How can primary special education students working at a ...



The Effect of a Journal-Writing Program

Encouraging Invented Spelling on the

Phonemic Awareness and Writing Level

Of Primary Special Education Students

Eleanor Parchem

Orchard Elementary

4200 Bailey Ave.

Cleveland, Ohio 44113

parchem1@

Abstract

This project was implemented to discover if a journal-writing program which encouraged developmental (invented) spelling could influence the phonemic awareness and writing level of primary special education students. Nine students worked individually with a teacher to write a sentence about a picture they had drawn, then worked with the teacher during mini-lessons drawn from the sentence. Testing results and observations indicated a significant improvement in letter identification and letter sound matching, reading and writing vocabulary, and level of writing development over the course of the study.

Introduction

How can primary special education students working at a preschool to kindergarten level develop their ability to write? This project looked at a primary cross-categorical (mixed disability) K-2 classroom in an urban elementary school in the mid-western United States. There were eleven students in the class in September 2008, aged six to eight years old. One student moved in November, and three more entered in winter 2009. Only the ten students from the original class were included in the study; however, one student moved one week before final data collection began, reducing the study sample to nine students. Six students were labeled learning disabled and three were developmentally handicapped. Eight of the students also had attention or behavior goals. Five students were Caucasian, two were African American, and two were Hispanic. Their writing and reading levels ranged from readiness (preschool) to mid-kindergarten level. Students in past years in this class made progress in letter/sound awareness and sight word knowledge, and made some progress in increasing their reading level; however, students did not apply this knowledge to decoding new words, and writing skills were poor. The ability to write increases special education students’ independence-it is a survival skill in class and life.

The teacher in this classroom has taught for 27 years in the district. She taught in an LD resource room in a private school in the same district, self-contained LD rooms, regular first grade, Reading Recovery (one-on-one reading instruction for at-risk first graders), and has been teaching in a cross-categorical classroom, mostly to primary students, for the last five years. During her years in Reading Recovery, she observed students move from at-risk of failure to grade level by building students’ reading and writing simultaneously.

The research question: To what degree will using a journal-based writing program which encourages the use of developmental spelling impact the phonemic awareness and writing developmental level of primary special education students?

Literature Review

An initial review of the literature on writing and special education found mostly information on handwriting, not writing content, and spelling instruction which seemed geared to older students. However, there was a great deal of literature discussing early writing development with young nondisabled children. The following is a sample of research on this topic.

Rieben, Ntamakiliro, Gonthier, and Fayol (2005) compared the effects of different methods of spelling instruction on letter knowledge, phonological awareness, reading, and spelling of five-year olds in France. The study is pertinent because French spelling has some of the same difficulties (silent letters, blends, and vowel combinations) as English. They placed 145 five-year olds into one of four groups. All four groups were taught thirty-six words in 18 instructional sessions over a six month span. One group practiced invented spelling with the words, one group copied the words with correct spelling, and the third group practiced invented spelling, but with individual feedback. A control group drew pictures for the words. The invented spelling with feedback group had a higher mean on all assessments, although only the orthographic tasks were statistically significant. The authors noted that practice with invented spelling had no negative impact on students’ ability to spell conventionally in post testing. They pointed out two factors when considering the lack of statistical significance for invented spelling with feedback and phoneme detection. Instruction only occurred for six hours over the school year, and students only received feedback about orthographic features, not phonemic elements. This study leads to the question of how invented spelling combined with both phonemic and orthographic feedback, with more sessions over a length of time, might affect writing and reading development.

Nixon and Topping (2001) evaluated the impact of a paired writing program on the writing development of a group of five-year old students in Scotland. The authors trained a group of eleven year old struggling students to conduct individual writing sessions with ten first year students. Tutors used a lesson flow chart as a guide. They had their tutees draw a picture, crafted and wrote a sentence with varying levels of support, and read the product. The tutor then made a good copy of the sentence for the younger child. Students in the paired writing group scored statistically higher than peers on a writing assessment tool developed by the authors. This study suggests the importance of one-on-one interactions with a more knowledgeable person for emergent readers and writers.

