di: Looking for curriculum advice for my first grade grandson

Thu Mar 26 17:53:13 PDT 2020

RMIT Classification: Trusted

Well, Owen's fluency is at the 90th percentile for an end of grade 5 student (Hasbrouck & Tindal norms), so fluency doesn't present an issue. You haven't mentioned his reading comprehension, but if he's coping with the RM series, I presume he's OK in that domain too.

Obviously, there are other DI program areas such as maths, language, and writing you could address. However, you have emphasised your role as being for reading enhancement. So, another instructional area that also has an impact on reading is spelling. You could do the placement tests for Spelling Mastery.

How does spelling have an impact on reading?

“Spelling is often included as a part of multi-component interventions and improvements in spelling cannot be attributed to the spelling component only. A fine line exists between reading and spelling instruction and it is often difficult to separate the two (Ehri, 2000). In the future, it may be of interest to conduct component analyses to determine the separate and additive impact of spelling and reading or writing interventions on spelling, reading, and writing outcomes.” (p. 22)

Williams, K.J., Austin, C.R., & Vaughn, S. (2017). A synthesis of spelling interventions for secondary students with disabilities. The Journal of Special Education, 1-38.

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“Both decoding and spelling rely on knowledge of the grapho-phonemic patterns of the language (Robbins, Hosp, Hosp, & Flynn, 2010). A review of research found that integrating decoding and spelling instruction in the lower elementary grades led to significant gains in phonemic awareness, alphabetic decoding, word reading, fluency, and comprehension (Weiser & Mathes, 2011). Moreover, the authors believed the spelling instruction might have fostered closer attention to the details of words’ orthographic representations. This seems supported by the results of a longitudinal study of children from ages 8–9 to ages 12–13 in which independent contributions to reading comprehension were made by children’s ability to use larger graphophonic units and morphemes to decode words (Nunes, Bryant, & Barros, 2012).” (p. 636)

Reed, D.K., Petscher, Y., & Foorman, B.R. (2016). The contribution of vocabulary knowledge and spelling to the reading comprehension of adolescents who are and are not English language learners. Reading and Writing, 29, 633–657.

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“ … research has shown that learning to spell and learning to read rely on much of the same underlying knowledge — such as the relationships between letters and sounds — and, not surprisingly, that spelling instruction can be designed to help children better understand that key knowledge, resulting in better reading. Catherine Snow et al. summarize the real importance of spelling for reading as follows: “Spelling and reading build and rely on the same mental representation of a word. Knowing the spelling of a word makes the representation of it sturdy and accessible for fluent reading.” In fact, Ehri and Snowling found that the ability to read words “by sight” (i.e. automatically) rests on the ability to map letters and letter combinations to sounds. Because words are not very visually distinctive (for example, car, can, cane), it is impossible for children to memorize more than a few dozen words unless they have developed insights into how letters and sounds correspond. Learning to spell requires instruction and gradual integration of information about print, speech sounds, and meaning — these, in turn, support memory for whole words, which is used in both spelling and sight reading.”

Moats, L.C. (2005). How spelling supports reading. American Educator, Winter 2005/06, 12-43. Retrieved from http://www.readingrockets.org/article/how-spelling-supports-reading

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"Despite the importance of spelling for both writing and reading, there is considerable disagreement regarding how spelling skills are best acquired. During this and virtually all of the last century, some scholars have argued that spelling should not be directly or formally taught as such instruction is not effective or efficient. We conducted a comprehensive meta-analysis of experimental and quasi-experimental studies to address these claims. The corpus of 53 studies in this review included 6,037 students in kindergarten through 12th grade and yielded 58 effect sizes (ESs) that were used to answer eight research questions concerning the impact of formally teaching spelling on spelling, phonological awareness, reading, and writing performance. An average weighted ES was calculated for each question and the quality of included studies was systematically evaluated. Results provided strong and consistent support for teaching spelling, as it improved spelling performance when compared to no/unrelated instruction (ES = 0.54) or informal/incidental approaches to improving spelling performance (ES = 0.43). Increasing the amount of formal spelling instruction also proved beneficial (ES = 0.70). Gains in spelling were maintained over time (ES = 0.53) and generalized to spelling when writing (ES = 0.94). Improvements in phonological awareness (ES = 0.51) and reading skills (ES = 0.44) were also found. The positive outcomes associated with formal spelling instruction were generally consistent, regardless of students’ grade level or literacy skills" (p.1703).

Graham, S., & Santangelo, T. (2014). Does spelling instruction make students better spellers, readers, and writers? A meta-analytic review. Reading and Writing, 27(9), 1703-1743.

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“At both grade levels (3rd & 5th) there were high, significant correlations between spelling and reading variables, with spelling variables accounting for from 40% to 60% of the variance in oral reading measures and a smaller, but still significant percentage of the variance when standardized test scores were used as a control. These results confirm a strong relationship between spelling skill and oral reading ability, supporting the argument that a common body of conceptual word knowledge underlies both.”

Zutell, J., & Rasinski, T. (1989). Reading and spelling connections in third and fifth grade students. Reading Psychology, 10(2), 137 – 155.

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“Despite spelling and reading being “two sides of the same coin,” spelling is essentially more difficult than reading (Ehri, 2000<https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5502407/#R15>, p. 33). Spelling requires more precision in phoneme-grapheme or letter-sound knowledge than reading (Foorman & Francis, 1994<https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5502407/#R17>). In addition, reading entails decoding of graphemes into phonemes while spelling entails encoding the phonemes into graphemes (Carreker, 2011<https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5502407/#R9>). These are two different processes. Thus, readers may recognize a single sound or syllable that comprise multiple graphemes, but as spellers they may not be able to correctly reproduce from memory the multiple graphemes (and in the correct order) in writing (Ehri, 2000<https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5502407/#R15>). Hence, without the explicit and formal spelling instruction, which teaches children to physically write the sounds they hear either through finger spelling and/or writing with a pencil and the use of multisensory tools including letter tiles and Elkonin boxes; to use capitalization and punctuation; and to generalize patterns through the use of word study (e.g., -at family of words such as cat, mat, and sat; see Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton, & Johnson, 2008<https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5502407/#R4>; Carreker, 2011<https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5502407/#R9>; Graham & Santangelo, 2014<https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5502407/#R20>; Santoro et al., 2006<https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5502407/#R40>; Schlagal, 2013<https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5502407/#R41>; Uhry, 2011<https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5502407/#R52>; Weiser & Mathes, 2011<https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5502407/#R54>), beginning spellers may not be able to establish the awareness and memory of letter patterns or understand transcription skills necessary to become good spellers and writers. Spelling skills should therefore be explicitly taught (Carreker, 2011<https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5502407/#R9>; Moats, 2005/2006<https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5502407/#R28>; Treiman, 1998<https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5502407/#R48>).” (p. 228)

Lee, J.A.C., & Al Otaiba, S. (2017). End-of-kindergarten spelling outcomes: How can spelling error analysis data inform beginning reading instruction? Reading & Writing Quarterly, 33(3), 226–238.

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“Most of the work on generalisation between reading and spelling has been conducted using phonics-based approaches where the emphasis is on which letters represent which sounds (and vice versa). In our own studies we have investigated the generalisation of sound-letter-correspondences from spelling to reading. Two students (KM: Kohnen, Nickels, Brunsdon & Coltheart [2008a]; and RFL: Kohnen, Nickels, & Coltheart [in press]) received training in sound-letter mappings. While there was no explicit focus on reading, both KM and RFL not only improved in spelling but also made dramatic improvements in reading the trained phonics rules (see Figures 1 and 2).

A similar example is a study by O’Connor and Jenkins (1995), who compared generalisation for two small groups of poor readers/spellers who received either intensive reading instruction or intensive spelling instruction in addition to their regular reading and spelling instruction. The spelling condition consisted of saying the sounds in an orally presented word (e.g., n-o-t) and then writing the letters or using magnetic letters to spell the training words. In the reading condition, children sounded out every letter in a word. After training both groups showed an overall increase in their developmental spelling scores, that is, their attempts at spelling the test words (even though not necessarily correct) were rendered closer to the target spelling.

