S3 E19 - How To Make Sure That Your Spelling Instruction Is Explicit

The very fact that you're listening to this podcast means that you want to do a great job for kids . You're on the bus and you are prepared to take action to ensure that all students leave Primary School reading and writing . It's terrific and necessary that we strive for better , but remember that you have cognitive load too .

Focused first on what matters most and on making sure that at-risk students, and those with additional needs, are prioritised , and all will be well in time . Success is built in a series of small , impactful and sustainable steps , not in overturning everything in one day and making your team overwhelmed .

Every small adjustment you make to move practice closer to explicit teaching is a real gift to your students . In today's episode of the podcast , I'd like to talk about what it looks like to make spelling instruction explicit .

I've addressed spelling instruction here on the podcast before and have provided links to those episodes in the show notes on our website , but today I'd like to specifically discuss markers or indicators that we can use to evaluate spelling instruction , to make sure that it is truly explicit and serving the largest number of students possible .

When considering spelling instruction , there are two specific areas to explore . There's the what and the how . When it comes to what we are teaching, we can think of this in a couple of ways . The first of these centers on knowledge . There are three types of knowledge .

There's declarative knowledge , which is the stuff we know , the procedural knowledge , what we can do, and the third element of knowledge is knowing what to do when . This conditional knowledge is the difference between knowing that there are several ways to spell the phoneme k , but that a "ck is used after a single short vowel .

Knowing that you can spell k with a "c , a k with the diagraphs ck , "qu and CH is declarative knowledge . Being able to write words with these patterns is procedural knowledge: we can do it . Knowing that the "CK comes after a single short vowel is conditional knowledge: knowing when to do what .

Students need all three types of knowledge to be successful spellers . So much spelling instruction has focused on procedural knowledge for such a long time . We gave children activities such as look, say , cover, write , check and rainbow writing , but didn't actively build their knowledge of how words work .

So that's the first thing to consider in evaluating spelling practice in your school: how are you building declarative knowledge when it comes to words ?

If students are going to develop conditional knowledge about using the grapheme "CK , they need to know what a single short vowel is , not just have said a-e-i-o-u a few times in the classroom , but really know it when asked , unassisted . Remember , doing and knowing are two different things . And this brings us to the sticky question of rules .

And I say sticky not because they're hard to learn and use , but because there are many , many opinions about their place in instruction . To me , it's common sense to come to the conclusion that students are helped when they know how words work .

Yes , there are the arguments about rules being ineffective because there are too many exceptions , but I think I might have to cover that in a different episode . The short version is that 96% of English spelling is logical when we understand the layers of spelling knowledge , and many spelling features that we might think of as exceptions are actually perfectly logical .

Rules , or , more accurately , generalisations or conventions , do have a place . They help students understand how and why of words , but we don't want to have an approach to spelling that focuses on them exclusively . That would be pretty boring and actually not that effective . There needs to be , dare I say it , balance in the areas of instruction we focus on .

This brings me to the next point , about the kinds of knowledge we need to help our students develop , and there are three specific areas of word knowledge: phonics , orthography and morphology . There are interconnections between all three of these , but they are three broad categories that we can think about .

When we read and spell , we use knowledge of all of these to help us . That's the crux of a multi-linguistic approach to reading and spelling . It makes perfect sense to me that we draw knowledge of all of this to understand words and that we shouldn't focus on just one exclusively .

So this is the next point of reflection when it comes to spelling instruction in schools , are we teaching students about all of these areas in an appropriate time and appropriate way ? Are we teaching phonics, orthography and morphology as we need to be ? The question then becomes, when is it appropriate to teach what ? There are two competing perspectives on this .

One is Stage Theory that says students need to develop proficiency in one area of word knowledge before moving on . In this hierarchical approach , students would need to show themselves to be proficient with phonics before moving on to learning about spelling rules .

The other theory is called Repertoire or Wave Theory , which identifies broader overlapping phases through which a child focuses on learning . And this learning is aligned to the information they are most likely to use to engage with reading and spelling words at this stage of development .

Repertoire Theory says that a child will access knowledge about how to spell a word based on how much knowledge they have and which area of knowledge is predominantly represented or important in a particular word . You'll find the references about all of this in the show notes .

Those supporting Stage Theory and Repertoire Theory generally agree on what needs to be taught , but differ in their perspective on how much and when . This brings me to the how of thinking about spelling instruction .

For this we can draw on several theories and sources of information , including Cognitive Load Theory , Information Processing Theory , evidence about explicit teaching , direct evidence from instructional research and what we see in how our students respond to instruction .