Ouellette and Senechal (2008) conducted a four-week long study on the effects of an invented spelling intervention on phonological/orthographic knowledge and word learning of a group of Canadian kindergarten children. Sixty-nine children were placed in one of three groups: the invented spelling group, a group trained in phonological awareness, or a picture drawing group. All three groups were taught the same twenty words, composed from a set of thirteen letters. For the target group, words were presented one at a time, and children were asked to write the words as best as they could. The instructor then talked to children individually and provided feedback which praised their work, then suggested another spelling which was slightly more advanced. In pre-post test comparisons, the invented spelling group performed slightly better, but with statistical significance, than the control groups in decoding, reading familiar words, phonological awareness, and permissible letter sequences. The authors concluded that encouragement of invented spelling combined with feedback designed to support development toward conventional spelling is a procedure that can be used in the classroom.

Craig (2006) conducted a 16 week study comparing an adapted interactive writing program with a program of metalinguistic games in four half-day kindergarten classrooms. Eighty-seven children from a mostly white middle-class rural-suburban public school were randomly placed into one of two groups, which were divided into intervention groups of four or five. Each group received four twenty-minute lessons per week for sixteen weeks. The interactive writing group engaged in shared, interactive, or guided reading followed by interactive writing and word building using words taken from the writing. The comparison group worked with the program Phonemic Awareness in Young Children: A Classroom Curriculum by Adams et al. (1998). The program consisted of a sequenced series of language games emphasizing phonological awareness and alphabetic training. Results of the study showed no statistical difference in phonological awareness spelling and pseudoword reading between the two groups; however, the interactive writing group scored statistically higher on real word identification, passage comprehension and word reading development, a scale based on Ehri’s (1995, 1998) four phases of word reading development. Craig concluded that evidence showed a link between early writing development and reading comprehension and word reading. She stated that the contextualized approach of interactive writing allowed teachers to differentiate instruction, enabling students to advance in competence in phonological awareness, reading, and spelling. She suggested a need for a broader definition of explicit, systematic instruction than that provided by the National Reading Panel (NICHD, 2000), and questioned whether teachers following a scripted program would be able to meet learners’ differing needs. The article points to the possibility of using writing as a pathway to reading development for young children.

O’Connor and Jenkins (1995) investigated the effects of spelling instruction on five developmentally delayed kindergarteners in Washington State. Students received twenty individual spelling sessions lasting ten minutes. The children spent eight minutes constructing target words with magnetic letters, and two minutes writing the words. If a child had trouble spelling a word, the instructor modeled the correct spelling. The authors found that students who received spelling training outscored a control group on reading real words and phonetic nonwords. They suggested that the students had generalized insights from the spelling instruction, and applied them in reading. They did not discover a significant difference between the sample and control groups in auditory blending or segmenting, which they attributed to the small sample and the reading program used in the class, which emphasized sound blending with all children. The authors analyzed the spelling development of students in the sample and control groups, and found that all of the students in the sample had moved from a prephonetic to a phonetic spelling stage, while the developmental level of the control group remained unchanged. O’Connor and Jenkins concluded that students with disabilities need more explicit explanation of the alphabetic principle than phonics instruction alone can give. This article did not explore the possibility of writing instruction using invented spelling, but it did use a developmental scale to evaluate the program. This suggests the possibility of individualizing special education students’ literacy program to provide an understanding of the reading process through writing as well as reading instruction.

The previous research studies presented evidence that supporting developmental spelling instruction has a positive impact on both the reading and writing abilities of young children. Rieben, et al (2005), Nixon and Topping (2001) and Ouellette and Senechal (2008) discussed the need for an older student or teacher to support emergent writers with feedback to support further development. O’Connor and Jenkins (1995) talked about writing with special education students. None of these studies discussed using journals to teach writing and reading concurrently to special education children.

