Below are my observations about 3rd grade student Danny’s spelling.
I chose to take a look at spelling samples because I would like to get better at analyzing a student’s spelling errors. I wanted to look at Danny’s spelling and writing samples because he is a 3rd grader and that is the grade that I currently teach.
It appears that Danny has good phoneme grapheme correspondence because most of the phonemes are represented in Danny’s spelling and writing sample, occasionally he does miss a blend though. He also seems to be able to correctly identify most short vowel sounds, with the exception of mixing up short i sounds as short e sounds.
As far as formal spelling instruction, I would begin working with Danny the short i and short e sounds. I would make sure to provide frequent opportunities for Danny to distinguish the difference between the 2 sounds. After Danny consistently showed that he had a good grasp on the difference in these 2 sounds I would focus on long vowels and vowel teams. I would also be sure to continue giving Danny long vowel words with blends to continue to strengthen that skill as we go as well. In terms of connecting Danny’s spelling skills within his writing I would begin by having Danny read his writing to me. When we come to a word that Danny says correctly, but spells incorrectly (such as one instead of once) I would ask him to identify each phoneme in the word. As Danny would say the phoneme I would write the corresponding grapheme I would also think allowed as I wrote the graphemes so Danny could understand why I used the grapheme that I did. If the class, or even a small group of students, all made similar mistakes when using past tense suffixes I would take the opportunity to teach them about suffixes. This would have to be something that was spread out over several days though, not just one lesson.
Reflection: Analyzing this spelling sample was enlightening. Spelling really is very telling about a student phoneme-grapeme knowledge. It was interesting to be able to look at his spelling sample and see what areas he needs further explicit instruction in. In the future I believe I will take a closer look at spelling mistakes when looking over errors in spelling assessments and in writing.
