Abstract:

This paper considers spelling in samples of writing collected in October 2019 (pre COVID-19) from 267 children in the 8-9 age range in 143 mainstream primary schools. All of the children who participated in this study were formally assessed by the Education Authority Psychology Service in Northern Ireland to provide standardised scores for literacy attainment and cognitive profile. These children presented with a cognitive profile which included a standardised score of 90 or above in one or more of the subtests of the Wechsler (2016) Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC). Each child’s level of literacy difficulties was assessed, and a Literacy Service teacher assigned to each child. Fifty-five Education Authority Literacy Service teachers were each assigned several children to support on an individual basis. Before support commenced, each child wrote a sample of independent writing under the supervision of the Literacy Service teacher, on a one-to-one basis in the child’s own school. Spelling in these writing samples was analysed to establish what sources of linguistic knowledge (phonic, orthographic and morphemic) the children were drawing on to spell words. It was evident from the analysis of the writing samples that children were drawing on phoneme-to-grapheme correspondence to spell words. In most cases children knew some, or all of the phonemes in the words they were trying to spell and selected letters that did represent the phonemes, but it was the wrong selection of letters for phonemes with multiple mappings. This was particularly the case for vowel sounds. The development of orthographic knowledge as measured by the correct selection of letters for phonemes with multiple mappings was limited, or had failed to develop altogether for this group of children. This provides an explanation for the severity of their spelling difficulties and also evidences that teaching phonics at the fine grain level of phoneme-to-grapheme correspondence is insufficient for the development of orthographic knowledge for children with orthographic processing difficulties.

Keywords:

Spelling, orthography, phonics.