Kid Writing, by Eileen Feldgus and Isabel Cardonick (1999), appeared to address the research question, although they did not explicitly include special education students. During a Kid Writing lesson, students use any phonemic and letter-writing knowledge they have to write a sentence about a picture they have drawn. The teacher works with the students and uses the writing sample to make a few teaching points. At the end of the lesson, students share their work, and the teacher presents whole group minilessons based on that day’s writing. Minilessons can include letter/sound work, sight vocabulary development, and/or analogy work. It was decided to use Kid Writing as the journal-based program to explore the research question.

Methods

The study took place in a large, mid-western urban elementary school where 100% of the children receive free lunch. Participants were 9 students in a mixed-disability special education classroom, grades K-2. Disabilities represented in the study were Other Health Impaired (mainly ADHD), Learning Disabled, and Developmentally Handicapped. The group was racially diverse, with 50% Caucasian, 30% African American, and 20% Hispanic. There were three girls and six boys.

Students were given the following assessments related to letter/sound knowledge and writing: Letter Identification Test (Clay, 93), a sight word test using words taken from the district’s reading series, Clay’s Writing Vocabulary Test (Clay, 93), Hearing Sounds in Words (Clay, 93), and The Conventions of Writing Developmental Scale (Feldgus, 2003).

Clay’s Writing Vocabulary Test is supposed to be administered individually; however, due to time constraints in the classroom, it was presented to two students at a time. Students were encouraged to write as many words as they could in ten minutes. They were given prompts if necessary. One point was given for every word students could write, including their names. In the Hearing Sounds in Words sentence dictation task, students were read a sentence with 37 phonemes, one word at a time. One point was scored for every reasonable phoneme/letter match. For example, if a student wrote ‘k’ for the /c/ in ‘car’, it was scored as a correct match because the student heard the phoneme correctly.

Tests were administered in September 2008 and April 2009. Pre- and post-test scores were then compared for statistical significance. The researcher also kept a log of interactions with students during journal writing sessions recording students’ compositions, what the students wrote, and teaching points chosen by the researcher. The log sheet had sections to record the students’ sentences, which were marked above the words to show what students wrote, teaching points that were always presented on a whiteboard, letters or words the students wrote independently, and teacher comments. In addition, student work samples were collected monthly, and analyzed for changes in sentence content and signs of emerging phonemic awareness.

Beginning in late September 2008, students participated in daily journal writing using the Kid Writing format (Feldgus, 2007).

1. The student draws a picture and tells the story or information to the teacher.

2. The student writes the story using “kid writing.” The teacher assists the child in articulating the words slowly enough to write letters for as many phonemes as they can.

3. The teacher underwrites the student’s story with “adult writing”; i.e., conventional spelling, in order to provide the child with a model of conventional spelling. The teacher praises both the student’s correct spellings and attempts at phonetic spelling. He/she then chooses one or two teaching points to present to the child on a whiteboard.

4. Students share their writing, and the teacher chooses several teaching points to present to the whole class.

Lessons ran one 50 minute class period daily, and the teacher was usually able to work individually with three students in this time period. While the teacher was working with a student, the other children worked at literacy centers including computer, listening, letter/word work, and free choice book reading.

Results

A significant relationship was found between pre-and post-test scores for all assessments. The Letter Identification Test has a possible score of 54 points; 26 upper and lower case, plus g and a that are found in many texts. In the Letter Identification Test, the mean pre-test score was 37.5, and the post-test mean was 49.8. The T-Test showed a significant relationship between pre-and post test scores at p = .004. All students showed growth in letter identification knowledge. Student 2 was repeating kindergarten and therefore was receiving letter reinforcement in the classroom as well as in the special education resource room where the study took place.

TABLE 1 Comparison of pre/post test letter identification scores

[pic]

In the Sight Vocabulary Test, the mean pre-test score was 2.4 words, and the post-test mean was 18.9 words. The T-Test showed a significant relationship between pre-and post test scores at p = .007. All students showed growth in sight word knowledge. Students 1 and 2 could read no words on the pretest.

