7.5 Spelling that Sticks

Shannon and Mary welcome @MindfulTeacherRachel back to the podcast to discuss strategies for helping their students strengthen spelling skills.     They talk about the stability of English spelling and the meaning-based reasons for a word's spelling, beyond sound-symbol connections.    Listeners will know what to look for in students' spelling errors and accuracies and walk away with fresh ideas for spelling instruction.  

RESOURCES MENTIONED DURING THE EPISODE:

1. Our Etymology episode with Rachel
2. our Schwa episode with Rachel
3. Morrison-McCall Spelling Scale
4. spelling error analysis sheets from Rachel
5. Uncovering the Logic of English by Denise Eide *Amazon affiliate link*
6. Spelling for Life by Lyn Stone *Amazon affiliate link*
7. How to Teach Spelling by Laura Toby Rudginsky and Elizabeth C. Haskell *Amazon affiliate link*
8. Dyslexia and Spelling by Kelli Sandman-Hurley *Amazon affiliate link*
9. And Sometimes Y by Rachel
10. Short Vowel Proctors by Rachel
11. Schwa in 1st Grade by Rachel
12. Rachel on IG
13. Rachel on Tiktok
14. Explode the Code    
15. Words Their Way Spelling Inventory
16. Spelling Choice Tests
17. Sound Mounds (the Eppich Classroom)
18. Scribal O

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• Free Rubrics Guide created by us
• Finding Good Books Guide created by us
• Information about our Patreon membership

Transcript

7.5 Spelling That Sticks with MindfulTeacherRachel 

Shannon Betts: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Reading Teacher's Lounge, where you can learn on the go by eavesdropping on experienced reading teachers, chatting about best practices that have helped their students grow. Mary and I, along with expert guests, share what we wish we'd studied in college, what we've discovered works with the students we teach, and what we're continuing to learn from the science of reading. 

Mary Saghafi: Learning to read is hard. And sometimes teaching a child how to read feels even more challenging. 

Shannon Betts: The Reading Teacher's Lounge is here to help you navigate the right choices for your readers. Come join the conversation. 

Welcome to the Reading Teacher's Lounge. Mary and I are here today with our first time, third returning guest. So [00:01:00] it's not the first time she's been on, it's the third time she's been on and she's the first guest to ever come back. For three episodes. So welcome back mindful teacher. Rachel. Hello. 

Rachel: I am so happy to be asked back. 

Shannon Betts: We love, we love you and we love that you're, you know, a local Atlanta friend as well. So what have you been up to? We had you on last year kind of about a year ago. We were talking about etymology. So what have you been up to in the last year? 

Rachel: Well, I finished the last school year strong, and during that time I got engaged and we bought a house, so some big life changes. 

Shannon Betts: Congrats, congrats. 

Mary Saghafi: Congratulations, 

Rachel: yay. Also, I released two new books. One is called V is for Volcano, J is for Jelly, which is about the Four letters that can't come at the end of English words, and also touches on etymology, which was perfect for the last episode. And silent E goes to work, which talks [00:02:00] about all the different jobs of silent E, more than just being magic E and making a vowel long. 

And I have just started the new school year, still, In the same grade. So that's really fun to kind of learn and improve every year in first grade, and we're about a month in and I was just sharing that my group is just really, really sweet this year, especially from a social emotional and an executive functioning standpoint. 

So it's been a really exciting year so far. Oh my goodness, I'm so excited about those new titles of books you read because they're related to our topic today. Yes, which is spelling. And I, to prepare for this episode, I, I don't know a lot about spelling, I'll be honest. And I don't, I cringe when I think about some of the ways I've done spelling over the course of my 20 plus year career. 

Shannon Betts: But I learned a lot preparing for this episode. Specifically, I read Spelling and Dyslexia by Kelly [00:03:00] Sandman Hurley, Uncovering the Logic of English by Denise D. Eid, hopefully I'm saying her name right, how to teach spelling. And my favorite of the four is Spelling for Life by Lynn Stone. And I want to start this discussion by a quote that just stopped me in the tracks when I read it in Spelling for Life by Lynn Stone. 

And she says it early on on page six in the book. She says, children, don't misspell words on purpose. And the second I read that, I mean, I put down my book, put down my little notebook that I was taking notes on, put down my pen, and I just stared at the wall for a while because I just, and I kind of went back through like all the different students I'd ever taught and the writing I had analyzed and all the spelling tests that I'd given and the spelling I'd seen over the years, and I realized that that is 100% true. 

Like if a student knows how to spell a word, they're gonna spell it correctly. like, and so they're not like, Hmm, I just don't feel like spelling this word right this [00:04:00] time. I'll just make, make a mistake this time. It, it's like they either know it or they don't. And I thought that was huge because it, I think that illustrates that the problem isn't with the students, the problem is with the instruction. 

Rachel: Absolutely. 

Mary Saghafi: We'll see. 

Rachel: With that quote. Thinking about it, I feel like. The reason children spell words wrong are, I think, one of three reasons. One is you literally haven't taught them that at all and are just kind of expecting them to know it, even though you haven't taught it to them. And I think we see a lot of that in, like, sight word memorization curriculums, where it's like, well, how don't you know the word there? 

Like, you've been reading that since kindergarten. And it's like, well, but they've just memorized it visually and there's no sound correspondence, so it's kind of. loose and jumbled in their brain. The second thing is you haven't taught it explicitly enough or like you haven't covered the extra nuances of like why there is [00:05:00] some etymological piece there. 

Or third, there's some sort of like, Executive functioning, like working memory thing that you need to work on with them. That's kind of outside of the scope of them necessarily knowing the rule, but like being able to apply the rule with all of the layers of physically forming the letters, getting the letters from there or the sounds from their brain into the letters, into the spelling rules, into the pencil, into the writing conventions, that, that sort of. 

writing layer. And so that actually, I think, is empowering to teachers in terms of teaching spelling because, you know, like kids want to spell well. Nobody wants to spell anything wrong. That's, you know, embarrassing and it doesn't feel good. But also, those are pretty concrete avenues to go down in terms of how to do spelling intervention and proactive spelling [00:06:00] instruction in the first place? 

