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__Teacher Action Inquiry Plan__

__Middle Syndicate:__ R.Hall, S.McMillan, N.Mackereth **The Rationale:** We have noticed over some years that many of our pupils make repeated errors in spelling. Some show little concern about or indeed awareness of inaccuracy. This is despite a class programme which has involved use of weekly Schonell lists and tests. **We wish to investigate**: whether making spelling a more important focus in the classroom will make a difference to their achievement in spelling. **What is happening at present?** All 3 teachers have been using Schonell Lists and occasionally topic based lists with a weekly test.

**What does the literature say?** "The spelling words of highest frequency in child and adult writing should be studied by elementary school children" (Thorndike, 1921; E. Horn 1924, 1926, 1939, 1960; Hollingsworth, 1965; T. Horn, 1969b). AVKO believes that this is especially true of the "insane" words such as was, does, should, couldn't, weren't, etc For more evidence from Research //Spelling Research: Classroom Implications// by R. McClutha see the red writing below. **What we intend to do?** The weekly list (refer below) will be entered on **Spelling City** by each pupil. They will be given time to engage in the activities as part of the reading/writing tumble. **Wordl** will also be used as part of their tumble. Nadine will be investigating the use and benefits of the students making spelling animations. **Glosses** will continue to be undertaken for vocabulary development as we have noticed (via anecdotal evidence, Hall, 2010) that this benefits the development of spelling practices. Spelling and glosses will be further extended by the use of **Photobabble**, appropriate images, online dictionaries and thesauruses. Hughes and Searle (1997), identified as a characteristic of highly capable spellers, that they showed an interest in the meanings and spellings of words. __Children will develop individual weekly lists (10-20 words) that are compiled in the following way:__ - Words not yet known from the Essential Lists. (Refer to literature mentioned above) -Words spelt inaccurately the previous week and deemed by the teacher to be significant are to be circled by the teacher in green ink. These words will be found in work across the curriculum. The words are entered in the back of the homework book. -Errors from the Friday test. -Words from the Commonly Misspelt words list -Words selected for Glosses -Additional words for vey good spellers to be selected by teacher.

__-Spelling to be given a higher profile in class__ (As glosses, vocabulary development will be) ie Rules including forming plurals Good Spellers ‘ approached spelling as a system they could control. Hughes & Searle (1997) Profile of a good speller. - __Focus on the word Families__ Prefixes, suffixes (This will dovetail into vocabulary study and Glosses) Good Spellers used their knowledge of sound and visual features of words and increasingly added meaning to their spelling logic. Hughes & Searle (1997) Profile of a good speller. __Spelling to be given a higher profile in class__ (as Glosses, vocabulary development) __Misspelt words are to be corrected as soon as possible__ AVKO believes that immediate correction by the student, erasing the misspelling and writing the correct spelling just once is at least as effective as copying the same word over and over again. Good Spellers recognized their correct and misspelled words. They could spontaneously generate viable alternatives for misspellings. Hughes & Searle (1997) Profile of a good speller. __Formal Test on Fridays__ __Achievers to be acknowledged on a chart__ __Additional Incentive for Able Spellers__

A Spelling Bee will be held between the classes of our syndicate towards the end of Term 2 and again in Term 4. (ie 2 categories, Y4/5 and 5/6. All must enter initially.) Rewards will be given. Words will be pasted in the back of the homework books. These words will need to be learned in spare time in addition to weekly lists. Words will be taken from ‘All About Spelling’ Spelling Lists grade 3, 4, 5, **What help do I need?** Technical- access to laptops, digital projectors, Nadine- to help with Photobabble Equipment- access to: books on spelling rules, star charts, star stickers, dictionaries, cameras, Essential Lists (1-7),

__ Term 2 Week 6 __

Progress so far...

What we are doing : - weekly spelling tests - stronger focus on words in reading- explaining rules/ structure as it arises - Individual spelling lists (from essential lists and own writing mistakes - SpellingCity - Glosses - Positive reinforcement and tracking via Star Charts

What we will be doing: -more frequent formal rule teaching -a greater variety of reinforcing activities - a wider variety of e-Learning tools e.g. fotobabble, wordl -A Term 3 Spelling Bee

=__Term 3 Week 2__=

(Sigrid and Nadine) So far we think that what we had planned is not proving to be effective for students and manageable for teachers, in that the students that are achieving are continuing to learn their words and largely get their words correct but the remainder are showing little change.

This term we have decided to give the students more ownership of learning spelling e.g. instead of giving students lists each week, we will get students to focus on a word that arises during writing or reading and they will come up with word families/ prefixes and suffixes/ tricky spellings/ synonyms & antonyms.

Some activities we will be doing: SpellingCity, WickEd- (spellbinder), clay modeling photo slideshows, Wordl

We have decided not to do a Spelling Bee as it will only be a motivator for students that are already successful.