Some school districts are encouraging teachers to scrap spelling tests. No longer will students “get a list of words on Monday and be quizzed on them on Friday,” the Houston Chronicle reports. “Instead, students should be graded on how well they spell in their writing and whether they stumble on certain words when reading aloud.”

Teachers quoted in the piece make (inevitably) the authenticity argument. “There’s nothing in the real world like a spelling test,” says one. Parents quoted by the Chronicle (inevitably, too) wonder if the end of spelling tests is a good idea. “I’m very concerned. There’s no accountability,” says one father. “I always had spelling tests. My wife had spelling tests. Our whole generation had spelling tests.”

I suspect this is another one of those education “issues” that serve as an Rorschach test, revealing your views on classroom practice in general. I always gave my fifth graders spelling tests if for no other reason than to teach study skills. “How often do you get a test that you know in advance all the questions that will be asked, and all the answers?” I counseled my kids. Seemed reasonable to me. Still does. Might have even helped their spelling too.

11 Comments »

My daughter’s fifth grade teacher gave spelling tests that included words from previous tests to make sure they didn’t just forget how to spell the words after the test was over. I wonder how the educationists feel about that?

Comment by barry garelick — December 28, 2009 @ 7:24 am
Spelling tests, just like learning the multiplication tables, are important because they help develop memorization strategies. Later on in secondary school, memorization really comes to the fore in subjects such as foreign languages and history.

While conversation in a foreign language can be a helpful learning tool so too is memorization. It would be very difficult to learn a new language if memorization were not a primary strategy in the learning process.

I always told my kids that if they learned to spell a word for a spelling test they were expected to spell that word correctly for the rest of the year. Not a fool-proof remedy but it managed to get the attention of most students.

Comment by Paul Hoss — December 28, 2009 @ 8:33 am
If schools scrap spelling tests, then chances are they won’t grade students on their spelling in their writing. They’ll only point out the spelling error if it interferes with comprehension. And then they won’t even correct the spelling; they’ll simply make an “authentic” comment on a Post-It–”I don’t understand the third word in the second sentence” or maybe just “Please check spelling.”

Teachers will have to be very polite when suggesting to students that something in their writing might need correction. Anything more direct would hark back to the bad old days of spelling tests. After all, how can you justify correcting a student’s spelling, if you haven’t asked the student to learn the word in the first place? And how can you ask a student to learn a word without being willing to test the student’s knowledge? Nay, if we do away with spelling tests, we must also do away with the whole notion of correct and incorrect spelling. There will be only “successful and unsuccessful communication.”

Comment by Diana Senechal — December 28, 2009 @ 10:36 am
Cobb County, GA doesn’t give a list of spelling words, instead they study patterns and any words that fit that pattern may appear on the spelling “test”. Problem is my kids always get it wrong – is it ow or ou. AT least with a list they can put the information into rote and remember when they need it again.

Comment by CB — December 28, 2009 @ 12:44 pm
I have long argued that an important principle for most learning is to “isolate and concentrate”. If you don’t isolate one bit of learning at a time and concentrate on it, you simply do not progress. A list of spelling words, followed by a test, does this. To not isolate and concentrate, I would argue, is to not even try to learn.

I have further argued that the “isolate and concentrate” principle must be complemented by the “spread and relate” principle. But that is another matter.

There may be some learnings in which progress is not made by first isolating and concentrating on one little bit at a time. Some learning can be viewed like the unfolding of a flower, whereas other learning is best viewed as the laying down of bricks. Any learning that is more on the brick laying side requires isolation and concentration. Each brick must be right. Details are important. Maybe some learning, art appreciation perhaps, is more like the flower unfolding, and details are not important. But surely not spelling.

But I don’t really know how to teach spelling. The approach CB describes, learning word families and patterns, sounds sensible. But shouldn’t that be a part of any method of teaching spelling? I can believe that teachers tend to shortchange that part. But it seems a stretch to think that approach could make spelling lists unnecessary.

