Although the dreaded spelling test is not completely consigned to history, word study minimises its use in the classroom.
When using word study in our lessons, we are teaching children to focus on the patterns in words. Our assessment needs to be on whether they understand this pattern, so at the end of a unit it is good practice to give children a list of words following that pattern to write down, without giving them the list to learn first.
Of course, there are still word lists to learn for each year group, some of which do not follow regular patterns. Here,word study will help you to work with the children on identifying the features of those words which make them unusual. Being able to articulate what makes a spelling irregular goes a long way towards replicating that spelling. When you don’t need to do formal assessments, we have tried and really recommend the use of collaborative spelling tests. These involve discussion between pairs of students about how to spell the words, once again focussing on talking about words and articulating to each other the correct ways of spelling the words. This process is outlined in the Tony Martin book we have referenced below.
Where assessment needs to be done to plan intervention, Word Study allows you to isolate the skills the children can’t do and build a very structured intervention programme. The Words Their Way book gives a detailed assessment format for this. We’ve saved the introduction leaflet for this process on our site which provides a starting point for finding out more.
[Video of Words Their Way diagnostic assessment procedure]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESCZCpKlrXg