This weekend I am at ASD in Doha, Qatar at the Real Spelling Workshop presented by Pete Bowers. The title of the workshop is Teaching How the Written Word Works. The emphasis is on helping teachers see the instructional benefits to a teacher-led inquiry approach, what Pete calls: “Structured Word Inquiry”.
I first heard about Pete at NESA last year when I was attending the literacy coach meetings in Cairo. My colleagues from around the world were raving about his presentation (he is fun and makes learning this seem possible) and the inquiry systems provided to teachers through the Real Spelling toolkit (a series of books and DVDs Pete uses which were written by Melvin Ramsden, but are not a program!).
After this weekend work, this is what I’m thinking and believing…
BIG IDEAS
- The English spelling system makes sense.
- Spelling is about meaning.
- Kids become strong spellers (language users) if we teach them systems and strategies that last. (Rote memorization and learning spelling for tests on Friday don’t last!)
- There are far fewer “irregularities” or rule breakers than I previously thought or taught.
- We should not be teaching spelling based on sound. It doesn’t work and causes confusion for our learners, which can only be overcome through rote memorization.
- Sayings such as “When two vowels go walking the first one does the talking.” aren’t accurate enough to spend time learning and compound confusion when students move to trying to spell accurately in their writing.
- We need to move to teaching spelling through a systematic study of the structure (the morphemes- prefixes, bases, suffixes) and the meaning of words (the origins- clues to both spelling and meaning) at all grade levels.
What now? The work Pete has shown me, especially the tools: the word matrix and the word sums, will be vital instructional strategies for my school to imbed into our daily word study work with students at all grade levels. Why? Because their use will motivate our teachers and our kids and will actually teach students about words: how to spell them, where they come from and what they mean. Furthermore, now that I know these tools exist (and once the teachers at my school do too) it would be wrong not to use them. Our students deserve to learn how to use these tools and deserve to have access to them. Period.
The How? and the When? we use these strategies are something I plan to begin working through with our word study reps at each grade level this year. In my experience, inquiry—structure=chaos. So we won’t be cannonballing into the inquiry pool. Rather I hope to dive in on one side and come out on the other. The stroke selected and number of inquiry laps we do, will be dictated by the grade level and developmental needs of our kids.
Have a look at these websites to get insight into this system (it is not a program!) of structured word inquiry:
www.realspelling.com
www.wordworkskingston.com
*Also- check out clips of teachers using the Real Spelling method on You Tube.