TABLE 2 Comparison of pre/post test sight vocabulary scores

[pic]

In the Writing vocabulary Test, the mean pre-test score was 3.3 words, and the post-test mean was 18.9 words. The T-Test showed a significant relationship between pre-and post test scores at p = .0004.

TABLE 3 Comparison of pre/post test writing vocabulary scores

[pic]

The mean pre-test score in the Hearing Souncs in Words sentence dictation task was 3.3 sounds recorded , and the post-test mean was 18.9 sounds. The T-Test showed a significant relationship between pre-and post test scores at p = .0005. Student 1, who showed the smallest difference between pretest and posttest scores on this test, has been diagnosed with a possible hearing loss. Student 7 is in a first grade homeroom where much attention is given to letter/sound knowledge.

TABLE 4 Comparison of pre/post test scores on hearing Sounds in Words Test

[pic]

The mean pre-test score on the Conventions of Writing Developmental Scale was 3.2, and the post-test mean was 4.6. The T-Test showed a significant relationship between pre-and post test scores at p = 5.02E-09.

TABLE 5 Comparison of pre/post test scores on The Conventions of Writing

Developmental Scale

[pic]

Sentence content improved in length and complexity of subject matter for eight students. Fall writing products were an average of 7.6 words, while spring products averaged 12.2 words.

All but one student improved their ability to record the sounds they heard in words, as well as showing an increase in sight vocabulary and use of classroom resources (word wall, class lists, etc.). Students recorded an average of 42% of the sounds in their writing products from a sample taken in September 2008. In March 2009, the average was 74%. Student 1 recorded fewer sounds in words in March.

Discussion

This study explored the effect that a journal based writing program that encouraged invented spelling would have on the phonemic awareness and writing level of special education emergent readers and writers. Results of pre-and post-testing showed significant improvement in letter recognition, sight vocabulary, writing vocabulary, sound-letter matching, and writing level. Students were observed to increase their ability to write sight words over the course of the study, although they required a great deal of repetition to take on new letters and words. Some students who focused on letter learning in the fall were taking on words by March. By the end of the study, all but one student were consistently writing the first letters of words, most were recording ending sounds, and six students were writing some correct vowels and blends. Several students learned to use classroom resources to assist them in their writing; the word wall, alphabet chart, and name chart (students’ first names next to their photos). As the study progressed, several students wanted to write their stories independently, but they had difficulty because they couldn’t hold a sentence in their memories long enough to write a sensible sentence. Sentences were written with words skipped or repeated, and students were unable to read back their work. To assist the students, the teacher brought the students to her to compose a story together, which was repeated several times before they went back to their seats to write. She also modeled and encouraged students to reread after writing every word. Most students continued throughout the study to need to sit with the teacher to compose and write. The teacher taught mini-lessons to individuals and the group based on student’s writing. She taught letter formation and sight word fluency. She also used analogy to help students use known words to write new words. For example, one student was shown how to use ‘is’ to write ‘his’. The teacher also used Elkonin boxes to teach hearing sounds in words in order, as described in Clay (1993).

What are elements of this program which make it so successful? Rieben, Ntamakiliro, Gonthier, and Fayol (2005) found that encouraging invented spelling in emergent writers has no negative effects on the development of standard spelling. Results of the Writing Vocabulary Test in this study, which scored only correctly spelled words, agree with those findings. Nixon and Topping (2001) discussed the importance of having novice learners work with an expert, in their case, older children. A key element of the Kid Writing program used in this study is the interaction with the teacher during and after writing. During writing, the teacher assisted children with articulating words, emphasizing phonemes as needed. This aspect of the program was particularly helpful for this special education class where all nine students receive speech language services. Children who could not articulate sounds in words could hear the teacher say them slowly and clearly. After the children wrote their story or information, the teacher wrote under their product using conventional spelling, providing a correct model while at the same time valuing the students’ efforts. Finally, the teacher supported the students’ learning with individual and class mini-lessons to scaffold their learning at a higher level. Ouellette and Senechal (2008) found that encouragement of invented spelling, combined with feedback leading toward conventional spelling, could be a powerful strategy in the classroom. Kid Writing appears to be an effective way to do both.

