we didn't want to interfere with that, at that stage. And I would, after that, I held my students accountable in their own writing for what I had taught. And it was much easier to do and much better for them. Motivation wise to to do that.

Narrator: 24:13

Get all the resources discussed during literacy talks, podcast episodes, and stay up to date about webinars and other special events from Reading Horizons, go to reading horizons.com/literacy talks, and subscribe to our podcast digest. So you're always in the know about everything literacy.

Donell Pons: 24:36

You know, and I'm going to add adult students, so let's not leave them out of this picture, too. So I have adult students that are attempting to write things they have not wanted to at all. And I say to them, keep some writing for you, that you're not going to go over you don't have to change the spelling, you're just getting thoughts on paper, and then the things that we do together sometimes if you want to share what you've written because you'd like to look at some spelling that's fantastic, but otherwise it doesn't need to happen that's been really liberating even for adults.

Stacy Hurst: 25:03

And you know, I think as teachers too, is where I think we kind of get in the mindset of the whole looking at the whole word. Correct, incorrect. And you already mentioned this Danelle, but if we look at the features, if we do a feature analysis, right, we can say, Oh, they're getting this aspect, correct the spelling, and they're connecting the correct grapheme. And so I just need to adjust my instruction for this pattern or whatever. But also, when we're talking about looking at their writing, too. I am a college professor now. So the writing that's in front of my eyes, I have students who are so engaged during classroom discussions, and their comments are so intelligent. And I do know that sometimes when I am reading their writing, it's rare that I have them turn in a handwritten thing, but sometimes I do. And in those moments, it really does, I hyperfocus on their incorrect spelling, and have to say, now I'm going to look at the meaning of what they're saying. So it does interfere in his spelling is that important, it interferes with what you're trying to communicate.

Donell Pons: 26:09

And Stacey, I would add in a college setting, because I've worked with college students, too, who have reading and writing difficulties, that when there's note taking that that is one of the highest skills we're asking students to do, right? They're listening to a lecture, whatever is being presented, they're having to synthesize that information, then they're having to come up with the correct words and produce that. All right, so that encoding is the highest level right there. And oftentimes, students who have been struggling, when the pressures off, they're not having to do all those other cognitively, you know, heavy demanding things, they could do the spelling probably just fine. So I always caution students who you know, I know your spelling, you feel fantastic about your spelling, typically, it's great. But let's look at your notes. And oftentimes, the spelling has become so poor that when they go back to use their notes, it's useless because they're having to transcribe basically their own handwriting. And at that case, then we talk about getting an accommodation, and boy, is that been helpful. So this is the other pieces that along the road for folks who've struggled even when you're getting help, and you're improving skills, and in certain settings, the skills are great. You also have to make sure you're supporting students, even at the Adult and Higher level, right, make sure you're supporting correctly.

Stacy Hurst: 27:20

And we know that spelling informs reading more than reading informs spelling. So we can't just assume that if we have a proficient reader that they're going to be a good speller, we have to teach spelling. And oftentimes in our phonics instruction, we address that through the instruction that talks about spelling patterns in English, but we're really focusing on having them recognize it, it is a different task, like you said, Donelle a higher level task to spell a word correctly. For example, there are some differences and I think in for example, in phonics instruction, most of us teach no matter what grade we teach igvh Right. My students called it the three letter eyes the long I sound, but when you go to spell a word, how do you know how to spell that? Is it I G H? Or is it I constantly E. And so in spelling, we teach them something like if you hear it, after I, then it is most of the time I gh t. If it's any other consonant sound after that long I, you know, it might be vowel consonant, E. So those are the kinds of things that really helped them. And then once they know that, they can recognize that in print, we can't assume it inversely that if they can read it in print, they can spell it accurately.

Lindsay Kemeny: 28:38

Well, in addition to knowing when to use a certain spelling, it's just spelling is harder than reading because you have to retrieve the information. So you know, reading you're just recognizing, oh, yes, I remember that we learned igvh spells i but then when you're writing and you've got to pull that information out of your head and remember, what were those three letters that spelled I? That's just another another level. So usually the spelling right it lags behind your reading ability a little bit and Louisa Moats in letters recommends that spelling bee taught along with your phonics instruction in kindergarten, first grade. And then beyond that the spelling instruction should lag behind a little bit because you're able to read so many more complex patterns than you're able to spell.

