Fostering lifelong spellers through meaningful experiences

Alderman, Gary L., & Green, Susan K. (2011). Fostering lifelong spellers through meaningful experiences. The Reading Teacher, 64(8), 599-605.

This is a practical article suggesting ways teachers can improve spelling motivation and make spelling instruction more relevant, which the authors believe will be more effective than the traditional weekly spelling tests that stress scores and competition. The article is not heavily theory-based, but does base its claims on achievement goal theory (Ames). This theory proposes that students have two kinds of goal orientations: performance (grade) orientation or mastery (learning) orientation. The authors believe that traditional spelling tests promote performance orientation, but mastery orientation leads to more positive attitudes and more motivation to learn to spell. They provide three brief tables listing classroom strategies, organized under three categories: 1) Varied, Meaningful, Challenging Tasks That Promote Mastery Goals for Spelling, 2) Evaluation and Recognition Practices That Promote Mastery Goals for Spelling, and 3) Student Participation in Decision-Making Practices That Promote Mastery Goals for Spelling. The overall themes in these suggestions seem to be relevance, intrinsic valuing, a de-emphasis on competition and grades, and the development of independence and self-responsibility.

The approach Alderman and Green describe is in keeping with my own views about how learning about words should proceed in classrooms. The authors cite the classic text, Words Their Way (Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton, & Johnson, 2008), with its many word sort activities, as an example of effective spelling instruction, and I also have found that text valuable. I only wish the authors had cited a bit more of a research base here. I know this article was probably aimed at teachers, and thus needed to be practical and classroom-based, but there are people who will criticize the kind of approach Alderman and Green advocate here, and some research findings supporting the use of these techniques with hard data would help silence the naysayers. Instruction that gives students autonomy, that is not “one size fits all”, that does not follow a systematic skill set (rather looking more incidentally at what words children need and use) and that does not value competition and quantitative scores will be seen by some as too loose, not structured enough, and maybe even “un-American” because it’s not about winning something and trumpeting that victory to the skies. Some would say that children do not know what is best for themselves, so teachers have to make the decisions. Alderman and Green’s notion of letting children decide about what words to learn, how they will be studied, and even how they will be assessed may be seen by some as giving children more responsibility than they can handle. Some might say that Alderman and Green’s approach may work for some children, but maybe not for those children who struggle the most with spelling. Although I love the approach discussed here, some good research data calming such doubts would be very welcome.