How might the Kid Writing program have influenced test results? Students were taught unknown letters during individual mini-lessons, as they were needed, so children saw immediately how the knowledge could be applied in their writing. They also saw the teacher model correct letter formation as she wrote the corrected sentence under the students’ work. The same process was at work for learning to write new sight words. Once could expect from this an increase in letter knowledge and writing vocabulary, as was the case. Similar scores in the sight vocabulary test, a reading task, and the writing vocabulary test reflect a possible relationship between reading and writing vocabularies for early literacy learners. An increase in the ability to record sounds in words was expected, given the procedures in kid writing for articulating words and emphasizing phonemes through the word as the student writes. The teacher also made use of sound and letter boxes during mini-lessons, which may have contributed to an increase in the Hearing Sounds in Words test. The Kid Writing program supplied the structure and modeling that enabled all children in the study to move up a full level in their development. The Conventions of Writing Developmental Scale places students’ writing on a continuum from emerging, scribbling, to conventional. In the fall, students at level 2, pictorial, where students draw and tell about a picture and imitate writing, and level 3, precommunicative, where students use letters, print their own name or a few known words, and attempt to read what they wrote. In the spring, all students had moved to level 4, semiphonetic, and six students were moving into level 5, phonetic writing. In level 4, students match some letters to sounds, usually write the beginning letters of words, write with correct directionality, spell some sight words correctly, and write one meaningful sentence. At level 5, students write reasonable beginning and ending sounds, include some vowels, write two meaningful sentences, and space words, although spacing may vary. Three students would probably have scored at level 5 if the tester had provided time to write two sentences, but this was not practical due to time/classroom management constraints.

Kid Writing took up a considerable amount of the literacy period; forty-five minutes to an hour daily. Is it worth the investment in time? Craig (2006) noted in her study a link between developmental writing and reading. Although not included in this study, Student 7, who had the highest posttest scores on most evaluations presented here, was also reading at the highest level in the class by March, approaching grade level in his oral reading ability. O’Connor and Jenkins (1995) also found a link between writing and reading, specifically for special education students. They concluded that special education students need more explicit explanation of the alphabetic principle than phonics instruction alone can give. Perhaps they also need the relationship between reading and writing highlighted more specifically. Students with behavior, attention, and learning deficits were engaged during one-on-one interactions with the teacher. Differentiation of instruction for different abilities was not an onerous additional step in planning, but a natural part of working with individuals. Whole class follow-up teaching points (mini-lessons) were chosen to address a variety of needs, using several ways of learning about words and letters; visual analysis of sight words, articulation of phonetically regular words, and analogy between known and unknown words.

Several factors limit the significance of this study. The sample group of nine students was very small. Illnesses, suspensions, and school events all interrupted regular lessons at some point. There was no control group, so it is impossible to tell if test increases are a direct result of the program, or some other aspect of instruction. No record was made of teaching points the teacher addressed during whole class mini-lessons. This record is important to make sure the instructor is presenting a balanced program of letter/word work over the course of a year. For example, the teacher may have done less analogy work than she thought, and an accurate log of mini-lesson topics would make it easy to spot such oversights. Finally, the teacher had no in-service in using the Kid Writing program; she developed her classroom routine based on the book and information provided by Dr. Feldgus in e-mail correspondence.

Although the results were very encouraging for this small group of special education emergent writers, future research could investigate results for a larger sample, using a control group. Researchers might also investigate the degree of effect the program has for specific disability groups.

References

Adams, M., Foorman, B. Lundberg. I., & Beeler, T. (1998). Phonemic awareness in young

children: a classroom curriculum. Baltimore: Brookes.

Clay, M. (1993). Reading Recovery: A guidebook for teachers in training. Portsmouth, NH:

Heinemann.

Clay, M. (1993). An observation survey of early literacy achievement. Portsmouth, NH:

Heinemann.

