B2. Word-Level Reading and Spelling
Decoding and spelling are interconnected skills that reinforce each other. Students use the foundational skills of phonemic awareness and alphabetic knowledge to begin to build their decoding and spelling skills.
Reading
Beginning readers practice blending sounds to read and write words and gradually start recognizing common words by sight. This may seem like memorization, but the reader’s brain is engaging in the process of orthographic mapping – the process by which the brain connects the sounds of spoken language with their written forms and the meaning of the word, storing these connections in long-term memory.
When a child hears a word, sees its written form, and connects it to the word’s meaning repeatedly, their brain starts to link the sounds (phonemes) with the specific letter patterns (graphemes) that represent them. Over time, this allows the child to recognize and spell words quickly and accurately without needing to sound them out each time.
NOTE: Orthographic mapping helps children become fluent readers by making word recognition automatic and effortless. The number of exposures for orthographic mapping to occur in the brain differs from learner to learner. However, all students learn to read words through this process. It’s also important to note that orthographic mapping is a cognitive process, not an instructional activity.
Assessment of Word-Level Reading and Spelling
Assessing a student’s word-level reading and spelling involves several approaches.
- Universal screening can help determine a student’s ability to apply their phonics skills to nonsense words, check automatic word recognition for high-frequency words, and measure oral reading fluency through timed passages. In Grade 2, all students must screened at least once using a provincially approved screening tool.
- Diagnostic assessment tools, such as phonics assessments and spelling inventories, can help you pinpoint the specific skills your students need support with. Your school board may have suggested diagnostic assessment tools.
- Classroom observations, such as listening to a child read or analyzing students’ everyday writing can provide valuable information on their phonics skills, their orthographic knowledge, and their morphological awareness.
- Spelling dictations that focus on the code/concepts explicitly taught (not a list that is given in advance and memorized) can also provide a window into the skills a student has consolidated and those still being worked on.
By combining these methods and observing performance, you can gain insights into students’ strengths and areas needing improvement, guiding targeted instruction and support.
A Note About Programs: Using a phonics program that has a detailed scope and sequence, simple-to-follow daily routines, and pre-made lesson plans can significantly reduce the time needed for planning in this area. Your board may have selected a program they are encouraging you to use. There are advantages to using a common scope and sequence across your school or board, however there is no one Ministry recommended program.
Spelling
English spelling is complex, and relies on different elements of our language. English is “morphophonemic” which means words are spelled not just by how they sound, but also by what they mean. To be strong spellers, students must be proficient with several aspects of language, and integrate them together.
- Phonics is the foundation, where children learn the relationship between sounds and letters, such as how the letter <p> spells the /p/ sound.
- There are also patterns in our writing system (“orthographic tendencies”), where sounds may be more likely to be spelled a certain way based on their position in a word. For example, we teach students that the ‘best bet’ spelling choice for /k/ at the end of a word after a short vowel is <ck>.
- Students also need to consider the morphemes in a word when spelling. Morphemes are units of meaning, like bases, prefixes, and suffixes; they influence how a word is spelled.
Integrating these areas together help children understand how to spell words, why they are spelled that way, and how their meanings can change.
Teaching the Structure of Language
English often has a reputation for being overly complicated – sometimes so complicated that students just need to memorize how to spell many words! This reputation isn’t warranted – English has a predictable structure, but it takes understanding of the structure of sounds, spelling patterns and morphemes to spell. Many irregular words that we may have previously called “sight words” are in fact fully or partially regular, and we can still teach students to carefully analyze these words instead of memorizing them as whole units.
Hanna et al. (1966) found that:
- 50% of English words are fully regular;
- 36% are regular with the exception of one letter-sound link;
- 10% are regular if morphology and etymology are considered.
Taken together, this means that only approximately 4% of English words are truly irregular.