Now , anecdotes are not robust evidence , to be sure , but I do think that there is a place for us to consider the response of our students to instruction, and use data and student growth indicators to evaluate our practices and approaches . We might think we're using a strong , evidence-informed approach to instruction , but if our students can't spell , it's not working .

If our students are reaching a certain point in their literacy development and stalling , questions need to be asked . It might not be the what of the teaching that needs addressing, it might be an aspect of the how that needs adjusting .

To dive a little deeper into that , have a listen to episode eight of season two of the podcast called Why Isn't my Tier One Instruction Working , and you may find some helpful information there . So let's get back to our discussion of the method of spelling instruction and what we can reflect on here .

The first thing I'd like to ask you to think about is the difference between explicit and intentional teaching .

And there are a lot of claims about explicit teaching, every man and his dog is claiming that their approach is evidence-based and explicit , but we have to know what that really means , because intentional teaching and explicit teaching are not necessarily the same thing , even though many people use those terms interchangeably .

Intentional teaching means that we have the goal of students learning something . It's entirely possible to be intentional but not be explicit . Explicit instruction means that we are applying Rosenshine's Principles , something that we do in all aspects of the

resources and programs that we create . Strong , explicit instruction breaks content down into small chunks . It introduces them directly , as in, it , doesn't ask students to discover or find the learning themselves .

If your approach to spelling instruction begins with students examining passages , sentences or whole words , or even begins with the reading of a picture book , it's not explicit , it's analytical .

Sure , there is the intention to teach a certain grapheme , rule or morpheme , but you're working from larger units to smaller , not just telling the student what they need to know and directing their attention to what they need to think about . My reasoning here , and why I'm saying this , is related to what we know about attention and human memory .

That is , we can focus on one new thing at a time . If we're asking students to examine a passage to locate all of the words that contain A , or introducing four ways to spell the sound A at a time , how many new things are we actually asking students to think about ? It's not one , it's many more than that .

And right there , we are setting many students up to fail . We're asking them to sift through the information we're giving them to find the learning . Yes , there will be students who are just fine with such instruction and have done okay with an analytical approach .

I'm not here to tell you that an analytical approach to spelling doesn't work , but there are many students who did just fine with a sight word program and leveled text from the first week of the Foundation year . That's not the point .

The point is that there are far too many students who go through the motions of an analytical , context-embedded approach to instruction , not actually learning what they need to . And if you don't believe me , look at your students and your data . These students reach year six and into secondary school still unsure about basic spelling .

Research is a bit spotty on whether analytic or explicit and synthetic approaches work best for instruction . Explicit approaches break things down into small units and teach students to put them together to read and spell words . These approaches have been shown to be more effective and there are studies that show that they are significantly more effective .

But equally , there are studies to show that there's not much difference between the two approaches , even though the explicit approach nudges ahead of the analytic . So here I come back to Cognitive Load Theory , Information Processing Theory and my own experience , and to be reasonable and fair, I'm not a researcher , I'm not pretending to be .

But I can comment on my own experience, and what I've seen in the schools I've worked in , the schools I now work with and the many , many , many students I have tutored to help them learn to read and spell when the classroom approaches have failed them .

When I ask teachers who is being served in classrooms where an analytical approach is being used , they'll tell me it's the top kids , the ones who learn reasonably easily . The strugglers get left behind , and that's the reason for this episode . We're aiming for instruction for all , not just some , not just most .

And if you're worried that all this explicit instruction might hurt your high flyers , have a listen to last week's episode . The goal of explicit teaching is that tier one instruction is as inclusive and robust as humanly possible . Practice that does not support our at-risk students has no place in our schools .

This idea is at the heart of every resource and program we create . This is at the heart of what equitable practice is all about . So when it comes to the how of spelling instruction , we need to establish strong conceptual understanding and declarative knowledge right from the start .

Now I can almost hear some listeners asking, "but Jocelyn , you've included locating words with target morphemes from a passage in your work . "You suggest that teachers provide instruction in morphology , phonics and orthography together . Why are you saying this ? " And that's true .

I have included a task where students read a passage and find words in the morphology lessons inside The Resource Room and in our new program , spelling Success in Action 2 , that teaches about prefixes and suffixes . The difference is that this activity comes after concepts have been explicitly introduced and practiced .

Students have been shown the morpheme , they know how to spell it , they've been told what it means and had time to review that knowledge . They have read words , broken them up into prefixes , bases and suffixes .

They have had at least two sessions of explicit teacher-led instruction at word and sentence level , first , to make sure that they have strong conceptual understandings . It's not until that is established that students are given a passage to read and work with .

