Teacher Takeaway
Season 4 | Episode 30 | Assessing Spelling with Dr Tessa Daffern
In Season 4 | Episode 30 | We will be unpacking and discussing: How do we assess spelling effectively?
In this episode, we are joined by Dr Tessa Daffern. If you would like more information about Tessa and the work she does, please visit: https://www.tessadaffern.com/
View the show notes here: https://teachertakeawaypodcast.weebly.com/shownotes
- Broadcast on:
- 05 Oct 2024
- Audio Format:
- other
[Music] Hello and welcome to the Teach Out Takeaway podcast. This is season four, episode 30 and I am your host Alice Spiggers and in this episode we're going to be looking at spelling assessment for structured literacy. I'm really looking forward to this conversation. I have a very special guest joining me to unpack how do we assess spelling effectively in a way that aligns with the structured literacy approach and to help me unpack that really meaty question. I have the wonderful knowledgeable Tessa Defern. Hi Tessa. Hello Alice, it's lovely to join you this evening. Thank you so much for your time. No that's okay. Just a little bit about you Tessa before we dive into our conversation to so that our audience fresh their memories. You have been on the podcast before but I'll introduce you again. Dr Tessa Defern is an adjunct associate professor in the School of Education Solar Lab at Latrobe University and co-director of Literacy Education Solutions. Tessa has contributed to education in various capacities as a highly accomplished teacher and school leader, academic policy advisor, keynote speaker and consultant working with schools in Australia, the UK and New Zealand. Her research and consultancy work are driven by her passion for empowering teachers to implement evidence-based literacy instruction and assessment. Tessa's award-winning research and instructional resources have been disseminated widely both in Australian and international publications. She's also served as an academic advisor for curriculum reforms in Australia and was pivotal in writing the New South Wales K to 6 English syllabus. Tessa enjoys regularly delivering professional learning to teachers in schools and education sectors. You have a pretty impressive bio. You've been doing a lot of things of late. Yes I've kept myself very busy over many years. I don't like to sit still and although I do like to putter in the garden and literally putter with clay every now and then. But apart from that I'm just very passionate about supporting students and supporting teachers with literacy because I see that as such a fundamental life skill. We all need to be able to read and write and communicate in various forms in our everyday life and it excites me when I see students thriving and it upsets me when I see students struggling. So I've always been passionate to have any opportunity that I can to support children to improve their literacy skills. Yeah so I guess my journey really started interestingly as a musician it seems very far removed from being you know an academic researcher and consultant in the space of literacy education when actually I'd say that my very first point of inquiry came from when I was a musician and I actually do have a degree as a classical flute player and I had the privilege of being in various you know professional orchestras over the years just to you know in my very very early adult years and at the same time I was also tutoring some students in various capacities in the in the music industry I guess and I became really curious about you know how they learn to play musical instruments and and the importance of really guiding these students to learn how to play a musical instrument I wasn't a qualified teacher at the time and it just sort of sparked an interest in so okay how do I help these students and I kind of learned through experience in that field and then became very passionate about it and found myself doing a whole education degree and and then before I knew it I was launched launched into a classroom and all of a sudden you know despite having an education degree I had to somehow teach these students how to read and write and it's like okay how do I do that I'm not actually quite sure where to start even though apparently I'm a qualified teacher and so to be quite honest I I struggled from the very beginning to find my way as a classroom teacher and I could see straight away though with the students I had potential for everyone everyone had potential but I just felt like I was drowning in you know how do I do it how how maybe maybe you know I do have very high expectations of myself and and whatever I was doing was never good enough and so I was always asking myself questions about how I could do better as a classroom teacher and one of the the sticking points for me I guess in really early my career was gosh I've got such huge variety in my class in terms of students who can read and write and some students who you know can somehow do it really well you know that they write amazingly how how do they do it how do they come to where they are and then I've got some students who are really struggling how can I support those students and I can see that they can get very anxious when it when I ask them to read or write so it's also impacting their ability to you know engage in any learning regardless of the subject or the topic they they kind of avoid it so I started occasionally looking into the literature and you know research just very casually looking into okay well what's out there to support me because I felt like what I was doing wasn't quite right it wasn't the best approach but I didn't know what would be better and through my casual reading I discovered that there was actually very little research in the in the domain of helping students how to read and write words and specifically spelling I found was quite interesting because I had some students who were quite good at reading but they were not very good at spelling and so before I knew it I ended up you know doing a PhD I wasn't expecting