It’s a pyjama day today. Yes, I know what you’re thinking, “It’s always a pyjama day for Lyn!”. Well, in spirit, yes, yes it is, but today, I’m participating in the flesh too. The reason for this is I’m having a good rest after a very fruitful, very busy week.
I have spent the last two days in Brisbane with the Catholic Education Office, talking to their Education Officers and school leaders about spelling. It was a great honour to have been consulted in this way, and meeting these groups of people has made me very optimistic about the future of primary teaching for this system.
There was such earnest will to raise the quality of spelling instruction here that the organisers needed to create a waiting list for the principals’ day. The auditorium became a standing-room-only space as the group of 20 or so invited principals swelled to 80+ leaders, all willing to sacrifice their Friday to hear about spelling. My goal was to reassure them that they were on the right path, while not burying the urgency of the mission.
It’s urgent because all the skills leading up to and away from spelling can and should be explicitly taught if fluent, strategic writing is the desired outcome. It’s urgent because in schools all over the diocese, country, anglophone world, teachers only have some, not all of the knowledge and resources to teach these skills well.
Spelling is the lynchpin of the whole thing. Step by step, we looked at those skills together. We looked at the nature of the lexicon, we looked at phonics pitfalls, we looked at high frequency words, we looked at systems, practice, and progress.
How did I end up here?
Possibly because I’ve been writing and field-testing guides to teaching spelling for the last two decades. The first published edition of Spelling for Life came out in 2011 and since then I have had the honour of writing a second edition. I thought, at the time, that my book, with its photocopiable worksheets and scripts was enough. But it’s clear that in a busy classroom, with a crowded curriculum, and a paucity of foundational information given to newly trained teachers, that a book isn’t quite enough. There has to be:
- a system,
- ongoing training,
- clear resources, and
- support every step of the way.
This is what my work has sought to address for all these years. I’m delighted to say that interest in this at scale is becoming a joyous reality.
No pressure there then.
It’s no small job, but it looks a lot bigger in the face of certain myths about English spelling. Prepare for some mythbusting.
Firstly, teachers don’t have to carry the history of the English language in their heads. I mean it always helps, but we can teach spelling well, nonetheless. Teachers don’t have to have a working knowledge of Latin and Greek. No harm in it, again, but if they are really going to be more effective, they have to a working knowledge of two things:
- How English words are formed
- How people remember words
Take the misconceptions around how words are formed. On any given day you’ll see memes on social media about how crazy English spelling is, or how English is “the hardest language to learn”, or how spelling isn’t important because yuo can raed htis, rihgt? And anyway, Spellcheck!
I beg to differ.
Resetting doesn’t just mean adopting new methods, it also means letting go of the myths. And there are millions of resources out there that reinforce the myths. It’s not going to be easy.
In the high frequency words section of my presentation, I talk about myths and facts. One of the biggest myths is that some words defy explanation. The slide below illustrates:
Another myth is that word retention and retrieval are acts of visual memory. We did an experiment to show that it’s not true. With that fact firmly in mind, I ask the question, “If you want to build the structures in the brain that facilitate accurate recall of letter sequences, why would anyone spend time on visual exercises (i.e. colouring letters in, attending to letter shapes, playing with fonts etc.) when it’s not visual?”
The fact is that English spelling is a system, just like any other system, and can be taught systematically. Many people are already doing that.
The second problem though, even if 1. is kept in mind, is that you can tell all the word stories and introduce all the morphemes you like, but how are you going to get your students to instantly and effortlessly recall those letter sequences when they need them most, i.e. when they are writing to learn?
That’s the even harder part.
If we want to push the reset button on approaches to spelling at scale, we have to teach the system, and have a system. That’s why, after decades of testing and development, Spelling for Life, the 4-Step Process and the Morphology Masterclass offer the answers to 1. and 2. in a way that no other approaches do.
I returned to Brisbane a couple of weeks later to present two days of Spelling for Life: First for lower primary, and second for upper primary. There will be two similar PD days in Brisbane that are open to the public on Nov 1 and 2.
The interest from the diocese has been pleasingly high. I’m determined to match that interest with systematic, clear resources that can be adopted easily. It’s basically my life’s work.
It’s work that’s been used repeatedly, over many years, with hundreds, possibly thousands of children from all backgrounds with a wide range of abilities. It’s not something invented overnight.
Later, I returned once more to the diocese, and conducted three full days of video demonstration lessons with real children in real classrooms. The footage will be used as training guides for their teachers, long after I have left.
My online courses will also be available to help start teachers on this journey and help them review their practice. The honour and the responsibility are huge, but I have confidence and great optimism that together we’ll make a big difference.
Schools from everywhere are now turning their attention to spelling and are buying licences for their staff for the rest of 2024 and the year ahead.
So if you’re serious about pressing that reset button, look this way. My word for 2024 is scale. My resources are scaled up and ready to go!
Here are some ways you can press the "spelling reset button" now:
