Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter

CAT Tracks for February 15, 2007 KAN'T SPEL KAT

From The Courier-Journal...

Don't corekt my spelling

Some Oldham elementaries drop word tests as part of focus on writing

By Daarel Burnette II
The Courier-Journal

"I lik sno becuz I lik to fro snobls," kindergartner Connor Callahan wrote during a recent assignment at Oldham County's Harmony Elementary.

"Good job," instructional coordinator Roz Poole told the 6-year-old.

At Harmony Elementary, students through third grade aren't told that "throw" is spelled "t-h-r-o-w" and "snowball" is "s-n-o-w-b-a-l-l."

The school has thrown away its spelling tests and spelling books, and it's not the only one.

Within the past five years, four of the district's nine elementary schools have ditched traditional spelling tests.

Administrators say it's a better approach to encourage writing than nagging children about misspelled words and teaching students to memorize words they soon forget.

"I'd give them a list on Monday and they'd spell them correctly on Friday for the test," Deputy Superintendent Charleen McAuliffe said of the spelling tests she used to teach elementary children. "Then, when I'd ask them to write something, they'd spell the exact same word wrong."

Administrators say the inventive tactics are already paying off.

"I feel that our kids are paying more attention to spelling and spelling better when they write on their own," Poole said.

But a growing number of Oldham County parents aren't sold on the nontraditional spelling methods, accusing schools of coddling students and abandoning the fundamentals.

Some parents, like Joy Abel, have transferred their children to schools that still use spelling tests.

"People judge how smart you are by how you spell," Abel said. "It can carry with them all the way into their professional career."

Poor retention

Inventive spelling got its start nationally in schools in the '80s, teaching children the makeup of a word instead of having them memorize random lists of words.

Oldham County began changing the way it taught spelling in the early 1990s, when teachers found that students weren't retaining the words they learned. Schools began aligning their spelling assignments with their writing curriculum.

But it wasn't until recent years that schools began eradicating spelling tests. And they are still in the minority.

Administrators in Jefferson and Bullitt counties in Kentucky and Floyd and Clark counties in Indiana said they still give spelling tests.

The decision to forgo tests and spelling drills at some Oldham schools is even more unusual, given the national emphasis on testing, education experts say.

With pressure to meet the federal No Child Left Behind Act's reading and math goals, many schools have switched back to spelling tests, said Sandra Wilde, an education professor at Portland (Ore.) State University and the author of "You Kan Red This!: Spelling and Punctuation for Whole Language Classrooms, K-6."

"When there's testing of writing, usually spelling is part of that, and it makes teachers say, 'Oh, gee, we have to give more attention to spelling, get kids to get the words right,' " she said. "Some of them, for lack of having other ideas, figure that means we should go back to some kind of more traditional form of teaching spelling, such as memorizing words."

The problem, Wilde says, is that constant testing teaches elementary-aged children to stick to the words they know, rather than risk spelling a word wrong.

"When kids write with inventive spelling, they write with anything they want to say," she said.

But banking on reading and writing to teach spelling is a recipe for poor spellers, said Rebecca Treiman, a professor of psychology at Washington University in St. Louis.

"Without tests, the teachers wouldn't pay as much attention to teaching it and children wouldn't pay as much time to learn it," said Treiman, who wrote "Beginning to Spell: a study of first-grade children."

That's part of the thinking at Liberty Elementary in Oldham County, where most teachers still using spelling tests.

First-grade teacher Debbie Raible gives her students a list of five to 10 words per week, testing them on words with similarities, such as "graph," "phase" and "phone," along with words they use regularly in their classes.

"We don't put emphasis or pressure, but we do want to emphasize that good spelling makes for good skills," Raible said.

Mistrust of the new

Oldham County administrators say they understand that ditching spelling tests can make parents uneasy. Schools hold workshops for parents at the beginning of the year explaining what they do to replace spelling tests.

"We all know how it was when we went to school," Poole said. "It's always scary when education changes. It's hard to trust that the new way is going to get results."

Instead of spelling tests, Harmony, Goshen, Crestwood and Buckner elementaries say they use writing assignments to assess student progress.

"The only time you use spelling is when you write," McAuliffe said.

Most Oldham classrooms have word walls that organize words into families. Words like "spent," "spank," "spark" and "spill" are categorized under the sound "sp," for example.

During a recent class at Harmony, students in Kasey Steinbock's first-grade class had a lesson on "sp," "st," "sc" and "sm" word blends. Afterward, students took out their composition books and organized words with those sounds into a chart.

They then searched the classroom for similar words.

"We want them to use their environment to learn to spell," Poole said. "I'd rather they spend their time reading and writing than studying for a spelling test."

Other Oldham schools are considering following suit.

Kenwood Station still gives weekly spelling tests, but its literacy coach, Donna Carden, said it is seriously considering getting rid of them. Carden said she's convinced that spelling tests are "a waste of time."

"We're looking at ways for teachers to be more innovative with teaching spelling," she said. "We just have to get parents on our side now."