Like, how do you prevent each of those three things from happening? How do you explicitly teach through each of those avenues to help kids? And then if kids do have errors, what, what avenue have they, missed on and what avenue have you missed on in terms of your instruction? 

Mary Saghafi: Rachel, you explained that so very well. 

And that's the purpose of really understanding the errors that, that our kids are doing when they spell. There was one other piece I wanted to add on to it. And that is that we are expecting them to do these kinds of like Isolated tasks and remote just isolated tasks and then be able to apply them. 

And when we ask them to apply them, for example, writing a sentence in first grade requires a lot of these finite skills that the students are required to do to remember what a capitalized letter looks like. What's the difference between a capital F and a lowercase f? Did I accidentally write [00:07:00] an uppercase N in the middle of my sentence? 

And that has a lot less to do with the spelling, with just actually the pencil paper tasks of forming letters. And so if we're moving too quickly for other kids, that's where gaps occur. And so we have to be really cognizant that there are sometimes pieces in our instruction where students are not available to take in that piece that we are teaching them and it becomes a gap in their instruction. 

It is not something that you should take personally. It is not something that you necessarily need to be defensive against. It is what the student is capable of doing at that moment that you have taught it. And I, When Shannon first brought this quote up to me, it's something that I think of a lot on my advocacy side of my practice and then as well as my tutoring side of my practice. 

I am constantly advocating that if the students haven't reached mastery at this point, [00:08:00] then we need to be able to know where we need to go back and reteach it. And I don't think that that is quite as obvious to all teachers. It is something that like I am very directly focused on in my practices, but when you are monitoring all of these different grade levels in an elementary school classroom, it might not be the same priority that I have. 

So when I heard that it was like, check the box. in my brain. Yes, I definitely agree with this statement. But then when Shannon was saying that it was such an aha moment for her it actually took me a moment to pause and go, that's true. There are many teachers who haven't actually hit that reflection point yet, and that's okay. 

We're just calling it to your attention again right now. And so I think that's why this is such a. Yeah. It's going to be a positive episode because we're going to be really solution oriented and and give teachers tools. But I just want to give permission to not feel bad. I know that Shannon mentioned at the very [00:09:00] beginning, how he You know, you're reflecting on some of the poorer practices that you've done as teaching spelling in your career. 

This is a positive let's move forward. These are some solutions that you can do. So I'm so eager to hear and learn from you, but I thought I would just add that small note in too. 

Shannon Betts: Let's, let's talk about what is traditionally not such helpful practices in terms of spelling instruction. I know I've seen, I've been guilty of in the past and also I've seen colleagues have word lists that just are seemingly unrelated, like they're not based on a spelling pattern or not based on a meaning pattern. 

I've, I've seen one colleague even just. The vocabulary words that were with the reading story of the week, they were also the spelling words. And I mean, they were just so random students. It was very hard to teach them because you really could only teach them by rote memorization or a little bit of sound mapping and then like looking at their regularities.[00:10:00] 

But that wasn't that helpful to, like, give, you know, transferability of those skills or whatever. But I think even more than that, is a lack of awareness and understanding of the purpose behind spelling instruction. And that, I mean, it's really only been like the last year with all the reading I've done that I've realized that like English spelling is the most stable thing. 

Like the sounds change, we add more words, schwa words, probably every single year as our speech gets faster and faster. But spelling is stable. And We need to help our students understand, like, there's an overall structure to English, and it's informed by meaning, informed by grammar, informed by word history, and then kind of lastly sounds simple. 

And I think if they have that sort of like why around spelling, [00:11:00] then it becomes less of a like case by case. Oh, here's an irregularity here. Oh, English is confusing. Absolutely. I feel like when I first started teaching I was at a school that they had like a regulated phonics period and it was a phonics patch, and there was no external spelling curriculum or expectation beyond that. 

Rachel: And I very quickly realized how problematic that was because Just because you can read a word doesn't necessarily mean you can spell that word. But it does work the other way. If you can spell a word, you can read a word. So spelling instruction and assessment is actually highly efficient because you can check a kid's decoding based on their spelling. 

You could check a kid's phonemic awareness application based on their spelling. It's really quite effective in [00:12:00] that way. And a huge big picture snapshot of What a kid is able to do based on what you've taught them. And I mean, I think that there's so much phonics instruction in our school, that's already very incomplete. 

Like all too generalized, not, not calling back to etymology, not calling back to affixes. So like prefixes and suffixes. And so because of that, I mean, the spelling instruction is even more sparse and basically left a lot of, a lot left to kids to make their own generalizations about and figure it out or not. 

And you know, we shouldn't expect a six year old to be able to know when to use CK at the end versus. a C versus a K. Like, that's just not reasonable for them to pull out of their brain. Like, [00:13:00] so, I, I really think that there is a big hole in, okay, well, we're doing phonics instruction, but that, that is not probably nearly enough in and of itself, like, in the actual scope of what is phonics, and so it's definitely not enough. 

In the scope of what is spelling and helping kids be more automatic spellers and writers. And like Mary said, we don't even notice the difference of that until the gaps start occurring. And then we're like, Oh man, this student is making a lot of spelling mistakes. This student is a poor speller. And then it's like, then you're just like doing interviction and trying to fix it. 

Shannon Betts: Right? Yes. Because it's not like happening on a systematic way along the path of that phonics learning. Well, it can if you are providing a lot of [00:14:00] encoding instruction with your phonics and decoding instruction, but I think when you can really see it is when you have end of the year third grader, who's writing ability is quite poor compared to their comprehension level and what they actually want to put down on paper and you start to see them really overly simplifying what they want to put on paper because they're not confident in their spelling levels. 

Mary Saghafi: And that part becomes really frustrating and you have to do a lot of additional work on very simple spelling words to give them the tools to do that. And I think sometimes, and it sort of depends on the kid, but when you're doing a lot of that remedial work, what happens is that the student then sees themselves as less than and that their ideas are less than because their words are so simple that they can put on paper. 