to but I did did my PhD focusing on children's spelling and writing and ever since then I've embarked on that journey of trying to find more information about how to best support students and and in that journey I've you know found myself also supporting pre-service teachers through my academic roles and and teachers in schools as well so it's been an absolute pleasure to be able to be on that journey and even though I might be you know the person who or a person who has quite a lot of knowledge I still have many questions that I'd like to ask myself and and and seek answers to in terms of supporting students with their spelling development and I had the absolute privilege of being a key writer alongside many others to develop the New South Wales curriculum for the K to 2 and 3 to 6 English syllabus so it's been nice to be able to translate some of the research ever that's into classroom practice and curriculum developments it's definitely an exciting space the the curriculum reform space you know it's exciting to watch how things evolve and and where you know education goes in this space but I wanted to just briefly you know go back a little bit and touch on the fact that you know the the story that you just shared around how you felt when you when once you had your education degree and you were in a classroom it is is is a story that's you know often shared by a lot of people in education you know we we spend four years at university learning how to be teachers and we get into a classroom it's like I don't know how to teach spelling I don't know how to teach reading and writing and you know I watch from afar the stuff that you guys are doing with the solar lab and some of the other universities around Australia that are starting to shift and change that narrative which really really exciting to be able to watch that and see some of those pre-service teachers come out into our schools with that stronger foundation of this is how we do it this is how we have that greater impact yeah look I have to say like I certainly wasn't alone when I was teaching and feeling you know a bit lost in how to support students in these fundamental literacy skills I certainly wasn't alone but having said that over the years and I say in more recent times very recent times I've definitely seen a shift in many many educators across well I can speak for Australia I guess who have embraced a lot of the current research evidence on supporting students with their literacy skills and the knowledge that they're gaining through that is is really remarkable in such a short space of time and there's still a long way to go but it's very reassuring to see you know you know when I first started my PhD you know I was talking about the importance of morphology for example and you know that that was not a word that was spoken of before and and even other terminology like you know simple things that we might consider simple today language like a you know a diagram is two letters that represent one phoneme or a base word or a suffix or a prefix or you know phonings and and graphing and all that kind of technical language that you know 10 15 years ago was just unheard of in most classrooms or educators sort of talk it but increasingly I'm seeing that becoming more and more part of everyday language in every classroom teachers role and I'm also noticing that educators are starting to ask really good questions challenging questions thought-provoking questions informed questions and and I think that's a really sign really positive sign of of great shift in teacher pedagogical content knowledge and with teacher pedagogical content knowledge brings empowerment it allows teachers to be able to respond to students needs in a flexible responsive you know way without feeling like that they need to rely on anything that's very sort of scripted and directed you know not to say that direct direct instruction is not good so of course it needs to be often very direct and explicit but when teachers have autonomy to be able to make those decisions and direct that learning themselves based on the needs of the students in front of them then that's that's where we can I think maximize student learning empowerment of teacher pedagogical content knowledge hmm absolutely and I think it's exciting too to see that the kids starting to pick up that language and use that language as well in their everyday conversation you know absolutely teachers have had to do a lot of learning about what those terms mean but yeah absolutely Alice and you know if if teachers like within any language any any words if if adults use the words with the students the students or the children they'll pick that up and they'll use the language if we don't ever expose them or or use the language with the students then they'll never come to learn that language or use that language so we should never underestimate underestimate students capabilities and it's really I've written a paper that stems from my PhD research on you know what happens I think the title of the journal is something like what happens when a teacher uses meta-language to explain spelling skills or something like that and it's amazing if the teacher uses that language the students will learn to use that language as well and with that means that they have that much more explicit as opposed to implicit knowledge of how words are structured which is one of the characteristics one of the characteristics of what high performing spellers do they can explain or justify the sorts of strategies that they use to spell and they can explain how words are structured as well yeah if we a kid can spell and say you know and read Tyrannosaurus rex or pterotectal there's no reason they can't learn those meta-language words absolutely you talked a little bit about the research that you've done what have been some motivating factors for your research on spelling assessment and instruction oh well first of all I'd say that you know my research has focused primarily on spelling and the impact that that has on on broader literacy skills and also how to assess and teach spelling and I guess I was motivated by it motivated by that because I recognized that spelling does play a critical role in literacy development we know that spelling is a foundational skill that supports both reading and writing and potentially it can support students vocabulary development as well and we also know that research that from the research that spelling and reading are interconnected so if we're teaching spelling skills we're potentially teaching reading skills as well and I was also very motivated by the fact that you know in a given class you have such diverse learners and you know you'll have students who are really really amazing at their spelling skills and those who struggle and that's the reality of a classroom so one of the challenges that I faced and and I think teachers still face today is well how do I meet that diversity how do I cater for that diverse need and so my research has really aimed to try and find some solutions that are practical for teachers another thing too was that I recognize that there was a bit of a gap in current spelling and structural methods so when I was teaching spelling you know what was very common when I was a classroom teacher myself was you know very traditional method of learning words by roach you know memorizing lists of words and testing students on those words on a Friday so I sort of thought okay some students are fine with that they're okay but I'm not necessarily seeing that they're remembering those words and applying those words you know further down the track surely there's a better way you know and I wanted to find if there was a better way and in my early investigations in that I thought well the first thing I need to know is what do students know if I know what students know about spelling then that's going to be an important starting point so okay what assessments can I use and so I was motivated by assessment first I thought I need to know my students I need to understand where my students are at in order to support them and when I started looking at that I realized that the assessments that you know were largely available to teachers were very much based around whole word scoring you know you have a set of let's say 50 words 70 words or whatever it might be and they either get them right or wrong and you give you give them a score you might give them a spelling age and then they're put into a particular category they are the low or middle or high and that's how you group your students that's how you differentiate your students lesson the lessons for your students and I thought that seems rather crude crude way of you know it's still not diagnostic it's not informing I practice in any way I don't know what to do when I have these groups and then I also started to investigate other options and spelling error analysis became part of my practice and I was using you know inventories that were informed or are informed by what's called a stage theoretical approach to spelling development and that you know very much aligns with a piage each in notion of development whereby a difficulty in certain spelling skills indicates that you're not capable of moving until the next stage of learning it's very linear and so you need to teach them these you know pre other you know earlier simpler simpler skills first in order for them to proceed through these stages and very broadly and simplistically those stages implied that students need to master phonological skills first which are about you know hearing the sounds or the phonings in the words and encoding them using very basic phoning graphing correspondences you know words like you know catch for example at c at very you know that fundamental kind of which is important but it's not until they master those skills that then they proceed to learning more about the you know within word kind of leather patterns graphemes for long vowels for example and the different graphemes for long vowels and then once they've mastered that they're you know cognitively capable of learning about things like suffixes and prefixes and morphological aspects of spelling which is really about the meaningful elements of words and I thought well let's say out sounds neat that sounds nice and clear cut and orderly and sequential but I was observing by using those sorts of assessments that while error analysis was in you know informative in many ways it wasn't as clear cut as that and in fact it was quite um to the contrary where sometimes I would see students having some knowledge of certain suffixes you know like you know i and g in a word like um jumping for example and they were spelling those sorts of words correctly yet they were making other sorts of areas that might have seemed quite simplistic um with base words um so I thought well why don't we look at another approach to error analysis so through my PhD I looked at various theoretical frameworks and my PhD sought to analyze student spelling errors but rather than categorizing them into spelling stages I thought let's have a look at the phonological applications of spelling their orthographic applications of spelling and their morphological aspects of spelling and that aligned very nicely with a particular framework known as triple word form theory and through my you know various research studies that I've done I've been able to provide that empirical evidence to support that framework so through that I've developed you know different assessments the components of spelling tests is what they're known as that looks at their skills according to those particular components that's um it's it's such a fascinating area and it's it's one that clearly you can really go down a rabbit hole and you know be forever looking at what is most effective and how do we assess it you mentioned the triple word form theory as a framework for spelling assessment and instruction what is triple word form theory and how does it that theory inform spelling assessment and instruction triple word form