Wednesday, 10 April 2013

Joy Allcock Spelling


Attending an inspiring four hour workshop from Joy has really refocused and motivated my spelling programme. Starting off with a test, our group certainly had some head scratching moments debating digraphs, blends, phonology orthography morphology, spelling rules and conventions, and this certainly catalysed focused engagement for the rest of the afternoon!

Joy stressed how important it was for us as teachers, to regularly look at our own skills in recognising how words sound and to practise digraph analysis of words as a quick excerise in team meetings.

Another aspect covered, was how children perceive words –Chinese learners who are visual and can tell if a word looks ‘right’ and Phoenician spellers who spell from sounds (e.g. The Won I'd Doe c.f. The One-Eyed Doe). It is the Phoenician learner who is of concern. Her description of these learners rang bells for me and I could now see why some of my class produced words that defied interpretation and why some children could not copy accurately.

The time was packed full of perceptive understanding of how learners learn – or don’t. I am so glad I have a record of this and may well blog all my notes –if I have time.

The first thing I have done is to conduct the Topic Assessment 1 test to ascertain groupings, strengths and weaknesses. I will administer the other tests once I isolate the ‘targets’ to further refine needs and grouping. I am interested in pseudowords aspect as it will pinpoint those students who cannot analyse sounds in words and translate them into appropriate letters and letter clusters.

I will also be using the vowel phonogram test to identify significant gaps in knowledge of sound-letter spelling patterns (SUS p62). My next step from this test will be to administer Topic assessments 2 and 3  p75 (SUS)

I hope to keep adding to this post as a means of recording how I have implemented this programme and the difference it has made.

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