Despite some improvements for the reading group, O’Connor and Jenkins (1995) found that students who had received spelling instruction showed significantly better post-test scores in spelling and reading tasks than the group of students who had received the reading-focused instruction. After training, the spelling group outperformed the reading group on spelling of the words used during training. But, surprisingly, the spelling group were also better at reading these trained words than the reading group whose training had been focused on reading the words! Hence, it seems that when teaching phonics, both reading instruction and spelling instruction can lead to generalisation to the other modality. However, it seems that there is greater benefit from using spelling instruction than reading instruction when teaching phonics to poor readers/spellers.”(p.117-8)

Kohnen, S., Nickels, L., & Coltheart, M. (2010). Skill generalisation in teaching spelling to children with learning difficulties. Australian Journal of Learning Difficulties, 15(2), 115-129.

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“Vocabulary learning is central to reading ability and academic achievement. Vocabulary researchers and educators have viewed its essence as a process of associating the pronunciations and meanings of words in memory, and they have paid little attention to the contribution that spellings might make to vocabulary learning. We review theory and evidence showing that this is a serious oversight. Once children become literate, they retain the spellings of words bonded to their pronunciations and meanings in memory. Several studies show that spellings of words are retained in memory and influence phonemic and syllabic segmentation of words, they enhance memory for pseudowords, and they impact the detection of oral rhyming words. Two studies show that exposing second and fifth graders to the spellings of new vocabulary words enhances their memory for pronunciations and meanings of the words. Students with better developed orthographic knowledge benefit more from spellings in learning vocabulary words than students with weaker knowledge. In fact, the detection of a Matthew effect suggests that differences in orthographic knowledge create a difference in vocabulary size that grows increasingly large over time. Findings carry implications for enhancing vocabulary learning and instruction. Teachers need to show the spellings of new vocabulary words when they discuss their meanings. Students need to stop and pronounce unfamiliar words rather than skip them during independent reading. Researchers need to incorporate orthography into their theories explaining vocabulary acquisition, specifically phonological working memory theories, and they need to attend to its influence in studies they conduct” (p. 389).

Ehri, L.C., & Rosenthal, J. (2007). Spellings of words: A neglected facilitator of vocabulary learning. In Dorit Aram& Ofra Korat (Eds.) Literacy development and enhancement across orthographies and cultures pp.137-152.

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“Spelling and writing are incorporated in some reading interventions because the skills associated with successful reading—such as phonological knowledge, text structure knowledge, and reasoning—also play a role in spelling and writing (Abbott & Berninger, 1993; Graham, Harris, & Chorzempa, 2002; Wanzek et al., 2006) (p.166).

Wanzek, J., Vaughn, S., Scammacca, N.K., Metz, K., Murray, C.S., Roberts, G., & Danielson, L. (2013). Extensive reading interventions for students with reading difficulties after Grade 3. Review of Educational Research 8(2), 163-195.

Regards,

Kerry

Dr Kerry Hempenstall,

Senior Industry Fellow,

School of Education,

RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia.

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From: di-bounces at lists.uoregon.edu <di-bounces at lists.uoregon.edu> on behalf of Ronda Wallace <wallace.rondaopal at gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, March 26, 2020 2:18 PM
To: di at lists.uoregon.edu <di at lists.uoregon.edu>
Subject: di: Looking for curriculum advice for my first grade grandson

Greetings,

I am teaching my two grandsons, ages 7 and 5 (first grade and pre-k). My 5 year old grandson is in RM fast cycle, lesson 121 (the Sid stories... IMHO the most difficult and frustrating in the entire book!). Because of the coronavirus we are actually doing two reading lessons and two math lessons a day for the months of March and April. At this rate we will probably be able to get into RMIII before the end of the year.  (Providing the silent “e” doesn’t ‘break his brain’ (his common lament the last couple of days!)   My aim is to have two strong readers because I had difficulties when I was young.

My 1st grade grandson will finish Reading Mastery  Plus4 tomorrow. I have the materials for RM Plus 5 and plan to began that grade level immediately.  Owen actually reads without error at 195wpm. I think he could pretty easily skip to RM6, but I don’t want him to miss the content in RM5.

So here’s the question: at this rate Owen will be finished with RM6 sometime in third grade. What then?  Do you have any suggestions for curriculum after the Reading Mastery series?  I would like to keep teaching them, as long as I am able (and they are willing!😂)

Thank you for any suggestions you can give. I feel so comfortable with Direct Instruction. I would love to continue using this method if there is anything out there.

Best,
Ronda Wallace

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