And in Spelling Success in Action 2 , the level of complexity of those passages is adjusted to suit the needs of students , with careful thought given to ways students can put their new learning to work .

Oh , and , students who need an extra hand get it through decoding support , larger text , more space between lines and the target words being underlined to optimise the intrinsic load of the task . So yes to context embedded work , but only after concepts have been established in practice .

Yes , I advocate for the teaching of orthography and morphology in the early years alongside phonics , but not all at once . In consideration of Cognitive Load Theory , Information Processing Theory and the Repertoire Theory , the ratios of these three areas alter over time .

The main focus in the early years is phonics , with some morphology layered in, to support students to read and spell multi-morphemic words . This doesn't happen , though , until students can blend and segment confidently .

Orthographic conventions are introduced alongside phonics , such as learning that we don't use "AI at the end of a word , because English words don't end in I , but the main focus is on learning how to use this grapheme to read and spell words . The convention is then revisited in year two and three to consolidate it .

We don't bring it all in at once and kind of throw it at the kids . One of the reasons is that we need to provide targeted , specific opportunity for consolidation and some intensive review . This just can't happen when we introduce way too many new elements at a time .

Rosenshine's Principles include the need to break learning down into small parts and teach them until mastery before adding new knowledge . Asking students to learn about a new phoneme , a new morpheme and a new orthographic convention all at once is a recipe for overwhelm for many students .

This brings me to another issue relating to attention that I feel is important to discuss , and that is how we're directing student attention and guiding them through the learning process . Preparing some resources and sending students off to do activities is not providing sufficient guidance for strong student learning .

It's also incredibly inefficient in terms of time and learning return on investment .

When we ask students to inquire for themselves or locate words in a passage and discover patterns , we're pretty much guaranteeing that a percentage of students are developing misconceptions or are only partly developing conceptual understandings , and when this happens, well , it's a massive missed opportunity for strong learning . I want to share a scenario with you .

You bought a new house or you're in a new classroom and you need to turn the light on for the first time . You approach the panel of four switches not knowing which one of them is going to turn on the light .

So you have a stab and you pick one and you go for it and you turn the lights on , and you may have had to turn three or four switches on to get there , but you got there and you know tickety-boo , that's okay , success criteria achieved: the lights are on .

Except that eight years later , you're still not quite sure which light switch turns on which light and when we introduce too many concepts and we ask kids to figure it out , this is what we're doing to many of them . We're creating a light switch situation .

So what I'd like you to do is think about how can you reduce or eliminate the light switch situation for your students ? So what can we do if we discover that there are elements of our spelling instruction that need to be tweaked ? Well , tweak them . I'm not saying throw out what you've got , but think about the elements of instruction, from this perspective .

Let's look at a breakdown of the elements of instruction that are included in a systematic , explicit approach to instruction that really responds to what we know about explicit teaching . Firstly , make sure that there is only one main learning focus at a time , not per day , but we're learning one thing , and once we start to get that , then we can move on .

Ensure that students have the opportunity to both read and spell at word and sentence level in teacher-led lessons . Provide opportunity for students to apply new learning in the context of meaningful texts and passages, so that can be decodables in the early years or whatever's appropriate after that , after explicit introduction and practice .

When introducing a new concept , adopt a direct , explicit approach that involves you just telling students what they're learning . Show them what they're learning , model how to use it, check that they've understood what you've taught by asking them to provide a response , and every student needs to respond , not just the ones with their hands up .

We're looking for full participation in adult-led instruction as a must . Number five provide many opportunities to review and practice newly learned concepts and content for longer than you might think is necessary . Six, be clear on what content is most appropriate for what stages of learning to read and spell .

Begin with phonics , gently layering in inflectional morphemes and common spelling conventions once students are finding their feet with decoding and encoding . Then transition out of phonics once the most common grapheme- phoneme correspondences have been learned , with an increasing focus on orthographic conventions and the most common derivational morphemes .

Finally , move to a focus on other derivational morphemes and Latin bases in upper

primary and early secondary school . Teaching spelling in an explicit and impactful way is not about having the perfect program , but about knowing about the three areas of knowledge that we draw on when we read and spell words . We then need to align our teaching with an explicit approach that provides the most direct path to learning for our students .

Analytic , discovery and inquiry approaches to teaching students about critical patterns in written language simply leave too much to chance , and I think we have a responsibility to make sure that our tier one instruction is robust , inclusive and explicit , so that all children learn exactly what they need to right there in the classroom .

I wish you a lovely week ahead , lots of food for thought today , lots of questions , lots of discussions , I'm sure , but until next time , bye .