Craig, S. (2006). The effects of an adapted interactive writing intervention on

kindergarten children’s phonological awareness, spelling, and early Reading

development: a contextualized approach to instruction. Journal of

Educational Psychology, 98, 714-731.

Ehri., L. (1995). Phases of development in learning to read words by sight. Journal of Research

in Reading. 18, 116-125.

Ehri., L. (1998). Grapheme-phoneme knowledge is essential for learning to read words in

English. In J. Metsala & L. Ehri (Eds.). Word recognition in beginning literacy (pp. 3-40).

Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Feldgus, E. & Cardonick, I. (1999). Kid writing: a systematic approach to

phonics, journals, and writing workshop. Chicago IL: Wright Group/McGraw-

Hill.

National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. (2000). Report of the National

Reading Panel: Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific

research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction (NIH Publication

No. 00-4769). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Nixon, J. & Topping, K. (2001). Emergent writing: the impact of structured peer

Interaction. Educational Psychology, 21, 41-58.

O’Connor, R. & Jenkins, J. (1995). Improving the generalization of sound/symbol

Knowledge: Teaching spelling to kindergarten children with disabilities. The

Journal of Special Education, 3, 255-275.

Ouellette, G. & Senechal, M. (2008). Pathways to literacy: a study of invented

Spelling and its role in learning to read. Child Development, 79, 899-913.

Rieben, L., Ntamakiliro, L., & Gonthier, B. (2005). Effects of various early writing

practices on reading and spelling. Scientific Studies of Reading, 9, 145-166.

Appendix A. Observation form for recording student/teacher Interactions during kid-writing lessons.

|Date |Sentence |Whiteboard Work |Writing Vocab. |Comments |

| | | | | |

Appendix B:Snapshot of Kid Writing Workshop

January 1, 2007

Eileen G. Feldgus, Ed.D.

eileenfeldgus@

Steps in Kid Writing Workshop:

Child draws picture and tells story or information to teacher. This is the planning stage – “Draw your story!” or “Draw your information!” – sometimes referred to as “thinking picture.”

Child writes the story using "kid writing." The teacher helps the child stretch through words the child does not yet know how to spell (I hrd a lt v ld fundr and thr wz ltng). The teacher stretches through with a “moving target” – making the consonant sound that she is up to louder and longer while keeping the sound in the context of the word.

Teacher underwrites the child's story in "adult writing" using conventional spelling so that the child has a model of correct spelling. (I hrd a lt v ld fundr and thr wz ltng / I heard a lot of loud thunder and there was lightning). The teacher (1) Praises the child's conventional spellings - "You remembered how to write and" (2) Praises the child's logical attempts to spell words phonetically - "You figured out the h sound at the beginning of the word heard and the rd sound at the end!" and (3) Teaches one or two new points - "The word was does sound like it has a z at the end but it's really an s; thunder really begins with a th (even though children sometimes say “funder.”

Teacher teaches mini-lessons about writing to the class based on students' work and needs - "I noticed a lot of children are saying the word thunder with an f sound - Watch my mouth, it's really th!" and "It's easy for me to read Tamika's writing because she remembered to leave spaces between her words." Teacher ALWAYS uses a white board or highlighting tape for emphasis of the key teaching points while teaching mini-lessons. Typically three children a day; three teaching points per child – “featured authors”

( Sometimes children "publish" their work by rewriting it or typing it on a computer. Kindergarten children usually do not publish their work.

Why encourage children to use PHONICS-BASED SPELLING for words they have not yet learned?

( Children move through stages of spelling development more rapidly because they must think about the sounds and letters in words. Children's reading ability develops more rapidly because children are focusing on the meaning of writing and on phonics.

The content of children's writing improves because children can maintain their train of thought. They don't have to make long stops to find spellings; once they learn how to "sound out" or “stretch through” words, they will not need constant assistance with each word.

( Children's writing vocabulary improves because children can use their rich oral vocabulary while writing.

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