The Science of Spelling with Brennan Chandler

Episode 258

In this episode, we sit down with literacy researcher Brennan Chandler to talk about the science of spelling instruction and why spelling deserves a much bigger role in science of reading conversations. Brennan explains how spelling supports stronger writing, more precise word knowledge, and better reading outcomes.

We discuss why spelling should be taught explicitly rather than left to chance, why patterns matter more than memorized rules, and how phonology, orthography, and morphology all work together when students learn to spell. Brennan also shares why morphology belongs in the early grades, how retrieval practice strengthens spelling knowledge, and why traditional Friday spelling tests often fail to lead to lasting learning.

This conversation is full of practical insights for teachers who want to move beyond isolated spelling activities and toward instruction that truly supports literacy development.

And this is just part one. Brennan will be back in our next episode focused entirely on practical spelling routines teachers can use right away in the classroom.

Brennan mentioned his TAP model of spelling instruction (Teach, Practice, Apply) in this episode. He's built six routines that put it into practice, called Spell Squad. Each one comes with scripting and a timer so you can teach it straight from the screen. Free teaching scripts and printables are on his site: Spell Squad

Resources

• Free teaching scripts and printables are on Brennan's site: Spell Squad
• "Spelling Is an Integral Part of Learning the Language, Not a Matter of Memorization."
• "How Spelling Supports Reading" by Louisa Moats
• This resource from Logic of English shares several high-utility spelling patterns and generalizations that may feel more useful and transferable than the long lists of spelling “rules” many of us learned in school.
• Follow Brennan Chandler

Looking for more literacy support and resources? Explore all of our podcast episodes, free listening guides, and classroom tools at literacypodcast.com.

Interested in bringing Melissa & Lori Love Literacy to your school or event? Email us at literacypodcast@greatminds.org.

Transcript

Why Spelling Still Matters

Melissa 0:00

Spelling instruction often looks the same in many classrooms. Weekly word lists, repetitive practice activities, and a Friday test. But these routines don't always help students understand spelling patterns or apply their learning to reading and writing.

Lori 0:17

In this episode, we talk with researcher Brennan Chandler about eight principles of effective spelling instruction. We explore how teachers can build understanding of the spelling system, strengthen word memory through meaningful practice, and help students apply spelling knowledge in real reading and writing. Hi, teacher friends. I'm Lori. And I'm Melissa. We are two educators who want the best for all kids, and we know you do too.

Melissa 0:46

We worked together in Baltimore when the district adopted a new literacy curriculum.

Lori 0:51

We realized there was so much more to learn about how to teach reading and writing.

Melissa 0:56

Lori and I can't wait to keep learning with you today. Hi, Brennan. Welcome back to the podcast. We're so excited to talk to you today about spelling, which I feel like is an often neglected subject in our science of reading conversations. We're so excited to talk to you about it today.

Brennan Chandler 1:15

Yeah, thanks so much for having me back. Let's do it.

Lori 1:18

Yeah. So I'm gonna kick us off, Brennan. So many teachers hear the word spelling, and right away, like the number one thing that I feel like if you asked a teacher or really any person, when we say, What do you think of when you think of spelling? They think of a weekly word list and Friday tests, right? But like other people might have like memories of themselves memorizing those lists, right? That goes alongside that without really understanding how like those words work, how the spelling words work, why they're the spelling words. So before we get into, you know, really digging into spelling instruction, can we talk a little bit about why spelling still matters in this literacy conversation and why it's so important? We shouldn't overlook it just because it, you know, maybe we hasn't been taught as well in the past, or there's been some practices that aren't as effective that happened previously.