Stacy Hurst: 29:28

Which makes sense because the patterns we're focusing on in kindergarten first grade are very consistent, relatively speaking. Yeah, that probably also follows the research that there is a closer relationship between spelling ability and reading in earlier grades. In later grades that can be really discrepant, you can have a good reader who cannot spell to save their lives. And I bet any fourth and fifth grade teacher can relate to that. Entire don't know.

Donell Pons: 29:54

And, you know, another piece to mention to this. I mean, we've touched on so many things is that the mechanics of writing as well All right, so not only are we calling forward the information about the letters we're going to use or a combination of graphemes we're going to use, but also the mechanics of writing, right? So there's a lot of demand, particularly if a student has a challenge with any one of those pieces. Or if you have a challenge with all of those pieces, that is a huge cognitive demand to be able to do that.

Stacy Hurst: 30:21

Spelling really is the integrator, right? It it connects every aspect of written language that we're talking about on the phonemic level. On the vocabulary level, we haven't even talked about morphology and how that informs spelling too, especially when you think of words like two, two and two, the spelling absolutely informs the meaning. And that becomes really important to teach to our students. Well, I guess we could also emphasize here that traditionally, I know the spelling that I saw came from basals. And they were theme based words, right? And it was a vocabulary test, in some cases, not just a spelling test. And so let's segue into as teachers and professionals in this space, what should we be doing in our spelling, instruction and assessment to support that development?

Lindsay Kemeny: 31:15

I just listened to the presentation by Linda Farrell, where she's saying spelling tests are not vocabulary tests, which is what you're just touching on Stacey. And at first, I'm like, Well, yeah, what is she talking about? No one confuses that. And then I realized, yes, everyone does. Because what are the words we choose? For still remember my son coming home with this? It was like, around Christmas time coming down with his list from the teacher that's like, oh, for fun, we're gonna have this theme based spelling list. And I'm thinking for fun. And there's words you know, Hanukkah, Christmas, all these expenses really complex. But anyway, that's what we do is that the spelling tests, the words are connected, because they're all in the text that you're reading that week, and there's no connection between the phonics skills. So so often, and we need to move away from that and say, okay, you know, this week we're going to have, we're going to be reviewing AI and a y, and I'm going to teach my students that we're going to see AI in the middle of words, and a y is going to be at the end. And then they're going to apply that on Friday, when we have our test,

Stacy Hurst: 32:27

you know, and you're connecting all of those things that you've already talked about the phonemic awareness and the sound wall as to help them with that spelling, sound spelling? Well. I used to tell my teachers because I worked with struggling readers as a literacy coach even and they would come to me with their spelling lists. And I remember 1/4 grader, they were reading the book, black beauty as a class or in her reading group. So all of her spelling words, were words like beauty, and she was still working on silent E and adjacent vowel skills. And I really think it's safe for us to say we shouldn't be testing a student on a spelling word that they can't read. We need to make sure they can read the things we're asking them to spell. So it really does need to be associated with our phonics instruction in some way. And supported by that.

Lindsay Kemeny: 33:16

I remember as a joke for like April Fool's Day, I gave my students all these really hard arts. And it was so funny, because like, no one was questioning it at first. And I just was trying not to bust up laughing because they were all just, you know, I have taught them to segment the sounds and then write the sounds they hear. And they were just dutifully doing that. And finally, I got to the word on a Mata PA. Great word. And they all were like, what and I just started laughing. You know, but sometimes, I feel like the spelling lists that are assigned kind of feel like an April Fool's joke.

