School spelling tests have changed little over many decades – the teacher dictates a word and uses it in a sentence, the student attempts to spell the word and is given a tick or cross for their efforts. All well and good if you have a natural affinity for the subject, but rather soul-destroying and confidence crushing for those who struggle to spell or memorise by rote.

There is also an inherent flaw with this method of teaching and testing – it allows for no analysis of the type of errors the student makes in terms of linguistic processing and in what areas they are going wrong. This project is aimed at developing a detailed online assessment tool to allow teachers to address this problem – not only will this result in a dramatic improvement in children’s spelling outcomes, but also positively impact on other areas of learning such as reading and writing.

The Background

As a former classroom teacher, Tessa Daffern saw that her students weren't reaching their potential in spelling, which was affecting their self confidence and motivation to write and read. As she looked at ways of improving her own practice, she realised there was very little research into the area of spelling, and certainly no vigorous, valid, reliable assessment tool on hand to inform her practice. She embarked on a PhD that examined the spelling skills and behaviours of almost 1400 children aged 8-12 from 17 different schools. The rich information gleaned from this research allowed Tessa to create a detailed, reliable assessment tool aimed at helping teachers make informed judgments about how to best enhance children’s learning in spelling.

Tessa has since developed a complementary spelling assessment tool that provides a robust and pure measure of the underlying linguistic skills involved in spelling. This tool allows for misspelt words to be analysed and broken down into areas such as phonological processing (a child's capacity to hear individual speech sounds in words and represent them), orthography (a child’s ability to know what is a plausible or 'legal' letter sequence or pattern), or morphology (a child's capacity for awareness and manipulation of some of the regularities associated with meaningful units within words, such as base words, Greek and Latin roots, suffixes and prefixes). This type of information will make teachers more able to individualise learning for their students within the vast range of abilities in each class and will have far-reaching benefits, with Tessa’s doctorate research showing spelling is a strong predictor of success with writing, even more so than grammar and punctuation. Other research has found spelling and reading to be reciprocally related, with strong spelling skills linked to strong reading skills. But most importantly, it transforms the learning process for kids.

“The children find it so much more exciting and eye opening if they discover spelling is not just a rote-learning exercise, but can be considered as a word-formation, problem solving inquiry process. It can make so much more sense to them,” explains Tessa. “If they're taught to use multiple strategies, rather than just sounding out or memorising words, they'll become much more autonomous in their spelling and become independent users of the Standard English language. But they need to be taught these skills and strategies.”

Pitch For Funds

The University of Canberra recently held an event called Pitch for Funds, in which 17 researchers each pitched their research idea for a chance to win a share of $7,000 in prize money. Tessa’s compelling pitch managed to raise $1,581.88 but she is aiming for $7,000 to get her project started so please donate today.

Tessa is currently working with five different schools to test the reliability and validity of the assessment resource she has created, while helping teachers develop the knowledge to maximise their outcomes in spelling. She has collected data from students and will be analysing that in the coming months, but the funding is essential to take all she has learned and transform it into an online tool that can be administered with ease by teachers, allowing students’ work to be efficiently scored, analysed and aggregated through an automated system.

• Five schools across the Australian Capital Territory are participating in this research project and are kindly contributing $4,000 to cover some professional learning costs for their teachers, as they seek to improve the way they teach and assess spelling.
• Tessa was awarded $1,581.88 at the University of Canberra Pitch For Funds event and this has enabled her to employ a Research Assistant who is assisting with the analysis of the test data.
• To complete this project, Tessa is now seeking $5,419 to cover costs involved in developing the spelling assessment tool into an online resource so that it can be made available to schools across Australia.

The biggest challenge for this research will be raising enough funds to make it happen. Thank you for your generosity.