theory is grounded in quite a lot of neurocognitive and behavioral research essentially it suggests that students are capable in the presence of explicit instruction of learning to use knowledge about the phonology of words which essentially is about understanding how the spoken words are structured in terms of syllables and phonings individual speech sounds and also orthography which is about knowing the phoneme graphing conventions of the written language but also understanding for example you know like proficient spellers have what we call heightened orthographic sensitivity so they understand what's plausible or legal in terms of graphing so certain letters that represent particular phonings but they're also aware of um graphing's graphing frequency so which graphing's are more common than others as well as their positional constraints and they may also know a little bit about the etymology of certain graphing's you know where certain graphing's originate from and so that's about orthography simultaneously morphology is part of that you know collective knowledge of spelling and that refers to understanding the meaningful units that make up English words and we know those meaningful units as more themes and it's not just knowing about knowing what the more things mean but knowing how they are spelled but in particular knowing how to combine more things to make different words and there are quite a few conventions related to that we can also bring in etymology when we're talking about more themes as well you know every morphing comes from somewhere every morphing has an origin so triple word form theory as the theory implies has there are three word forms and they are phonology orthography and morphology and in the presence of explicit teaching students can learn about those three word forms but more importantly they can learn to integrate them or cross map them or in other words coordinate them or combine them with increasing efficiency over time so we don't necessarily have to wait until one of those word forms are mastered before another can be introduced they can be taught simultaneously albeit to different levels of intensity or focus but it's not like one's one's contingent up upon another they can be learned in many ways together concurrently and over time with explicit teaching students can learn to coordinate these with increasing efficiency and autonomy to support them with their spelling skills and i would add with their reading as well so that's what triple word form theory is really all about it sounds you know rather sort of like a complex theoretical term and and it did start really just as a conceptualized idea that's sort of what a theory is it needs to be tested and and we test theories through different means so that's what i wanted to do through my research you know the idea sounded great and i thought well okay makes sense to me but let's test it the first starting point really is to develop an assessment that has those three word forms as distinct measures that are assessed so you need to then make sure that those assessments or those measures are valid and reliable and so a valid and reliable assessment of spelling can then you know be used to inform teaching purposes but a valid and reliable assessment needs to have you know particular features it's not just okay i'll just come up with some words that i think might be okay and test them and off we go you know to make sure that they are valid certain statistical measures are required yeah and you mentioned a little bit earlier around the components of spelling tests as a form of assessment that we can use to help us in this space what does that look like okay so the first one i did develop was actually targeting students in use three to six and that was the the components of spelling test for what i used and trialled as part of my PhD and when i conducted that assessment i thought i'd just need to make sure it's as concise as possible so the original iteration of that test had quite a lot more words than the current version has that's part of trialling and testing so the current version has 70 words that students write through dictation and across those 70 words there are over a hundred individual linguistic items that are analyzed that you you check for and what you're doing in that checking or that error analysis is checking for underlying linguistic skills that might be problematic for students that you know blocking their ability to spell certain words that particular test though is a real word measure and that's i think it's a valid and important measuring of what statistical evidence to show that but i've also developed other assessments as well to accompany the original components of spelling test so the cost real word version has is is the one that many many schools use and is is the most popular one and i've developed an online platform to go with that as well so that platform provides an automated error analysis and that saves teachers a lot of time and i certainly can understand while spelling error analysis is a very valuable technique to assess spelling it can be very time-consuming i can certainly attest to that when i had to analyze thousands of students spelling attempts in fact i've only just finished analyzing a whole suite of tens of thousands of words and so i completely understand how arduous that task is so through what i've been doing in my research and my work is to find a way to develop an online platform where the errors that students produce in their spelling if they make errors can be analyzed automatically by computer through very complex coding and and i've been able to achieve that so that's what many schools use so for years three to six or an above in some cases if they need that the students essentially type the words into an online platform and the errors are automatically analyzed and scored against norm-referenced data so get the sentiles and standard deviations and those raw scores are then also mapped to color coded instructional recommendations so it provides