Exploring classroom teachers' spelling practices and beliefs

Abstract

Using three perspectives on spelling instruction (i.e., memorization, generalizations, and developmental) as a framework, teachers in grades 2 to 5 were interviewed to investigate the practices and beliefs about spelling instruction which exist in a school system which has de‐emphasized formal spelling instruction. An analysis of the respones to open‐ended questions suggests that the classroom teachers in this sample (n=42) persist in the use of weekly lists and testing. About half create their own lists and half rely on a published speller to some extent While there is a range of activities associated with spelling, many traditional activities are still employed such as writing words multiple times and using words in sentences. Many of the teachers questioned such practices as invented spelling and do not appear to take a developmental view of spelling. The interviewed teachers were largely dissatisfied with the spelling ability of their students and current spelling instruction, but appeared to lack the knowledge and resources needed to teach spelling more effectively.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 42 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.