Tuesday, September 20, 2005
Inventive Spelling
I was interested to hear the comments today and Friday about the reading regarding the student who used inventive spelling. Every teacher who commented indicated that they had a problem with the spelling not being corrected by the teacher at the time of writing. I would like to point out that the student was in KINDERGARTEN and that most kindergarten students do not have many vocabulary words let alone know how to spell or even form all the letters of the alphabet. I think this is a great example of teachers getting so tunnel-visioned about their assignments that they are missing the bigger picture. What is the student learning? Was the student able to communicate with faulty spelling? The assignment was to produce an illustrated book which she did. If this had been a 9th or 10th grade student then the spelling error would not have been acceptable but here the example was about a student just starting to write and create. Would she have loved the process if her first attempt was criticized for her spelling? Do we turn students off to learning when their first attempt isn't perfect? And isn't this the very thing that we stated upset us about our students? Where is the love of learning? Did we kill it?
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Jan beat me to posting about this! As I mentioned to today's group, I wanted to post about this because I found it very interesting that many teachers on both days had such a visceral reaction to this part of the reading. I also would echo that this was Kindergarten. Until recently, students didn't really write at all in Kindergarten - they didn't really start writing until the end of 1st grade or beginning of 2nd. (They may have practiced writing letters, but not titles of a book.) In this example, not only was she writing, but she wrote something we could all understand. I'm not a Language Arts teacher, but I seem to recall being told a lot about "getting your ideas on the paper" then going back and revising for spelling, grammar, etc. I think for a Kindergarten student (and remember, I have one right now), this was actually an amazing accomplishment. I would agree that if this was an older student (maybe 3rd or 4th grade) I would expect more immediate feedback from the teacher, but I share Jan's concern about killing the love of learning in students. Maybe this is why nobody wants to raise their hands in our classes?
ReplyDeleteI agree that we all tend to lose focus on the big picture instead of what matters...this lttle girl constructed her own story and was able to expand on her ideas as a kindergartner. That's amazing! It reminds me of Brian's experiment and how no one considers the sponge as part of the experiment but just looks at the end result. One thing to explore over the next few weeks in our own classrooms could be where are we killing the love of learning and how can we create classrooms that instead foster that love and expand upon it? This would be a good big group brainstorming session. We could even talk about our own experiences or what we see in our classes. This would take some serious opening up and sharing.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the challenge, Anne. As I discussed with the group on Tuesday, this was the passage I discussed as well. What I thought about was giving students the opportunity to discover mistakes, have their "ah-ha" moments...all within my class. I would want to ensure at the high school level that they made discoveries beyond just their first writing, reaction, or reading. This was my challenge piece. Could I create such opportunities for individual discovery? And, what would that exploration and reflection look and sound like?
ReplyDeleteThis discussion reminds me of a spelling incident involving my eight-year-old nephew, Tyler, about two weeks ago. Tyler was (ironically) having difficulty spelling the word "development." Instead of giving him the correct spelling, his father told him to keep sounding it out and trying until he got it right. By the time Tyler discovered the correct spelling, he was in tears because he was so frustrated. I don't really know what to make of all this, but I know that spelling is certainly not worth anyone's tears. I think Tyler was frustrated not so much by his own endeavors, but by the fact that someone who clearly knew the right answer was standing over him and keeping that answer a secret. This is one of my concerns in the classroom: I don't want to be the keeper of secret right answers who is patiently waiting for my students to struggle until they hit the response that I knew all along. I find it relatively easy to approach reading and discussion from a constructivist perspective because to me, these are individual activities that rely on personal connections. But I need some solid, conrete ideas as to how to teach grammar and spelling in a constructivist way. When I teach punctuation, for example, I try to have them figure out rules on their own, but to be honest, it feels like we're just dancing around the point until I bring it home through a direct approach. Does anyone else feel this way?
ReplyDeleteI'm by no means on expert on constructivism, but I think there is a difference between constructivist teaching and pure discovery teaching. My interpretation of constructivist thinking is that they would say you don't teach grammar and punctuation purely by having students figure it out on their own. What a constructivist would say, however, is that you need to assess the students' current level of knowledge on these topics before trying to teach them. You need to figure out where they currently are, where you want them to be, and then how to get there. I think it's pretty impossible to have students "discover" spelling - especially in this messed up language called English. I think a constructivist would not agree with the approach the father took (although I'm not sure exactly what the "right" constructivist approach would be). But I don't think that necessarily translates to "they can't do any writing without correcting their spelling" like in the example from the reading.
ReplyDeleteKristin,
ReplyDeleteI agree with Karl. I think spelling is not to be discovered, but if I were Tyler's father I would have looked at his first attempt and said this and this are right, but this and this is incorrect. Then I would have asked him if he was willing to try again. Kids have different tolerance levels...some might try twice and be frustrated while others might think it's a puzzle to figure out and they would not appreciate you telling them the answer. To teach grammar you might want to have two lists (side by side?) where one list is right and the other is wrong. After comparing the two lists, students could write their own grammar rule. Does this sound reasonable? BTW, I just "taught" my calculus kids the product rule for finding the derivative of a product of two functions using a discovery approach. It was such fun for them when they found the rule, even though they knew I knew the rule from the start!
Barbara
I think that there can be different "levels" of constructivism in the classroom. I am under the impression that if we left the entire learning process up to the students to complete then we would be doing a greater disservice to society. I think that the important thing to remember is the teacher is thought of as a facilitator to the educational process and not just a "giver" of information. I think that there are times to give information and a time to allow investigation. The scary part is when the "learners" start to think for themselves and become "life long learners". In science sometimes this can be easier than in other disciplines. The experimental process allows the students to formulate their own theories and hypothesis and then the experiment is designed and redesigned so that the theory can be rewritten until a suitable explanation can be reached. This is what I think of when I think about constructivism in the classroom.
ReplyDeleteI have a GT 2nd grader. He doesn't spell words correctly and depending on the assignment,I usually let them go. I agree with Brian in the sense that there is a time for investigation and a time to just give the information. The key is making sure that you don't stomp the love for learning by wanting everything to be perfect. My son loves school so much and I don't want to be the one to turn him off! I find that if I "ride" him too much that he gets frustrated. I think of how far he has come in 2 years and I know that all of the spelling will come in its own due time. In fact, he may take after his mother, and struggle with spelling but learn to adapt.That is a good skill to have-adapting!!!!
ReplyDeleteI have just come across this blog on my search for a student centered, constructivist spelling program. I teach at an international school in Berlin. The school teaches in German and English. The class I teach is made up of grade one and grade two students. The German program they use is constructed so that once the students have understood how to use it, they can learn the letters and the spelling patterns required in grade one and two pretty much on their own and at their own pace. It has such clear and easy to understand instructions, clear pictures, texts the students are REALLY interested in and constantly encourages the children to write independently. The program values the understandings about letter sounds that the children have. It starts of with a fool proof letter-picture alphabet which the children use to construct their first words. This way, the children can use all letters straight away to write messages. They do not know the letters by heart straight away, but through their frequent and enthusiastic writing, they learn the sounds of the letters very quickly. Bit by bit, the children are introduced to the different spelling phenomena. Many have told me that this is impossible in English because it is so irregular, but I do not want to believe that. With this program, the teacher has time then to work with individual students. The students can choose when to work with the program and when to engage in creative, independent writing. I have seen how these students love to write and are not under or over challenged. I would love to find a program like this in English. Do any of you know of such a program?
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