teachers with some data that can really inform their practice to you know it's diagnostic but it's also um comparative it allows them to compare their students performance against Australian norms and get a sense of you know where their students are sitting against where the expectations might be and it does that quite automatically but you know any assessment that you have so i've developed that is four year three to six and then developed an assessment for early years so for foundation two year two using the same approach um of course though younger students are generally not fluent at typing words on the on a device so what i do recommend for and and and this is what teachers do in different schools using it the costy the components of spelling tests for the early years the teachers um administer the tests like they normally would as a paper test and then the teachers type in the words that students have actually written very carefully of course and then the or all of the errors that students are making might make are analyzed and mapped to color coded instructional recommendations um and i do have a studio word assessment as well which i developed it's been um published in a peer or the development and testing of that has been published in a peer review journal um and that has it also undergone a lot of rigorous testing and statistical analysis to ensure it's a um a robust measure so you know it has strong you know psychometric properties um and i think that's really important because what it's very interesting i've noticed over the years you know spelling error analysis and the importance of teaching those three components of spelling so the the phonology orthography and morphology have become very you know kind of um hot topic at the moment i think which is great we want that but with that has come an abundance of a lot of um different resources and assessments that haven't really gone through um rigorous testing and i think that when we're using measures that are assessing students skills and spelling we want to make sure that they um you know objective measures and valid and reliable so that's i guess what i've aimed to achieve in the work that i've been doing is is validating and um testing these sorts of measures um so for example you know um you know there are different ways we can test for validity and reliability in an assessment so um one characteristic might be that an assessment has what we call content validity so that's where we're looking at um you know that a test particular test is actually meeting certain criteria in terms of you know the linguistic structures you know and that might be something that's informed by a theoretical framework like triple word form theory and construct validity can do that as well and we have measures like um you know internal consistency that will put the reliability of mitas as well so there's lots of different ways we can check for um these you know assessments to make sure that we we are making judgments that are quite you know as accurate as we possibly can yeah absolutely and it only benefits teachers in the classroom and then therefore their students yes even more exciting you mentioned that you've analyzed a rather large number of students spelling skills and knowledge through the assessments and you know through your research have there been anything kind of trends or patterns that you've noticed during that time or as things have evolved yeah certainly um well if i look at just um if i take one component at a time i'll start with the phonological component of spelling one thing that has stood out for me is that um we've got some students who might appear to to know um phoning graphing correspondences and they can apply that knowledge to one syllable words and and these students might be in the six five six you know they you know 10 11 12 year old students who might even be performing very well they might be considered your high performing spellers yet sometimes they still make mistakes whereby they are encountering a what we call polysyllabic or multi-syllabic word a word with many syllables and in the middle of that word uh those words there are very regular phoning graphing correspondences there's nothing kind of tricky about them in terms of encoding certain sounds or speech sounds or phonings um but because it's sort of they're stuck in the middle of a long word students are finding it hard to remember where they're up to and so they might miss a phoning altogether or maybe even whole syllable and so they're encoding of the medial or middle part of polysyllabic words is not quite accurate and it comes down to uh phonological working memory you know there's a limit to how much you can remember so the longer the word basically the harder it will be especially if it is an unfamiliar word or you know an unknown and completely unknown word um it's hard to remember all of the phonological constituents all the phonings in the word in order from left to right you know from beginning to end so students can make mistakes with that so um we can't assume that just because let's say we've had an excellent uh you know phonological or phonemic and phonics sort of program and in the early years we've done a fantastic job and the students know all their phoning graphing correspondences for you know common graphemes um doesn't necessarily mean that they can apply that knowledge when they're spelling longer words so we need to still provide students with the opportunity to practice segmenting uh longer words into syllables and phonings as one strategy to support them with their spelling so that's one aspect and one one particular phoneme that students find hard to detect is the schwa vowel phoneme so um and that that's the phoneme that is one of the most or probably the most common vowel phonings in English language spoken language and it occurs in an unstressed or unaccented syllable so if students are not hearing that phoneme in a word they might not be able to represent it in any way or form so it's phonology where