But these still don't break words right down into phonemes and graphemes and really teach children how to put them together and pull them apart. There is some rhyme sorting, as well as some rhyming games like bingo and concentration, which at least acknowledge that there are letters in words beyond the first one. In practice this means a lot of memorising whole words, reciting rhymes and jingles while pointing to the text, initial phonics of the "a is for aardvark, b is for badger" variety, vocabulary and concept picture sorting, discussion of vocabulary, dictation (without prior explicit teaching of the relevant spellings), finding named letters in text and shared reading. The teacher of Emergent Spellers is advised to "talk with and read to students and share the sounds and meaning of language", "build vocabulary with concept sorts", "develop phonological awareness with picture sorts, songs and games" and "enhance alphabet knowledge with games, matching activities, and sorts". Words Their Way program for "Emergent Spellers" I despair at the idea of a whole lot of lovely teachers and kids I know spending hours on such tasks, instead of things that do make linguistic sense. Most of this just makes me want to cry – it simply makes no sense from a linguistics point of view, it's basically assessing initial letter-sound skills (which have already been assessed) and visual memorisation of words as wholes (which if used exclusively as a strategy soon leads to literacy failure). The assessment goes on to ask individual children to read particular words from Humpty Dumpty, firstly in the verse itself (this is called Word Recognition in Context) and then on a list – on, Humpty, put, horses, sat, men, king's, wall, had, fall – which is called Word Recognition in Isolation.
I'm not going to try to unpack the construct validity of this assessment, except to say that it makes my "what's the point?" meter go off like a rocket. The teacher is expected to score this pointing on a scale from 0-6 where 0 is going backwards and forwards and all over the shop, 3 is "points to words for each rhythmic beat or syllable, getting off track" and 6 is accurate pointing. Of course, an "Emergent Speller" who is writing random letters will not be able to do this, and is by definition not an "Emergent Speller" at all (more on this later).Ī "Concept of word" assessment teaches children to memorise the rhyme Humpty Dumpty (which most children from mainstream backgrounds will already know, bad luck if your family is from South Sudan and you haven't heard it before) and then checks, one by one, whether they can "read" it themselves, by pointing to each word as they say it. The assessment also requires children to spell little words like mat, nap, kid, log, jet and gum. This is all good, we know that little kids who start school with awareness of initial sounds, rhyme and letters are ahead of the game on literacy.
Words Their Way's assessments for "Emergent Spellers" first examine their ability to identify rhyme and alliteration, and circle pictures that begin with given letters. Words Their Way assessments for "Emergent Spellers" On the other hand, anyone in our education system who can only write random letters at age seven is well behind, and probably well aware of this, and highly distressed about it. Most one-year-olds are more likely to suck the pencil or throw it at you. Words Their Way calls anyone aged one to seven who is writing random marks on paper, drawing pictures, doing "mock linear or letter like writing" or writing random letters and numbers an "Emergent Speller".Īctually, I call someone aged one who is making any sort of recognisable marks on paper a baby genius. People I know and respect say it is better than the standard "give them a bath in written language and they will magically catch on" Whole Language fare, but its conceptual framework still sees literacy as natural and developmental and a bit mysterious, to be "facilitated" as it "emerges", not an artificial skill to be pulled apart and actively and systematically taught. The literacy program they've chosen to use is called Words Their Way, which in the early years essentially puts a layer of initial and analytic phonics over what remains at its core a Whole Language program. Oh well, I guess it means they'll always generate plenty of work for a Speech Pathologist with literacy expertise (she said, through gritted teeth). I've been pushing for an early years Synthetic Phonics program at one of the schools I work in, but sadly I'm just a far-too-busy part-time contractor and outsider, who doesn't get to go to the meetings where such things are decided, so I haven't succeeded.