St John the Apostle Primary School - Florey
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Pawsey Circuit
Florey ACT 2615
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Email: office.sjaps@cg.catholic.edu.au
Phone: 02 6258 3592

Teaching, Learning and Inclusion

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My first taste of the Catalyst Project was Spelling Mastery.  I was a bit precious about changing the way I taught spelling, but I trust my leaders and the research behind the decision and gave it a red hot go all the while hoping I was right and they were well… off track!

But alas, they were so right!! Spelling Mastery works, the data does not lie.  Two years on and I would never go back to how I did it before. But why does it work? As parents it helps to understand not only the content of the curriculum but also the pedagogy, behind our teaching. “Pedagogy is often described as the act of teaching. The pedagogy adopted by teachers shapes their actions, judgments, and teaching strategies by taking into consideration theories of learning, understandings of students and their needs, and the backgrounds and interests of individual students.”

A vitally important piece of pedagogy that underlies Spelling Mastery are Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction.

These include

  1. Daily Review
  2. Present new material using small steps.
  3. Ask questions.
  4. Provide models.
  5. Guide student practise.
  6. Check for student understanding.
  7. Obtain a high success rate.
  8. Provide scaffolds for difficult tasks.
  9. Independent practise.
  10. Weekly and monthly review.

Over the next few weeks, I will give specific examples of how each one is used in Spelling Mastery and other curriculum areas. For some background, this clip is an excellent overview of what Spelling Mastery is.  The only difference in our school is that it runs for K-6 and we have lessons 4 times a week.

1. Daily Review – can strengthen previous learning and can lead to fluent recall.

Not to be confused with rote learning, Daily Review is more sophisticated.

  • It is quick – 10 – 15 mins
  • It is fast – the teacher quickly asks for responses.
  • Students either verbally respond or write on whiteboards.
  • Concepts are “interleaved” – some recently taught and some from a few weeks or months ago.
  • The content of each review shifts slightly each day.

This is an example of a Year 4 Maths Review. You can see the instructions at the top and the correct answers in blue.

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2. Present New Material Using Small Steps – Present new material using small steps.

A good example of this is when we learn a dance we don’t try and learn the whole thing in one go. We learn each step one at a time and in the right order and then we repeat it until we remember it all.

Small steps are a regular feature of Spelling Mastery. This is a script from the teacher’s book for LEVEL D.

 EXAMPLE Y-I RULE DISCRIMINATION (LEVEL D) TEACHER    STUDENT

    1. I’ll say some words. Let’s figure out whether the rule about changing y to i applies to each word.
    2. Remember you change the y to i in a word when the word ends consonant and y, and the next morphography beings with anything except i.
    3. First word: worrying. What word? WORRYING
    4. Spelling the first morphograph in worrying. WORRY
    5. Does worry end consonant and y? YES
    6. So maybe worrying follows the y to i rule?
    7. Does ing being with i? YES
    8. Does the y to i rule apply? NO
    9. Spell worrying. WORRYING


This article is an excellent overview of Rosenshine, if you are interested. https://teacherhead.com/2018/06/10/exploring-barak-rosenshines-seminal-principles-of-instruction-why-it-is-the-must-read-for-all-teachers/

 Let me know if you have any questions or comments. stephanie.stewart@cg.catholic.edu.au

 

God bless,

 Stephanie Stewart