while it may not be an essential you know um priority you know when there's so much else to teach it still exists we still need to focus on that to some extent as needed for even some high teaching spellers so that's that's phonology um and and we know even if i talk it um you know students learning to spell in the first year of school and they're just stringing together certain uh phonings to make a word to spell the word um there are certain graphemes that are harder to to blend or and segment than others so for example the combination of or the cluster of consonants st or in a word like string um it's quite hard um and so while we don't teach st or str as a blend you know as a unit as a phonological unit we still need to teach students how to combine those distinct phonings together to make st or because certain classes are harder than others when it comes to orthography the orthographic component uh it's an interesting one um in some ways there is a bit of a sealing effect for orthography students quite quickly learn the graphemes or let's common graphemes for let's say vowel phonings um that's not so much the issue as they get older they know you know xy and z are the different graphemes for this particular phoneme but what they find hard is to know which graphemes to use for certain words so in that regard it's kind of you know a hard skill to learn because it becomes increasingly more of a matter of learning specific words rather than learning graphemes for a particular phoneme so as students get older the focus for orthography should become much more fine-grained in terms of very very careful selection of words words that students need to learn to support them with their reading and their writing it's very much connected with vocabulary instruction rather than you know just for the sake of it i'm going to show you all the all the different graphemes for the long a phoneme and there are many of them um no okay that's not really the focus the focus is more i need you to learn to spell these particular words because they will be important for your reading and writing yes they will have long a but they don't necessarily have ten different graphemes you know here in these words so word knowledge is very important for orthography um but also there are some orthographic pictures that are hard for students to develop and they're generally the ones that have less consistency in their conventions so for example words that have certain letter patterns in an accentage final syllables um you know words that might end in le like a little but le can be is one very common way to spell the all clusters of sounds at the end of these words but there are other ways is le there's a l you know you l there's lots of different ways to spell um all in these uh sorts of words we don't really have easy ways to teach there's no consistent generalization for which letter combination to use in those instances so for that reason that that's hard to learn and that's it that's why it becomes quite worth specific in terms of you know teaching certain words and teaching them deeply teaching them well making sure students can use these words in a range of semantic contexts um but when we can teach uh you know the positional constraints of graphene's we should so for example you know simple example very simple example uh a word that starts with a surname is not going to be we're not going to use ck at the start of a word it's not plausible or legal in english language um so we will tell students that um but ck is common at the end of a word or base word you know after a short vow like it like in sick or lick or luck or um clock so that so those kinds of positional constraints can be taught so if they can be taught we should teach them and those sorts of um graphings are learned more quickly because they there are some generalizations that we can teach um when it comes to morphology uh some patterns or trends that i've noticed and might be any researcher to observe these trends uh really are the fact that inflected suffixes tend to be grasped generally more quickly than derivational suffixes so inflected suffixes are those that mark tense so you know ING or ED and SNES and also plurality so um for nouns so one baby two babies that kind of thing uh and also comparative and superlative suffixes so you know bigger biggest um they're the only inflected suffixes so because there are only a couple they tend to be learned more quickly and also they they occur in in very common words and and you know nouns and verbs we're using them all the time so it's not no surprise really and derivational suffixes are basically all the other suffixes and and the part of speech is changed when you add the suffix so when you add you know for example the suffix i-o-n in a word like location you're changing um the verb locate to a noun location so there are many many derivational suffixes and the words themselves can sometimes be quite complex um vocabulary and because there are many different types of derivational suffixes there are many generalizations we can teach and many words to teach so it's no surprise that they take longer to master um and you know it doesn't mean though you know we have to wait until students you know in E3 before we start that kind of instruction we can start to teach them about some of these simple inflected suffixes from the first year of school as soon as students can make very basic you know consonant vowel consonant nouns and verbs we can start to introduce the suffixes the other observation is that prefixes um there are some prefixes that students can develop very very easily because they're very regular very phonetic um you know prefixes like unread pre-students learn those with very to know little instruction actually if they've got strong phoning graphing correspondence knowledge um there are some prefixes that do require explicit teaching and they're what we call the assimilated prefixes or absorbed prefixes um and and there's been a bit of misconception around that so for example you know really we can simplify um the teaching of the assimilated prefixes by looking at you know the three ones that I would focus on are in and add and com and focusing on those would be really you know the prime focus for upper upper primary school years and and when students have mastered their knowledge of those more common prefixes um and they are very teachable if we teach them the generalizations associated with those the students will learn them and basically the generalization is same for all of those assimilated prefixes but they're all very contingent upon um what the base or the root starts with um and and that's that's an important piece of information that the students need to learn um but aside from that um another aspect of morphology that I've noticed that has been um not really well developed across the primary school years is simply just the teaching of homophones um there are many homophones in English language and in fact my research data shows that homophones seems to be the least developed subscale out of all subscales why do you think that is because I it's something that we have noticed at the school that I I work at that you know homophones continue to be something that the kids struggle with why do you think that might be well when I did do my PhD at the time um in when I looked at the the curriculum that you know schools were required to be following so the Australian curriculum is what I looked at um homophones was any explicitly stated in the three any four that was it and so um I thought well maybe if it's not in the curriculum in a mandated curriculum teachers and not going to necessarily make a point to teach that particular concept skill so I sort of partly put it down to that that was one potential reason and the other reason was um that well simply that there are so many homophones in English language that um you know we just need to make sure we learn them all and how do we teach them and it's one of those skills that I think we just need to learn we just need to learn that word and we just don't have the research evidence still to this day I'd love to do some research on this um how do we teach homophones so from my and I will say here my anecdotal evidence is maybe teach not too many homophones at one time because you know if you say okay hear it you know 10 different homophones with long a yeah that's great but no matter how much work you do in the course of the couple of you know lessons or even a lesson students are probably not going to remember all of that in fact they might get rather confused so less is more I would say when it comes to teaching homophones um maybe um of course you're going to also make a point to prioritize the homophones that you notice that students are spelling incorrectly in their writing because again we don't have research evidence to prove which homophones to teach when there's no research that tells us what to do in that regard so perhaps start with you know high frequency homophones homophones that occur frequently in students writing and reading and um not teach too many at one time that would probably be one one suggestion and maybe mnemonics might help as well so a little memory trick to help students remember certain homophones can be another strategy hmm yeah it's definitely an interesting space and it sounds like you could do a whole lot of research on that um digging back to the assessment the components of spelling test how can teachers use that to implement a structured literacy approach um well I think the first thing is really understanding um where the students are at so when it comes to teaching spelling rather than saying okay I've got some spellers who are poor on spellers who are somewhere in the middle and some who are really amazing it's probably more helpful to say okay I'm going to have a lesson and that lesson is going to focus on a particular component of spelling I'm going to now look at my data my error analysis data for that component and identify where my students are at so let's say for morphology I am going to look at the cost data and have a look at inflected suffixes and I can see that some students are scoring higher than others um I'm going to teach you know something to do with the suffix I'll keep it simple and say the suffix I and G um and I'm going to look at my data and realize that I've got some students who know a lot about the suffix I and G uh or you know they they seem to be scoring highly um in this assessment so how can I extend those students when I teach something to do with the suffix I and G and then I've got other students who you know clearly their scores are showing that they have very limited knowledge so how can I support those students when I teach the suffix I and G um so in that instance for let's say more broadly for the teaching of morphology my point of differentiation might be that students who have more knowledge uh those students who can be given the task where they have a selection of words that um align with different types of generalizations and they need to do more analysis themselves with the greater independence and find how those words fit certain generalizations and use those words in different semantic sentence level contexts students who have lower level of knowledge about that particular suffix I'm teaching at that point in time might will need more scaffolding so I might do also just one generalization at a time and I might very directly and explicitly show them this is the generalization here are some examples I will show you how I can add suffix I and G and use these words and sentences one generalization at a time step by step so it's how you scaffold it and how many generalizations you present um you know I guess you could take a more structured inquiry approach for students who already have that knowledge and a more direct instructional approach for students who don't have that knowledge when it comes to you know phonology in general if that's what you're focusing on you know given lesson it might be um that you know your