Brennan Chandler 2:10

Yeah, spelling matters for a lot of reasons. I'm gonna focus on two big reasons. The first is that it's a core component of written expression. Students cannot fully show what they know in writing if spelling's taking up all of that cognitive bandwidth, right? And when their spelling becomes more automatic, we prioritize some instruction and some practice. Students have then more room to focus on ideas, sentence quality, organization, revision, meaning, all those other higher order writing tasks. I mean, writing is the most cognitively demanding thing we ask our students to do. And also for us as adults, it's hard to write, right? There's lots going on. So that is one of the reasons. It helps us become better writers, it helps students become better writers. But it also, and why I nerd out about it a little more too, is that it helps also strengthen reading. So spelling practice and instruction asks students to work through our alphabetic system in a really active way. So, what sounds are in this word? What letters represent those sounds? What patterns or meanings might explain the spelling? And so in the early grades, really spelling helps students crack the alphabetic principle, crack that code from the production side. And so it builds this kind of precise word knowledge students need for both reading and writing. And so I think we have to separate spelling from the way it's often been practiced historically, either rainbow writing, those word lists, those Friday tests, you know, um, those weekly lists and Friday tests really aren't enough. And effective spelling and stretching helps students really understand how words work. And I think, because right now I have to defend this a lot in our AI, in the age of AI, right? In the age of predictive text, in the age of, you know, of just AI um large language models, is that students still need to generate, evaluate, revise, and communicate ideas clearly. Spelling is one of those key foundational skills that really makes that possible. And lately in my talks, there's this quote often connected to George Orwell that I've been quoting. And it's more of an interpretation of his work than a direct quote. But he says that if people cannot write well, they cannot think well. And if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them. And so I think there's a lot of truth in that right now. And that's why writing instruction matter so much. And spelling really helps support that, enables that to happen.

Melissa 4:21

Yeah, I really love this idea. It reminds me almost of fluency in a way, like reading fluency of you know, the idea of you have to be able to read accurately, to be able to read quickly or, you know, at an appropriate pace so that it happens quickly. And that this reminds me of the same thing for writing, you know, like if the spelling is getting in the way, it's gonna be laborious to write. And then, you know, who's gonna want to do that? But if if you are spelling, if you can spell easily, your writing can flow a lot more quickly.

Brennan Chandler 4:51

Yeah, it's exactly right. We don't want all our kids' cognitive energy going to spelling the words. Like I love spelling, I actually don't care about it that much. I care about writing, and that's why I stead and research spelling. So that's exactly it.

Melissa 5:03

Yeah, I love that. And I love that it connects to reading as well, you know that you know it is important for reading. So we want to keep spelling in this conversation with the science of reading. And so you

The Teach Practice Apply Framework

Melissa 5:15

are gonna talk to us today about the research behind spelling instruction. So, you know, the science of spelling instruction, which is really fun. Um, so let's talk about that. You have eight principles of effective spelling instruction that you talk about, and we're gonna talk through them all today. Um, but talk to us a little bit because you've categorized them into three categories: teach, practice, and apply. So, can you explain a little bit about you know that model, those three phases, why those, and what what happens in each of them?

Brennan Chandler 5:48

Yeah, that's a great question. I really, I mean, I've looked at all the research. We did a huge meta-analysis in 2025 of almost five decades of spelling instructional research. And so, this model, this TAP model, I called it, to have a helpful mnemonic. We love mnemonics in education. It's just really a way of organizing what decades of research on spelling instruction have consistently showed us. And so effective spelling instruction is not a routine, one routine or a program or sort of this approach. It's a combination of how we teach, how students practice, and then how they apply their spelling knowledge and meaningful literacy tasks. And so that tap stands for teach, practice, and then apply. We reverse some letters there, it's not a big deal. The teach component, the first component, it's really about helping students understand how the spelling system works. And English spelling is quasi-regular, it's not random, but it is really complex. And so students benefit from when we actually teach spelling. The practice component then is all about retention and practice. We know from cognitive and learning science that learning requires more than exposure. Like the magic, Anita Archer always says, is in that practice. And so that practice is so, so important. So they need lots of opportunities to practice. And that apply component, the last component, is really about teaching for transfer. Spelling is not just living at the sound level or the word level, right? We want to make sure that we're connecting it to what's really happening in authentic reading and writing tasks. And so, what I like about thinking through these principles in the framework is that it helps teachers think beyond what spelling program am I using or what's the best way to teach spelling. And instead asks, are my students building understanding of the English spelling system? Are they practicing in ways that support memory? And are they applying that knowledge in meaningful literacy tasks? And so, really, those eight principles sit underneath those three, those three big ideas we can move through.

