Topical Issues of Methodology in Teaching Spelling on the Pages of the Russian Language at School Journal (1979–2019)

This article reviews works devoted to the methodology of teaching orthography (spelling) published in the Russian Language at School journal from 1979 to 2019. The reviewed works cover the following aspects: theoretical (linguistic, didactic, psychological and psycholinguistic) foundations of teaching orthography in secondary school; study techniques and methods for explaining spelling rules; essential characteristics of the various methodological systems for a phased process in studying complex spelling rules; types of developmental spelling exercises; lesson plan description, repetition of spelling topics and systematization of the lessons studied at different levels of secondary education from grades 5 to 11 in accordance with changing requirements of Federal State Educational Standards and respective textbooks for teaching Russian as a native language. The article focuses on the aspect of spelling training and preparing students for mandatory written exams in the Russian (native) language in grades 9 and 11, including the final essay in grade 11. In addition, the article provides a general overview of reviews of textbooks and spelling exercise workbooks for pedagogues and pupils published by methodologists. The research methodology was based on the theoretical analysis of scientific knowledge (problematic, comparative, aspective, recapitulative) and practice-based experience of pedagogues. It is concluded that the reviewed publications (in the indicated period) are relevant for modern readers.

Translingual Writing in a Linguistically Diverse Primary Classroom

Growing numbers of scholars in composition studies support translingual orientations in their postsecondary writing classrooms. However, translingual orientations are rarely extended to elementary school writers, who are often asked to compose exclusively in Dominant American English. Drawing on theories of translingualism and emergent biliteracy, we use case study methods to examine children’s translingual writing in a highly linguistically diverse second-grade classroom. We pay particular attention to students who had not had formal instruction in languages they tended to use orally, documenting the creative and strategic ways in which they wrote. Among other strategies, students repurposed English sound–symbol correspondences in developmental spelling, composed strings of non-Roman symbols, and remixed multilingual environmental print. They also engaged in translingual writing for a range of purposes, such as expressing pride, connecting with audiences, and indexing identities. Our findings suggest the potential of moving translingual perspectives beyond postsecondary contexts and into elementary classrooms.

Validating an Online Assessment of Developmental Spelling in Grades Five Through Eight

Assessments of developmental spelling, also called spelling inventories, are commonly used to understand students’ orthographic knowledge (i.e., knowledge of how written words work) and to determine their stages of spelling and reading development. The information generated by these assessments is used to inform teachers’ grouping practices and instructional priorities. While relatively easy to administer, developmental spelling assessments can be time-consuming to score and are susceptible to human error in both the scoring and the interpretation of results. The purpose of this study is to develop and validate an online version of a commonly used spelling inventory, making the assessment more efficient and accessible and the results more reliable for teachers and scholars alike. Implications for practice and directions for further research are discussed.

Teaching Children With Developmental Spelling Difficulties in a One-on-One Context

The aim of this article is to provide clinical and practical guidance for the provision of one-on-one intervention for children with spelling difficulties. We briefly discuss the requirements of theoretically guided assessment and suggest some norm-based assessment tools in this light. The main focus of this article is on teaching children with spelling difficulties in a one-on-one context. Previous research has shown that children present with spelling difficulties of different types and that intervention is most effective when targeted at the specific difficulty. Hence, we outline different interventions for different subtypes of developmental spelling difficulties.

Effect of Phoneme Awareness Instruction on Kindergarten Children's Invented Spelling

The purpose of this study was to determine if children trained in phoneme awareness in kindergarten would differ in invented spelling from children who did not have this training. A reliable scoring system was created to evaluate the invented spelling of the kindergarten children. The children were selected from 18, all-day kindergartens in four, demographically comparable low-income, inner-city schools. Prior to the intervention, the 77 treatment children and the 72 control children did not differ in age, sex, race, PPVT-R, phoneme segmentation, letter name and letter sound knowledge, or word recognition. During March, April, and May of the kindergarten year, treatment children participated in an 11-week phoneme awareness intervention that included instruction in letter names and sounds. After the intervention, the treatment children significantly outperformed the control children in phoneme segmentation, letter name and sound knowledge, and reading phonetically regular words and nonwords. Of primary interest in this study is the fact that the treatment children produced invented spellings that were rated developmentally superior to those of the control children. The 7-point scale created for scoring the developmental spelling test was found to be highly reliable using either correlation ( r = .98) or percent of agreement (93%).