And we need to really dispel that myth. A lot because if you are really good at decoding, you may not be as strong at encoding, but what Rachel had stated [00:15:00] before, and I want to overemphasize this is if you are good at encoding, which is spelling the sounds that you want based on these, like each individualized phonemic pieces and the graph themes that match them, you are going to be a good speller. 

So you're going to be a good reader and a good speller, right? We want to emphasize that. 

Shannon Betts: Let's talk about your books, Rachel, because like, those are like, your two latest books are kind of two of the biggest spelling things that students need to realize kind of early on, that usually are not explicitly taught. 

Rachel: Yeah, absolutely. So letters that we just wouldn't see come at the end. I think we, as adults who are fluent readers, understand, you would never see it. Or like, you would know automatically if you saw a J at the end of the word, Hmm, that's, you'd pause, Hmm, that, that doesn't look quite right for me. Or that [00:16:00] word is from a different language. 

Like that word is not originally English, but kids don't have the, if you'd, unless you've told them and practiced, they don't have that. moment to pause and think about that. I see that too also with right now we're really working on beginning blends in first grade. And so kids will spell the, like, der, like drop sound as J R O P. 

And I tell them, you know, It does sound like that, but that sound is the D and the R blending together. And also, you would really never see JR next to each other in a word in English. But unless it's the abbreviation junior, right? Yeah. Same thing. Are you gonna say 

Mary Saghafi: T R and C H R? T H 

Rachel: R, like you'd never see that spelling, chur, it would be cur, because of the etymology piece. 

Like Christmas C H R would be that hard C and [00:17:00] so when they're spelling tree, I see so many kids spell C H R E E E, or E E, because that's how it sounds to them. And so helping them notice, like, these are some things that, like, are just very unexpected. Or like, you'd never see it all in English spelling. 

And kids don't notice that unless we explicitly call it out to them. Partially because the books that we're expecting them to read don't have like the vast amounts of vocabulary that. We're taking in as adults reading everything all the time. And so they're not, they're not seeing those regularities and irregularities as crystally clear. 

And with as much like frontal lobe work as we are as adults. So, Yeah, I was going to share really quickly. Kids love when you teach them what not to do. They absolutely love when you call attention to the irregularities, or here's your [00:18:00] challenge, go home and tell your parents what ask them what letters are never at the end of an English And likely many parents are not able to state that and it becomes this like, amazing, I have knowledge that my parents don't have yet. 

Mary Saghafi: And when we're talking about the word give and they want to know why, you know, they say, Oh, there's an E at the end, but the E is not making the I say it's long name. That's because E is making that word sound. Stable so that it's not the V at the end of the word. So it has etymological background information that you can share, but it's also another piece. 

So this explicit teaching is so helpful for students. And once they start recognizing and spelling it or checking other people's spelling or their own editing, they, they take ownership in it. And that's what we're trying to get our students to achieve with this. 

Shannon Betts: I wish we had learned it in college. Like, if I had just learned, okay, we don't spell words at the end [00:19:00] with I, U, V, and J. 

Like, that would have been huge because then that leads itself to teaching points. Like, okay, if we don't end words with J, okay, that explains the DGE spelling. Okay? 

Mary Saghafi: You know, 

Shannon Betts: you could take a candy heart, like the L U V, little candy heart at Valentine's. Okay, so, that's the wrong, that's how it sounds, that's how love sounds, but we actually spell it L O V E, and love actually has two kind of etymology things, because it's got the E there, so that it doesn't end in V, and then it also has the scribal O. 

Rachel: Absolutely. I mean, kids love learning those little things. It makes them feel so empowered and smart. Like, so in my V is for volcano, J is for jelly. I say that like a V at the end is like a volcano and it'll explode the whole word. And so kids will do like, 

Shannon Betts: and you do the best at explaining these things in like kid friendly terms. 

I just love your books, [00:20:00] Rachel. 

Rachel: Yeah. And then also sometimes I do, I, I, you won't be able to see this in the podcast, but I'm doing like a peace sign with my fingers and I'll say, well via the pointy tip, it's gonna. Tip over at the end. And so some of my kids will go, Oh, don't let that be like tip over tip over. 

Like they'll do the little motion and tell kind of tell that multi sensory to make it stick. And they will remember it and explain it. Like I was helping this student last year spell, I think it was the word love. And I had her put a E at the end, because the B would tip over, and her sister's name ended in a V sound. 

And she goes, hmm, does my sister's name have an E at the end? And I was like, Well, why do you think that? And she goes, well, it has a V at the end and I think it's going to tip over. And I said, you're absolutely right. That is how you spell your sister's name. And her sister started at school this year in preschool. 

And I saw her name written, like she wrote her name and her little preschool [00:21:00] handwriting with the E at the end. And I was like, I know your big sister went and taught you that. It just really empowers them and they truly are capable of remembering these kind of larger nuanced topics very well. And when you Teach them explicitly and especially kind of what Mary said, like they love what not to do. 

Because it lowers the scope of what to do and makes it more explicit and safe for them. And students love stories. And so it's the word story and then the word structure, like if we can frame spelling around those two things that will pique their interest. And then. Make them want to look for exceptions, but then also make them want to look for the story and the structure. 

Shannon Betts: reasons for those exceptions. And then, because students love stories and then are also pattern makers, then maybe they will hopefully go on, and you can [00:22:00] encourage them to go on and find related words that can also follow that same pattern. So 

what, how do we do this? Like, how do we help these students? Like, I know, I know we can do things on a case by case basis, and some of the books that I read, kind of, lean towards that way of doing things of like looking at students errors and in their writing samples and using that as a jumping off point for teachable moments to start to look for, okay, what are the spelling rules that students might be missing? 

You can look at logic of English and kind of read that whole book and see the full 31 spelling rules that are part of English. But then, How would you do that in a systematic way? Like if you're a first grade teacher like yourself, or when I was teaching second grade, like how do we like approach spelling from the beginning of school all the way to the end of the school year? 