Stacy Hurst: 33:57

Okay, so that's one thing to do associate our spelling list. First of all, make sure that any word that we are testing them on, we've taught that pattern, and they should be able to recognize it in print. Yeah, so we're really just focusing on the structure that

Lindsay Kemeny: 34:12

don't depend on the parents. It's not their job to teach the students their spelling. It's,

Stacy Hurst: 34:18

yeah, that drill that happens at home, right, I did have a parent who drilled words incorrectly with their students. And then when the student came, you know, spelled them I could tell how the parent was spelling them. But let's talk about that too, because I think a very solid practice is to not send home that list of spelling words, but to send home the pattern and maybe some information for the parent or caregiver about that pattern. Like we just talked about with igvh. If you hear the sound after that, then you're usually going to spell it with the long eye with IG H. And then have them practice the pattern and very clearly communicate and I know I have used a spelling program that does this, communicate to the parents. It's not going to be your traditional spelling test the words that we're sending home and there are 20 or 30. So a student can't possibly memorize the whole list anyway. But the words that are going to be on the test are not on this list, but they follow the same pattern. So I think that's a good practice. But parents initially have some concerns about that. Why do you think that is?

Lindsay Kemeny: 35:29

You know, I was surprised because when I switched, I thought I would have pushback from parents, but I actually didn't like I brought one well, good, really cool with it. I think they were happy that the pressure wasn't on them. So I had heard that parents push back, but I didn't experience that at all.

Stacy Hurst: 35:47

Yeah, I think I did. But then once we explained to the parents, they were so okay with it. And many of them ended up saying, Oh, I wish I was taught spelling this way. So that Okay, so we've talked about what to do to support that at home. Um, what else did I know? Oh,

Donell Pons: 36:05

yeah. So I know, we're getting near the end to wrap up, because this could go on forever. But I'm just thinking of the adult students. And I think we've touched on some really important pieces that I want to reiterate. And that is a good structured literacy program. You are following systematically, and you're learning cumulatively, right, you're building on things that you're learning. And that is so important, because you can't just bolt on spelling and do spelling instruction really well, if you don't have all those other pieces of a good structured literacy program in place, then it will really feel like, oh, how do I teach this? This seems overwhelming, I don't know. But when you do have a good structured literacy program in place, it makes total sense. And then the spelling just naturally falls into, you know, being taught correctly going with the patterns that are being taught. And it just makes sense to be able to do it that way. So I think, for a lot of folks, if you haven't looked at structured literacy, if this is new to you, taking a good look at what that means and the basis for what this this is built on, then I think the spelling of if it sounds unusual to you, or it sounds different will make a lot more sense to you. Likewise, folks who already know these things, I'm sure they're just Yep, nodding their heads and saying that's how it works. And Lindsey, you had something to say to that? Well,

Lindsay Kemeny: 37:19

yeah, it just, I just think it's good to remember to have that space to practice and to come back to things. So we're not going to practice AI and a y this week, and then not touch it again for several months, right. And so whenever in my phonics lessons, I have that, you know, dictation portion to pull in previous concepts so that we can review. And that's just something I've tried to improve on, just last year, and then also, it's okay to go off. Like if you do your, you know, assessment on Friday, and you see that a lot of students didn't understand that concept. It's okay to do it again. And you might get off track a little bit of your schedule, but you know, it's something you need it, you know, it's just we need to be flexible with our instruction and just remembering to review previous taught concepts. Yeah, I'd

Stacy Hurst: 38:13

say another thing to remember is not to teach words in isolation, either or assess them that way. So when we're talking about spelling words, then on our tests, we should have been writing sentences that those words, as well, so they're seeing how they connect to all aspects of language. So we've talked about a lot of really important things today. I think we could talk more about this. Like, for example, we haven't even covered the schwa or things that ended up being challenging in spelling. But I do think Danelle, you kind of touched on it. And I think this would be just a general piece of advice that we could give to any teacher when they're teaching those tricky words. Some words that students need to know like days of the week, we look at days, like Wednesday, and we could teach our students to think wetness day when they're spelling it, and then know that we say it Wednesday, so we're even adding a syllable when we spell it, or when we're talking about the schwa. A really simple process that I like to use is we analyze the word which is helpful to make it sticky, right, we analyze it by syllable, we analyze each syllable by phoneme, that's pretty common practice. I hope that these days, but then looking at a word that has the schwa in it like pencil, and we could say something, I usually say this, how does it look like we say it, and then we would keep the stress on both syllables, pen SIL, how do we actually say at pencil, where's the schwa? And so our students are aware of that the schwa is not as big of a problem when they're reading because they have that set for variability Most students do that will kick in and they recognize the word and they use context to help them know the pronunciation. Once they've done some basic decoding, but when we're spelling that can be really tricky. And I think I'm really suggesting these things so teachers know that it is not crazy English is not crazy and we don't give our students just some defeating like messages, right.

