Development of Spelling and Differential Relations to Text Reading in Grades 3-12

Abstract

The authors claim that assessing spelling in Grades 3-12 has utility. They base their claim on data from 875,040 students in Grades 3-12 in 52,923 classes in 840 Florida schools who took the Reading Comprehension, Maze, and Word Analysis spelling portions of the Florida Assessments for Instruction in Reading during the 2009-2010 school year. The importance of instruction to spelling ability was evident in (a) the large intraclass correlations at the class relative to the school level, (b) the greater variability in spelling at the class level rather than at the student level, (c) the greater role of demographics at the class level compared to the student level, and (d) the role of high ability spelling classrooms compared to low ability spelling classrooms in differentiating Reading Comprehension and Maze performance. Growth in spelling was evident in the elementary grades but stagnant above Grade 7. The authors conclude with the hope that secondary teachers will include spelling instruction as part of their goal to engage students in reading for understanding.Why assess spelling beyond the primary grades? We were asked this question so many times in the development of the Florida Assessments for Instruction in Reading (FAIR) that we decided to call the computer-adaptive spelling test Word Analysis rather than spelling. The objective of this article is to provide empirical evidence that assessing spelling in students in Grades 3-12 has utility. We are interested in whether variability exists in spelling growth at the student, class, and school levels in Grades 3-12 and whether growth varies for disaggregated groups of students. We are also interested in the value added of reading comprehension in predicting spelling outcomes over and above a text efficiency measure based on adjusted maze fluency, controlling for demographics. Finally, we are interested in the implications of spelling development and its relation to text reading efficiency and reading comprehension for instruction in Grades 3 and above.

The incremental variance of morphological knowledge to reading comprehension in grades 3–10 beyond prior reading comprehension, spelling, and text reading efficiency

“…The correlations between text reading efficiency and other measures are stronger in grades 3-5 (r = .60-.69) than in the secondary grades (r = .48-.63), a finding consistent with previous investigations of FAIR mazes (Foorman & Petscher, 2010).…”

“…Text reading efficiency tasks typically give students three minutes to read short passages with every seventh or ninth word deleted and to select which of three highly distinct, high frequency words best completes the sentence. In Foorman and Petscher (2010), relations between a text reading efficiency measure and a reading comprehension measure changed over the grades. Above a fifth grade reading ability, variability in text reading efficiency lessened and, hence, its ability to predict reading comprehension decreased.…”

“…But we might also expect morphological knowledge to predict reading comprehension above and beyond spelling because of the additional links between morphological knowledge and vocabulary in predicting reading comprehension in the Kieffer and Lesaux's (2012a,b) studies. Additionally, in a study examining relations among spelling, text reading efficiency, and reading comprehension, spelling was only moderately related to the other two variables (Foorman & Petscher, 2010). A limitation of this study is that vocabulary measures were not available.…”

“…Children as young as ages five and six demonstrate correct usage of inflectional morphemes in speech (Berko, 1958;Carlisle, 1995) and transparent derivational morphemes (Carlisle, 1995;Jones, 1991) in reading. However, in writing English, the interactions among phonology, orthography, and morphology are complex and result in many spelling errors (Arndt & Foorman, 2010) unless spelling is taught (Foorman & Petscher, 2010). These interactions also result in difficulties reading words.…”

Examining the genetic and environmental associations among spelling, reading fluency, reading comprehension and a high stakes reading test in a combined sample of third and fourth grade students

“…A moderate and positive relation between spelling and reading comprehension has been indicated in languages with transparent orthography such as Finnish, Dutch and Greek (Mommers, 1986; Protopapas, Sideridis, Mouzaki, & Simos, 2011; Savolainen, Ahonen, Aro, Tolvanen, & Holopainen, 2008). The relation in English speakers is less-studied, although the work that is done also suggests a positive association, r = .68-.89 (Ehri, 2000; Foorman & Petscher, 2010). In addition, results of a longitudinal study showed spelling ability in a sample of first grade students significantly predicted reading comprehension in fifth grade (Roberts & Meiring, 2006).…”