Rachel: So we do follow [00:23:00] a spelling curriculum and it's inspired by like Orton Gillingham stuff, but we based it off of the scope and sequence that we use for our like phonics and reading curriculum. So how we do it is we kind of track our spelling a week or two behind our phonics so that it like serves in and of itself as a review point. 

Now you're really strong at reading these words with short a, so we expect that you're able to spell them. And then we talk about within that. The nuances of, okay, well, what does whiny a sound like? Oh, we're still gonna spell that with a short a and a closed syllable. But that kind of case allows us to, once kids are confident spelling CBC words with all of the vowel sounds, that's when we add those short vowel protectors. 

So we'll do a whole week that's spelled out. gloss [00:24:00] rule spelling. And what are the exceptions to that? And sometimes they'll bring an exception like, well, what about the word gas? And I'll say, well, that's short for gasoline. That's why there's not a SS at the end. Another one of those examples of what not to do or go home to your parents and see if they can come up with a word that doesn't have a double consonant after a short vowel that's FLS or Z. 

We do a whole week that's D G E. We do whole weeks that are soft C or soft G with a spelling. And so we really kind of break down that phonics even further. And so based on that scope and sequence, it's already set up. Proactively in a really systematic way. So that way when you're doing your analysis in kids work, whether it's a, like a formal spelling assessment or just a writing assignment, you can go back to the scope and sequence and say, Hmm, like, I actually don't expect that this kid would spell this word or sound right because we haven't [00:25:00] explicitly taught it. 

Or, Hey, there's a gap here. We should have taught, I don't know CK at the end of words. And we didn't have it in our scope and sequence after short vowel sounds. So we need to go back and explicitly teach that to them in a spelling context and have them practice it from an encoding standpoint. And that I think makes. 

your analysis of kids spelling a little more clear of like, Oh, I have taught this versus I haven't taught this. For example, we're doing a handwriting curriculum. Right now we always do a handwriting curriculum for lowercase letters starting at the beginning of the year and we haven't taught them lowercase P yet. 

So most of their P is still uppercase. And so in their writing, I don't go back and correct that right now because I haven't taught that to them. So I don't expect that they know it. That's not fair for me to be like, well, write a lowercase p. They [00:26:00] don't know a lowercase p. That's fine. We will explicitly teach it. 

So same thing with spelling. I'm like, if you don't know how to spell that sound or you don't know how to spell ed at the end of words or whatever, I just let it fly for the moment, like take a note of it, but know that that's coming up in the curriculum. And so that way it feels really proactive as opposed to, Oh my gosh, here are all these errors. 

Here's all the stuff I'm going to have to teach. And I have to organize it in some sort of scope and sequence that makes sense and like touches the kids it needs to touch. Which can kind of feel overwhelming in the moment. And so. I love the way we do spelling in my grade because I feel like it's so, it covers all of our bases. 

And it allows for that intervention in the moment of, oh, this kid spelled this wrong because of like etymology and we can tell those stories. But [00:27:00] it really clearly touches on all the spelling rules that we want them to be able to use. know by the end of the year, and we know we've explicitly taught them all. 

Mary Saghafi: I thought you explained that so beautifully, Rachel, because I think that that is, that is so needed and it gives teachers permission that you know, this is how I can analyze this. Also, perhaps in the moment, you are noticing that, you know, maybe you have three to four kids in your classroom who are continuously reading. 

forgetting to add that, that second consonant for a floss rule. That might just be the time where you start a class letter discussion or a you know, spelling discussion and say, I've noticed that some people are spelling the word, let's say staff you know, with just one F on the end, do we have any advice for these spellers and let the students really take ownership on stating, well, the, the spelling rule tells us that Blah, blah, blah, and when I'm working [00:28:00] explicitly with students one on one, I'm consistently holding them accountable to restating and proving why they are spelling what they're spelling in the classroom. 

That's not always helpful, but there are times where you can pull out those spelling rules and you can give students the language and the ownership to do that. And it's much more powerful when it's coming from students. especially if it's already been taught. So I wanted to just throw that in because I think that that can be a helpful tool as well. 

Rachel: Absolutely. And we also have like spelling and they're, they're just like eight, eight and a half by 11. They're not like big posters that we hang up in the room after we go over the rules. And I leave those up during assessments because they're not. Explicitly telling the words, they're just sharing the rules. 

And I love to see. Like most of my students and all of my struggling spellers will get up during a [00:29:00] spelling assessment and they'll go and they'll find the correct poster, they know what they're looking for, and they'll be resourceful in that way and, like, help themselves. because they know what they're looking for. 

Shannon Betts: I think that's so smart because, I mean, we live in the world of spellcheck, right? And on our phones, on our computers, and you're not giving them the word. You're just giving them the rule and teaching them resource skills to, like, go find the reference and apply it. Absolutely. And I just love for them. 

Rachel: I tell them that I want them to, you know, be problem solvers as much as possible because I'm always there to help them. Whether it's like with school stuff or life stuff, but what if I wasn't there to help them or what if parents weren't there to help them at one point, what would you do, right? Like eventually we'll get you to an adult. 

We'll get you to a safe adult or whatever, for whatever situation, we'll get you to someone who knows the spelling rules. You'll, you'll have the technology or whatever, but. What would you do first in that situation? What would [00:30:00] you do next? And so really helping them be their own problem solvers, and the fact that they know those resources are there and know how to use them appropriately is really empowering for them and also is a big executive functioning skill in and of itself. 

Shannon Betts: So when you were sharing your answer about your spelling curriculum, two thoughts came to mind. One is the two weeks behind your phonics curriculum is like genius to me. Like, I mean, because you're not reinventing the wheel, right? But, and I do have some follow up questions in a minute about sort of like, okay, what does that spelling look like two weeks later? 

So I want to ask about that. But also I wanted, I was thinking about something I read in Spelling for Life by Lynn Stone, because you mentioned handwriting and she has a great scope and sequence in the appendix for like basically every grade level. And She combines it with handwriting instruction. So her spelling and handwriting are together. 

And the first thing she [00:31:00] teaches, the very first lesson is how to draw a circle. So I'm curious. How do y'all draw a circle? Do you do it? Okay. 

Mary Saghafi: So you 

Shannon Betts: do it 

Mary Saghafi: counterclockwise, Rachel. I do mine clockwise. Start at the top and you are going to make a magic C to bump the bottom. But I 

Shannon Betts: didn't learn a circle that way. 

Like when I draw a circle, I do it clockwise. But 

Mary Saghafi: minus clockwise too. 

Shannon Betts: See, like if I just was drawing a circle on a piece of paper, I would draw it, you know, if I'm drawing a face or something. But she teaches to draw a circle. You start at two o'clock and you go counterclockwise, and then that's forms the base of the letter, lowercase c. 

The lowercase a, the lowercase d, so the g, so many letters. And I just think that's the coolest thing that that's like the very first lesson. And then she teaches about straight lines, curved lines, crossbars, like all of these things. And she she just recommends doing spelling and handwriting. 

Coincident. 

Mary Saghafi: You bring up such a really good point [00:32:00] with this because I was also trained explicitly in handwriting without tears curriculum. And so handwriting without tears is very much rooted in straight lines, little curves, big lines, little curves and big curves. And so you can make every every letter of the alphabet using those. 

And there are very explicit ways to write that. And I do notice with. A great deal of my students that they're drawing letters and creating their own systematic way of writing letters rather than using the, the, this well established systematic way of writing. I'm working on that 

Shannon Betts: with my tutoring student too. 

And I'm like, well, your way is just not quite as efficient. And he's like, but I like my way. Well, so that's where you taught him. He, what he likes to do now is like, we can do it blindfolded. And I'll say like, My way blindfolded is better 'cause I'm never picking out my pencil. And I always know where my circle's gonna end and where I can join the stick to it. 

But when you do the circle and the stick [00:33:00] separate and you're blindfolded, it's gonna be all over the place and you can't match him up. And so that's 

Mary Saghafi: encouraging him way you've said that. That's 

Shannon Betts: encouraging him to learn the right formation. But, and I didn't mean to interrupt you, but that reminds me of one other thing from spelling for life about why this is so important. 

This letter formation is because she. She, she says that the definition of phonograms is word is sound pictures. So if we think of that in terms of hieroglyphics and like if we had a hieroglyphics language, like we would have to reproduce that hieroglyphic perfectly every single time so that people would know. 

That's that symbol, right? And that's the same thing for letters. Like, we have to stress to the students and explicitly teach the formation of these sound pictures rather than just like letter names, letter sounds. Like, it's extremely important that the B and D is not reversed, because otherwise the entire word [00:34:00] is a completely different word. 

And so, it's not just a matter of, oh, it's a stick and it's a circle and it doesn't really matter. It really, really matters. It would matter if it was a tree or a triangle and we had to draw it a certain way. It matters with the stick and the circle a certain way. 

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So those are some of my thoughts. Mary, I interrupted you. Was there anything else? 

Mary Saghafi: No, no, not at all. I think that that's really explicit. Like once again, this is something that I have done for more than a decade now. And so I often do forget that there are other teachers that don't have that same type of training that I have. 

And so I've been forming my B's and D's very explicitly for more than a decade now. And I know how efficient it can be. for other students like the students as they're learning and growing in that way. And so I'm really glad that we're bringing [00:36:00] it up because I think these are really good thought points that all teachers really need to think about that. 

Maybe we were not taught on our own in our training. So, so once again, you know, we're just, we're pondering and reflecting about our own practices and making it. 

Shannon Betts: If I was transported back to my second grade class and like, okay, go, go back and be that homeroom teacher again, if I was in that role again, I think what I would do is what Rachel suggesting of like, okay, I already have my phonics scope and sequence. 

Okay. Now I'm going to do my spelling two weeks behind that, but I'm also going to combine my spelling and my handwriting so that that way it's just as efficient as possible. Rachel, I have some follow up about what happens after that two weeks, like Okay, they let's hopefully like they would be able to blend the words at that point because you've taught them the phonics and decoding part. 

And so then is spelling a couple days a week. Is that every a few minutes every day? What kind of activities are y'all doing? And then following up with that. I want to ask about [00:37:00] assessment as well. 

Rachel: So Monday we teach the rule and I actually like differentiate it. So I will go ahead and like teach the floss rule to my kids who are like already reading and writing. 

And so they're practicing that with like short a, and then they'll, we'll go back and like, kind of review it again and give them a couple more short bowel protectors. And so with that group, that's already ready for all that we get pretty far into like morphemes by the end of the year. With the other group, that's just our regular, regular, regular spelling curriculum. 

We start, we introduced the concept on Monday and then every day during language arts groups, we talk about it in their small group. So with a teacher, but then they, I don't do centers and I'm, I feel very strongly about that. We do independent work and I find that just very independent, like very easy to differentiate as well as so that there's a finished product that I can check and give feedback on [00:38:00] based on what that kid is learning. 

And then they can go back and like correct those errors or notice those things that they need to do. So I feel like it's a really productive time for them. As opposed to like when I was doing centers and kindergarten, I felt like I didn't really know if they were doing. They're just moving flashcards around on the floor. 

Right. And by the time they transitioned to the next thing, like, it was just too much. So they each have an independent work packet, if you will, that they do every day. That's all sorts of different activities. And several of those touch on the spelling rule of the week. We do a lot of like, um, explode the code. 

It's British at workbooks. And like, they have these really fun ones that like, we start. them off with on like Tuesdays or Wednesdays where it's like, there's a picture of the thing. And then it gives you like. Three choices for the first sound, three choices for the second sound, three choices for the third sound. 

They have to like circle, which one any column and then spell the word. And so [00:39:00] that's like really structured, right? Cause it limits the choices of how to spell that word. And gives them that extra scaffold. And then the next day there's just like the pictures and they have to spell the word and then like, Another day, there's I forget all the different activities, but they're all kind of like that. 

They do a lot of that. They give you choices for which letter you can actually circle. So they're finite choices for each sound. So if it's a word that has three sounds in it, then, you know, you might be choosing between a TH and an SH at the end if you're working on digraphs. And I happen to absolutely love explode the code. 

Mary Saghafi: I think it's an oldie and a very goodie. And that is something that I often give my tutoring students as summer homework practice that, that they can really move and grow on because I feel like it's one of those amazing independent activities for students at many different levels. It's great. 

Rachel: Absolutely. And they, the pictures are so funny. They're like these little, [00:40:00] they're kind of like scribbles. They look like you're able to like tell what they are. And sometimes my kids will like circle one that they like and write like, ha ha in the corner because they think it's funny. And they want me to know that. 

And I just love that. They also do different things where they have to like come up with six words that follow the spelling concept of the week. So if it's short a, I expect that it's a two or three sound word that follows short a, at, hat, whatever. So they come up with six words. And then they have a sheet that has 6. 

And they come up with like a complete sentence that goes with each one of those words. And so that's a really like. higher executive functioning activity because they need to do sentence conventions, they need to know like how to write all the uppercase letters and lowercase letters in the other words they're adding. 

They need to know the meanings of the words. They need to know the meanings and like the grammatical, is it a noun, is it a [00:41:00] adjective, like how would you use it in a sentence? And I don't, I don't market wrong quote unquote if they spell other words in that sentence. Incorrectly that are rules that we haven't taught yet. 

I just want them to know that they can spell the word that they've chosen in the correct context in, you know, a proper sentence. So that's another kind of activity that they do by themselves. Independently. So we practice that every day and we, I really try to make that like an increased. level. 

Like we'll start with one that's really finite choices or maybe less. And then by the end of the week, it's like, nope, you got to do whole sentences so that it really scaffolds them up to doing stuff. And then on Friday, we do an assessment that has. It starts out with just sound. So I might say spell sh if we're doing digraphs that week or whatever, or blends spelled burr, [00:42:00] and they're just spelling the blend. 

And then the next section is actual words. So, but. just words in isolation. And then the third section is sentences. And so for those kids who are already getting kind of a challenge concept of the week, I don't really do the sounds section. We just go do the words and then they might have more sentences or longer sentences that they need to do. 

Versus if they're a kid that's And getting our regular curriculum or even some intervention, their assessment is kind of going to look a little bit different. So we can really split that up in groups and give that assessment during a like small group time on Fridays. It's, we usually divvy it up into two small groups of kids. 

But sometimes we divvy it up into four small groups of kids for the assessment. And then based on the assessment, we have like an error analysis check sheet, spreadsheet, and that goes to like, Did they get the new concept? And then [00:43:00] there's a concept for like old concepts missed. So like figuring out what concepts from the past that they didn't continue to transfer. 

There's sections for like writing conventions. So did they have end marks? Did they have an uppercase letter where appropriate? Or did they have hidden capitals? Did they have any flipped letters? So like handwriting and writing conventions section. Did they misspell, you know, any initial sounds wrong? Did they misspell any vowel sounds wrong? 

Did they misspell any N sounds wrong? So it really gets down into the nitty gritty for your error analysis. And then that can help you either regroup kids, if you need to, Or be like, oh, these kids are really missing up, you know, mixing up short e versus short i. This is something that we need to go back and reteach in this group and do a follow up assessment on afterwards, because I'm noticing this pattern here with this [00:44:00] kid or this group of children. 

Shannon Betts: So that assessment that you're giving, like, let's say you're working on the floss rule that week, y'all might have, y'all might have practiced the words you might not have, but it's not like a memorized list. It's like just some random floss words that you're dictating for the assessment and then also the dictated sentences that error analysis check sheet. 

Would you be willing to share that with our audience or is it from your curriculum? 

Rachel: No, we can share. I can share it. Like all teacher made at this point, just okay. 

Shannon Betts: And so you're taking the explore the code or whatever it's called and like you're applying it you're choosing which sheets would match your scope and sequence. 

Rachel: Yes. Okay. And so last year, our big task was going through expose the code. We had it divvied up into sections, like which section followed which phonics rule, but we divvied up which pages go with which day and big document of that. And so you can just like run them through team, like building excellence and [00:45:00] efficiency in that way. 

Okay. Of like, how can we do this better? And then also how can we make it easier for ourselves the next year so that we can work on something making work on making something else even better. So I love that. I love the spreadsheet. I love a scope and sequence. It's very satisfying to me. 

Shannon Betts: Do you give a diagnostic spelling assessment as well to kind of decide who were those kids that could handle maybe more advanced spelling? 

Yes. Yes. Okay. What did, what do you give. 

Rachel: It comes with our, or we do it through the phonics scoping sequence that we use. So it's essentially, I mean, I don't remember the words off the top of my head, but it's like CVC words with all the short vowels. And then it's like one ones with the floss rule or any sort of one. 

Shannon Betts: And that sounds a little bit like the words their way when, I mean, that's what I've used before. 

Rachel: Okay. And then based on that is how we. Well, group kids regroup kids and make sure we like, I'll kind of go through the spelling scooping sequence and [00:46:00] like circle weeks that like, I really need to work on with particular children as well. 

Yeah. Cause those are fascinating. I 

Shannon Betts: really love the words their way when I've given them most of my career, because I love them that where you write the errors on the. On that kind of spreadsheet because it looks like yeah, yeah, I mean, and it plots it out and it shows you developmentally like where they fall and it always matches up to my phonics assessments as well my decoding assessments but you know, can they handle, you know, are they just sort of beginning it in sound or do they know just sort of direct one to one correspondence or are they looking at, you know More than one correspondence to, you know, the sounds like, do they know those within word patterns for like all those different long vowel spellings and things like that? 

Are they understanding, you know, the syllables and affixes? It's just fascinating to me developmentally. 

Rachel: Yes, it's fascinating. And I, when I then give my students feedback on the [00:47:00] assessments, they're always like, They're really into like their own kind of data and like their own, what they're working on. 

And so I don't expect if a kid has like all the short E's spelled as short I's one week that next week it's going to be perfect. Right. But I'll say something like, you know, you had six short E's that were spelled with the letter I next week. I really want you to make sure that you're feeling those sounds in your mouth and hearing the difference between eh and eh. 

And tomorrow, like next week, let's try to have three like that are like incorrect. And so incrementally getting better, setting like reasonable goals with them about their spelling. And I think that helps them prepare for it as well. It's like, okay, this is the one thing I'm working on in spelling right now was to, oh my God, like, I need to work on all these things. 

I misspelled all these words wrong. Like if you give them one pattern or one, [00:48:00] one sub concept that they're working on, that actually helps kids narrow down what they. need to practice and what they're paying attention to. It's a, it's a 

Shannon Betts: manageable goal. And I think like we were talking about earlier, like the, you know, the traditionally sort of ways of teaching spelling, if it's just some randomized list that needs to be memorized, you can't give that specific feedback. 

You can't make those goals because it's just like, okay, get this random word correct next time. I mean, that's just not a transferable skill, but if you're giving these assessments, y'all are doing those error analysis. On the assessment results and then just taking just a few minutes and given that feedback and goal setting that will make that spelling stick. 

There were some, the spelling for life referenced and I haven't had time to look it up yet, but she called it the Morrison McCall spelling scale. She says it's available free and it's eight separate 50 items single word test. Oh, she's googling it right now. Okay, tell us what you [00:49:00] see Rachel. But then also she suggests giving spelling choice tests, like you and Mary were just talking about that a little while ago of just like, you know, Should you spell quest K W E S T or Q E S T and showing kids both choices and having them choose one. 

And she said she gives those as diagnostic spelling tests at the beginning, because it's a really good indicator of spelling potential. Like if they can get the spelling choice correct, then they're going to be more amenable to learning from spelling intervention, or if they are really scoring poorly even on spelling choice diagnostic assessments, then like, she knows that with her clients, she's going to have to be even more explicit and go slower through the scope and sequence. 

I thought that was interesting. I think I want to add maybe one of those spelling choice assessments to my diagnostic collection. I love that. 

Rachel: And I also like, it reminds me of, in dibbles, the like, maze. Oh, Mary loves those. Every time for my kids, because [00:50:00] it just helps me so much understand their comprehension and like grammar as well. 

Like understanding if they, you know, like parts of speech and like what should go there based on the parts of speech. I've 

Mary Saghafi: Yeah, no, same here. And I think that once you can, you know, in a one on one situation with my bigger kids, if I can hear them say, Hmm, does that start with a C or a K? Let me look at the next letter and I can hear them verbalizing these rules. 

I know that that rule will stick with them. And if they haven't I might look and say, Well, what do you think? And let them just keep processing verbally processing that information until they, I saw, I'll say, well, can you think of a word that also ends with a CK? Are you sure that ends with a CK? 

Does that match that rule? That gives them more ownership too. But also you're right, Rachel too, when you use these diagnostic things, you can start to see, are there these anchors [00:51:00] in their learning where they're taking ownership of their learning and processing it? in their own individualized way. 

And you can kind of see what are those milestones that they're hitting or what are the things that you need to back up and reteach? Yes, absolutely. And I also, I mean, think that my kid, my kids will say they want to do another spell check. Like they want, they like the assessment. I've never and growing up, none of my friends wanted a spelling test. 

Rachel: Like that's terrible. We don't want it. My students are like, can we do a spell check today? I'm like, well, it's not Friday. They're like, well, can we just do a little one? Like, okay. Sometimes we'll also do, I'll write some sentences with like common misspellings of words from the scoping sequence. So, like, I will not have a CK at the end, or I'll have those trick blends where I have, like, JR next to each other for drop and I'll give it to them and I'll have them [00:52:00] use the editing marks that we use in first grade to, like, fix my sentence and catch my errors and they feel so cool because, like, they caught my problems and it fixed them and they feel so powerful. 

Or they'll be like, Rachel, you're so silly. Like, how did you even spell that wrong? 

Mary Saghafi: I love that. That's the best first grade impersonation I've heard. That's perfect. It really is. I wanted to share that I pulled up the Morrison McCall spelling scale and it's a PDF file that's really great. On page eight, it's It starts with one list and it does look a lot like the words their way scope and see words are way spelling inventory. 

So they have all of these words that are written. So number 27 is the word written, I have written four letters, you repeat it again, written. And so you're looking to see can the. Student double use the 111 doubling rule in that word. And then also are they knowing the, the WR as the silent letter at the beginning. 

So I think [00:53:00] that this would be a good one too, especially if you have students who you are consistently giving the words, their way spelling inventory too. And they're starting to memorize those words. I have that. That in some cases to I would say this would be a really great addition to being able to use that 

Rachel: at the bottom. 

It has like a quick grade level finder. So it's the number of words, correct. And then, like, kind of where they are in. The grade level. So there's a bunch of different lists. So you don't get those kids that memorize all the words, but like number of words, correct. Five is equivalent to grade level 1. 9. 

So like end of first grade. So that can give you a really good idea of like, Ooh, if they're in third grade, you know, we should, and then 

Shannon Betts: you could go to her appendix. In this spelling for life by lynn stone and look at the scope and sequence and she explicitly says Okay, if they're at this level These are the spelling rules that you need to explicitly teach them. 

You need to teach them final e jobs one and two [00:54:00] You need to teach them illegal letters. You need to teach them the C, the Q rule, the C rule, the G rule. Like, I, I love her scope and sequence. I love any scope and sequence really, but especially like a new to me, fresh one. Like, I was, I read this one very closely, carefully, because I liked how she, how she laid it all out and developmentally in order. 

And then also that she combined it with handwriting, like I said. 

Mary Saghafi: I was just going to share. I think that this conversation is really helpful because you've been giving some really explicit examples of how it looks in your classroom. And that's really what we want for our listeners. I'm wondering, is there anything in particular that you can offer? 