Lindsay Kemeny: 40:18

And then morphology, you know, bringing that in as well because once you teach, you know, they can hear the word jumped. But then they realize, oh, this is past tense, right? And that's going to help them connect with that Edie and bringing in it in for you know, unusual spelling's because there's a lot of times there's a reason for that. And so when I teach how to spell the word one, like the number one, then connecting that with the word loan alone, once I mean that's really powerful to connect those and then understand why it's spelt like that. It's not just crazy.

Stacy Hurst: 40:58

Yeah, and other words like sign and signal to relating those. So I would like to mention a couple of resources for teachers. I've just been reading spelling for life by Lynn stone. It's the second edition. And this is a good way to emphasize what we've just been saying. She says all words are spelled the way they are, for a reason. Unfamiliar spellings only seem irregular. And then a few pages later should give seven major stories of exceptional words or words that are exceptional. That can be borrowed words, abbreviations, acronyms names, jargon old and or common like Colonel, we've used that example before, or slang. So anyway, the book spelling for life, I recommend that by Lynn stone, and then this is a new one, and I have been loving it beneath the surface of words. And it really puts a lot of good information in teachers hands and brains that will help inform your reading instruction. So beneath the surface of words by Sue skip betta Haglund Do either of you have other resources for teachers

Lindsay Kemeny: 42:05

uncovering the logic of English it's one of the first ones that I read, which is great. Yep, that's the one Donald's holding it up.

Stacy Hurst: 42:15

Yeah, that is a really good one. Danelle, any other resources that you can think of.

Donell Pons: 42:19

There are loads, but that is one that I like to use as well what Lindsey said. Yep.

Stacy Hurst: 42:23

Great. So in closing, I just want to ask a personal question. And that is, do you still have words you have trouble spelling? You know,

Lindsay Kemeny: 42:32

I always psychologist, psychiatrist, all those ones. I'm always like, Wait, P S. py. Oh, wait, what was what was one of the first two?

Stacy Hurst: 42:43

That's a good, that's a good example. Yeah, done now.

Donell Pons: 42:47

The more that I have the opportunity to teach others, I continue to learn. And that's the beauty of it that I tell my students all the time is, they always say I'll bet you know everything. And I'm learning all the time, which is fantastic. We can all learn, continue to learn.

Stacy Hurst: 43:01

Yeah, teaching and learning is not exclusive to the teacher or the learner. We're both right. Each student is a teacher and a teacher is a student. So yes, I would advise us to analyze those words that we struggle with, I used to have a hard time with the word comfortable. And I think that's because we pronounce it differently than it looks. But once I focused on the base word and what each of those syllables meant, it really helped me remember to spell it correctly. Okay, so lots of good tips. I think we can end by emphasizing how important spelling is to literacy instruction in general. But it really is the connector, right? So we can't teach it in isolation of all the other structures of our language, and lots of resources out there for teachers, and ways to support our students and we're all learning together at the same time. As ever, this is a topic that we could say so much more about. But thank you all for joining us. And please join us next time for literacy talks.

Narrator: 44:03

Thanks for listening to literacy talks, the podcast series for literacy leaders and champions everywhere. Literacy talks comes to you and your colleagues from Reading Horizons, we're reading momentum begins. Visit reading horizons.com/literacy talks often for resources, ideas and great literacy learning conversations. Subscribe to Our Podcast digest and you'll always be up to date on all things literacy. See you next time.