Certainly the weekly spelling list can be called traditional. But why is it traditional? Followers of educational fads are quick to assume that anything traditional is motivated by blind adherence to tradition. I think it is a lot more sensible to assume, until we have reason to believe otherwise, that anything traditional is motivated by functionality. It works. Spelling lists work. Do we have any evidence that the teaching of spelling can be done better without weekly lists than with? I’ll believe it when I see it.

I see this through the lens of my own experience as a math teacher. In an article on my website (http://www.brianrude.com/fractionsquiz2.htm) I describe how many of my students in college algebra do poorly on fractions and are thereby handicapped in learning algebra. And I wonder why they can’t do fractions. I don’t know why, but I can’t help speculating that part of the problem is teachers who think learning math can be done without attention to details, that you don’t have to isolate and concentrate on one small bit of math at a time, that you never have to memorize anything, that teachers should just get out of the way and let wonderful things happen naturally.

Comment by Brian Rude — December 28, 2009 @ 4:32 pm
I would like to see the “one size fits all” traditional whole-class spelling list approach die. BUT I would not drop formal spelling instruction; rather I would like to see it individualized for each student. This can easily be done via computers.

Comment by Crimson Wife — December 28, 2009 @ 5:47 pm
Crimson Wife,

It can be individualized in every discipline, with or without computers.

Comment by Paul Hoss — December 28, 2009 @ 8:05 pm
Paul, you keep claiming that it’s easy and effective to individualize instruction in every subject without computers. When are you going to describe how this is actually done?

Comment by Ray — December 29, 2009 @ 12:08 pm
Paul has sent me a draft manuscript on this subject, which I’m in the process of editing. The holdup is me, not him. Look for it later this week.

Comment by Robert Pondiscio — December 29, 2009 @ 12:10 pm
Nearly 30% the students in English speaking countries cannot invent a plausible spelling for an unfamiliar word after 6 years of schooling, Perhaps this should be the first objective.

You can teach the 4 high frequency spelling patterns for each phoneme in spoken English. It is next to impossible to “teach” someone the “correct” spelling. They have to be memorized.

If you know an average of 4 high frequency spellings per sound, you can spell 85% of the words in the dictionary . . . . Perhaps after about a half dozen tries if your have never seen the word spelled before.

It is easier to memorize the “correct” spelling from a set of less than a half dozen alternatives than it is to memorize the dictionary. It turns the task of spelling into a multiple-choice test.

On-line spelling tests tend to be of the multiple choice variety.

[ ] sizzerz /’siz3rz/
[ ] sissers
[ ] scissers
[ ] scissors
[ ] cizzers

The starting point might be to ask the student to give the dictionary pronunciation guide spelling for the word. If you can spell *siz’rz, then you can ask, what are the ways that s and z are spelled in English.

/s/ s, c, ss, se, ce, sc, st, ps, sch, cc,
song, city, mess, scene, listen, psychology, schism, flaccid, horse, juice

/z/ s, z, x, zz, ss, ze, se
has, zoo, xylophone, fuzz, scissors, breeze, *hose

It is easier to learn a dictionary key because /s/ is always
and the written always represents the phoneme /s/.

No writing system is perfect but almost all other alphabetical
writing systems do a better job of representing speech than the
one adopted by English speakers.

Comment by Steve Bett — December 30, 2009 @ 2:40 pm
A key ingredient, to any subject matter, is using knowledge in context. It is important to learn strategies and this is especially true of vocabulary. Adding further dimensions, i.e. auditory and visual, allows the student to have a more dynamic interface and learning experience.

Since the summer of 2009, more than 10,000 users around the world have utilized a ton of innovative features and learned words using the VocabSushi method. Located at http://www.vocabsushi.com this is a no cost solution for differentiated learning.

I’m gearing up for the GRE in a few months. There are many other options but would end up costing hundreds of dollars. An app for mobile devices is also soon to be released.

Comment by David Breitzmann — December 30, 2009 @ 5:42 pm