Many students can memorize words for a "Friday Test" but if there is no transfer to student writing, what's the point?
Fourth graders are responsible to learn "core words" from the list of words. Words are arranged on the list in the order of frequency of use in everyday writing. I will teach spelling lessons and strategies such as spelling rules, phonics, word patterns etc. Students will have classroom assignments to practice their spelling skills in context.
Visual skills are developed and practiced such as proofreading. Each week for homework, students will work on five of the words on their "personal list" that need to be learned. Students will add words to this personal list as the words are spelled incorrectly in their everyday work. Parents can help by becoming their child's personal spelling editor and assisting with spelling. While the core word list may look easy, remember that these words are also the words that might be misspelled or used incorrectly in everyday written work.
How are students Assessed? Students are assessed using their everyday writing. Random checks will be made to classroom assignments could be graded for spelling - science, social studies, language arts, math. In addition, a "cloze story test" is given in which students listen to a passage read by the teacher and fill in the missing words in the story.
These words come from the core word and priority word lists. Sentence dictation tests are also given. The teacher reads four sentences and the students write the sentences including using the correct punctuation. Again, nearly every word in the sentence dictation comes from the core word or "no excuses" priority word list.
They are the seeds from which this spelling program grows and develops. Because each child looks up words on a cheat sheet during the "test" in Loudoun County, Virginia a cheat sheet is taped to each child's desk. Traditional spelling tests are out; feel-good pseudo-tests are in. Sitton believes that "the spelling solution does not lie in improving the low standardized spelling-test scores The solution is to improve students' spelling in writing and then to use their writing as the basis for spelling evaluation.
So it's no surprise that the Sitton program teaches only four spelling rules. Your child certainly won't be taught the vowel spelling patterns such as ai, ay, ie, oo that everyone must learn to become a good speller and reader.
Sitton insists that "learning to spell a word involves forming a correct visual image of the whole word. All words should be introduced as whole words so that students can more easily form and retain correct visual images of them.
It's clear that the Rebecca Sitton program is a whole-word or whole-language spelling program. But whole language, which has replaced phonics and traditional spelling instruction throughout most of our country, is the root cause of declining U. By adopting invented spelling, and now Rebecca Sitton spelling, school administrators across the country are trying to hide the grievous failure of their reading, writing, and spelling curriculums.
Bewildered parents are told it's OK that their first-graders can't spell more than 10 words, they'll pick it up eventually. By osmosis? Rebecca Sitton Spelling Program Abandons Rules Traditional spelling rules have been abandoned in the latest spelling program sweeping the nation. Teach each sound-spelling correspondence explicitly.
Teach frequent, highly regular sound-spelling relationships systematically. Teach students directly how to sound out words. Teach students sound spelling, decodable text. Teach reading comprehension using interesting teacher read stories.
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