We've talked a lot about multisensory ways of, you know, getting the kids involved and how your independent work looks, but is there anything else you want to share with the teachers? While we have you on 

Rachel: I would say another thing that, you know, we really, I mean, we touch on all the rules really specifically, but I am very particular [00:55:00] about like how I teach vowels. 

And I will explicitly say to kids like vowels are the trickiest vowel sounds are the trickiest for kids to spell because they are the most options. And they sound the closest together in your mouth. It's very easy to hear the difference between and it's less. easy to hear the difference between eh and it. 

And so, and that's especially true if you have some speech stuff going on, which a lot of my kids do, especially because a lot of my kids are missing a lot of teeth. And so that is always something I consider as well. But I make sure to tell them that on the outset because it helps them know, oh, I want you to pay extra attention to the vowel nuances here. 

And when I say double check your vowels, They know explicitly what that means and like what kinds of things they're looking [00:56:00] for. Especially as we get into the long vowel sounds. I've recently been using the graphics from her name is Paige. I don't remember her last name. She teaches third grade, but she does these like sound, they're called sound mounds. 

And she does, I like the vowel, the vowel ones the best. And so on the mound, the one towards the left, like where you'd start reading, those are the spellings that you'd use for the sound at the beginning of a word. You'd see at the beginning of a word. In the top, in the middle, those are the common spellings that you'd see used in the middle of a word. 

And then in the on the right is where you'd see sounds, the spellings used at the end. So, for example, on the long A sound mound, A Y is towards the right because you'd see A Y at the end. A I is in the middle because you'd never see A I at the end. And then we, as a class, will like highlight the most common choices. 

And that [00:57:00] is a really good way for them to physically picture all of the Options for spelling vowel sounds and then like process of elimination out ones that like are not eligible choices for whatever word we're working on because we do do a week that's like AI versus a Y, and in the spelling scope and sequence and so. 

They know well, AI is not a choice at the end because I can't come at the end. So I have to use a Y. So we, I, I put those posters up in addition to our, like other spelling rules, posters. 'cause I just think it gives kids a really good visual of the choices for spelling all the different vowel sounds and then where those choices are. 

For lack of a better word, legal in words. 

Mary Saghafi: Yeah. Perfect. I think that that's a really great example too, because that's what we want our kids to understand is that when you're spelling, you're actually making [00:58:00] choices based on the sound that you feel in here in your mouth and how it's going to look. And those are rooted in rules of English. 

And so it's not full memorization. So that's a perfect example. I love that. We'll make sure that we link to those in our show notes as well. That's great. 

Shannon Betts: I appreciate this discussion, Rachel. Like I don't know. After reading all these books, I just had a lot of thoughts floating in my mind. And I think talking about the specifics with you, this is like what the Reading Teacher's Challenge is all about. 

It's just sort of like bouncing ideas and hearing perspectives from colleagues and specifics about what's done with the students they work with that definitely brings my own understanding of my practice forward. So, yeah. Thank you so much for joining us today and sharing all your knowledge and experience and the specifics of what you're doing with your students. 

Rachel: Absolutely. I love to share and I love to bounce ideas off of each other and [00:59:00] I just like love to offer it what feels like choices for teachers who might feel kind of overwhelmed or even like limited to by kind of this new way of thinking about reading and spelling instruction. 

Mary Saghafi: That's a beautiful point. 

Yeah, I think that that's exactly right. What would you say to the teacher, 

Shannon Betts: like, who's listening that like maybe they teach. Second or third grade and they, they don't have a spelling curriculum at their school. What 

Rachel: should they do? I would say start with your phonics scoping sequence and go from there. 

And you know, the first year it's not going to be perfect. We have re finagled our spelling curriculum so many times. The last time I did it over a summer and like doing it that first year after I re finagled the whole thing by myself, I. There were errors. Like there were things that I was like, ah, we should have added that or [01:00:00] this week is irrelevant, or we could differentiate that better. 

Like, don't expect it to be perfect the first time it can always get better. But like a great place to start is your phonics scope and sequence and go from there. And then also just. the way that you do like diagnostics at the beginning can be really, really helpful in understanding how you can use your spelling curriculum to like support your students there because it is hugely impactful on their writing. 

And so it might feel like, oh my gosh, we're really slowing down to focus on spelling when I want them to be producing so much writing, but it's going to be beneficial in the long run because students are going to reach a cap of how much writing they can produce based upon their spelling. They're not going to be able to write beautiful sentences of SAT words if they are having trouble spelling the word width [01:01:00] because they don't know how to spell th consistently in words. 

So it might feel like you're going slow to like go fast later, but that's okay. 

Mary Saghafi: I also think it's okay to teach your students that to going slow so that you can really master it and feel and feel what ownership is and feel that you understand the rule can be really empowering too. So that was perfect. 

Additionally, I want to share that we always link your books, Rachel on our, on our Amazon page, and I use them in my practice too. But the newest ones and sometimes why the short vowel protectors are really good. And then. Your newest ones U stands for, no, J 

Rachel: stands for jelly. V stands for volcano. 

V is for volcano and J is for jelly. And then the other one is silent E goes to work. 

Mary Saghafi: Silent E Goes to work. Right. We'll make sure that we link those as well to support you because these are amazing books and really helpful. Especially for my students. They've been really, they always ask to read [01:02:00] them and reread them again. 

It's really sweet. Really sweet. That makes my day. Good. I'm so glad they should because it's a, it's an amazing thing that you provide and putting them in kid friendly terms and, and making the spelling rules fun. I think that's what this is all about. So thank you for joining us. We can't wait to have you next season or this, whenever you're ready to come back again. 

We love having you. I also recommend following Mindful Teacher Rachel on all of the social media accounts because she shares such great. Like content, but also she's such a great authority on reading instruction and also an advocate in your own right for teachers teaching the science of reading. 

So keep up the good work on all your social media accounts too. Thanks, Rachel. 

Shannon Betts: Thanks for joining us and congrats on all your life changes.