data shows that some students might be okay with spelling words that have longer like more syllables and more phonings and and so you know they're scoring higher for polysyllabic word you know blending and segmenting kind of skills so they can work with longer words you can ask them to segment certain words into syllables and phonings and those words and they may be quite complex longer words you know phonologically and maybe even they can they can handle more words because they can work at a faster pace as well when it comes to orthography the point of differentiation can be you know if my let's say i'm teaching you know words that have long a um some students have a lot of knowledge i will get them words that have um you know greater complexity vocabulary wise and and it doesn't necessarily mean that the graphemes are obscure graphemes it means that the the words and all complex i want them to learn those words that's what's important um whereas other students who are scoring lower they don't know much about you know graphemes for long a i'll start with a simple you know here are some high frequency words that have you know a very common graphing or two graphemes not too many at one time you know reduce that cognitive load so if you know your students and know what they're capable of and where they're up to you can you can make these um small i i consider them to be small but significant adjustments um to cater for the needs of all your students in your class not just those who are struggling but those who can be extended we can't neglect those students either yeah that's absolutely a valid point is that you know we have to be able to use the data that we're gathering to inform that instruction you know that's the whole point of gathering that data and i love how you provide those practical examples of you know how you can maximize that differentiation to support you know those students who need it but not giving your more capable students something completely different you know you're using the strengths that they've got that knowledge that they've got to extend on those concepts yeah and some students will just need more uh dosage as well so you know more repetition so wherever you embed that repetition for some students that they will certainly benefit from that and students who are capable of you know moving on to other you know concepts there's always still scope to check that they can apply that learning um i use the acronym of art so art ART so A is acquisition have they acquired that skill R is retention have they retained that can remember that not just you know five minutes later or the next day or the next week but you know a couple of weeks later and t for transfer are they transferring that in their writing and too often they're trying to turn through the content and and bombard students with all the possible graphics that exist in English language or the you know all the different more things it might make different words are they applying all the technology in their writing maybe not maybe you're trying to do too much so slow down go deep provide lots of contextual opportunities making sure that students can apply that knowledge that you're teaching in their writing um and you know too often i see teachers that are saying are you know I'm concerned that I'm not seeing them apply that in their writing then my question is well you know are you trying to do too much maybe maybe that's some it could be something as simple as that not enough consolidation and opportunity to transfer that learning in semantic context and that might just be the key potentially to support students to move to that transfer of learning hmm yeah fascinating nothing to go away and think about differently um if any about audience i'm wondering how they can access the conventions of spelling test and the and the work that you do how might they be where might they go to use it in their classrooms well i do um you know i do have a youtube channel actually that where i do post little youtube videos of different demonstration lessons just a bit of a taster nothing professional or anything they're just very authentically taken often from my iPhone so that's quite a nice of starting point for some teachers but also on my website i do have places where where teachers can purchase the components of spelling tests the manuals and the online platforms and the dashboards so my website is the place to go for those resources and i also have a number of freely available resources that teachers can download on my website so that's basically www.tessadefern.com that's my website and so teachers can certainly go there or they can email me um if i have new questions i would like to find out more about the research work that i do and translating that research into um practical resources that teachers can use fabulous and your website has a plethora of information i have visited many times definitely audience if you're um keen to learn a little bit more and have a look at the work that tessa does and the manuals that she has i highly recommend jumping on to her website and doing that and we will make sure that we pop the website up so that it's easy for people to access it has been a fascinating conversation tessa and thank you for helping us understand a little bit more around spelling assessment uh in a structured literacy space it's my pleasure thank you so much for taking me on tonight it's been lovely to check to you alice oh we're happy to have you any time tessa i hope audience you have enjoyed the conversation as much as i have as always you can reach out on our socials follow along on twitter it's not twitter anymore it's x i always say twitter i just i just can't get past it um facebook instagram and the team are also all on LinkedIn as well so make sure you connect um offer your feedback we've had some really good feedback coming in of late um and some really good guest suggestions as well i hope you've enjoyed the episode we look forward to seeing you again until next time bye for now [Music]