Explicit Teaching That Beats Chance

Lori 7:36

Yeah, thank you for that. That makes sense. I also I love the way you've organized them. I think it's really helpful for us to think of as teachers, right? So, Brendan, I want to dive a little bit further into that teach phase. Makes sense. Um, one of your principles is that spelling should be taught explicitly rather than left to chance. Love that. And I bet I know you've mentioned Anita Archer. I bet she would like that too. Um, you also say that spelling is better taught than caught. So, what does that actually look like in classroom practice for teachers? Like walk us into a classroom. What are we doing now if we need to be explicit and teach it, not catch it?

Brennan Chandler 8:14

Yeah, so spelling is yeah, it's better taught than caught. And that that phrase, that term was coined by um Graham and St. Angelo in 2014. They did a huge meta-analysis of all these studies, and they found that incidental spelling instruction actually doesn't work that well and explicit and spelling instruction sort of wins. So that just means that again, we should not assume students will infer the spelling system just because they read or write a lot. Many students need us to make that system explicitly visible for them. But really, in practice, this expelled this explicit instruction should be quick and tight. We're not giving a 20-minute lecture on the CK spelling pattern or the historical origin of a word. We want to get in, define the target skill or pattern clearly, model it, get students using it, and get out. Because really, we'll move to the practice, but that's where that magic is again. And so that explicit teaching, though, is so important because it gives students the lens and helps them retain it. So if I'm a teacher in practice, if I'm teaching that CK spelling pattern or the vowel team AI and AY, I'm gonna clearly name that target. What is the vowel team? What's the spelling pattern? What's the rule? Explain it simply and concisely, which is another principle. Model a few examples, also non-examples as well. Use a contrast that it's helpful. Often when we use vowel teams like E E and E A, we need to do some contrastive analysis, show different words that are used by those vowel teams, and then move quickly into guide a practice. And so if I'm doing the CK, I might say something like this. Today we're learning that after a short vowel and a one-syllable word, final is often spelled CK, as in back sick, rock. Then students are gonna immediately read, segment, spell, and apply words with that pattern. And so explicit instruction here and spelling really opens the door, but then that practice is where that spelling knowledge really does get built.

Melissa 10:02

All right, we love this next one because we talk all the time about this idea of rules versus patterns. Um, and it's really interesting because I know that I was taught a ton of rules when I was growing up. And last night I was watching Survivor. I still watch Survivor, and they had to spell I do love Survivor. Um, they had to spell the word inconceivable. And you know, in my head, I said, I before E, except after C. Um, and it actually did help me. Um, but you know, I was thinking about that. I was like, man, I do still remember some of those rules. But the principle here is not about the rules, it's about teaching patterns instead of these long lists of rules. So can you talk to us a little bit about that? Why these patterns would be better than these rules that a lot of us are really familiar with?

Brennan Chandler 10:46

Yeah, I don't know if I could spell that word orally right now, honestly. That's a tricky word. I mean, this kind of goes back to again that spelling and writing are already incredibly demanding tasks, cognitively, right? Students are holding sounds in memory, retrieving spelling, seeking about meaning, generating ideas when they're writing, coordinator output all at once. The last thing that many students need, and students I also think about with dyslexia or reading difficulties and writing difficulties, they don't need maybe 40 disconnected spelling rules layered on top of that, right? And so I want to say though, and be clear, I'm not anti-rule, I'm anti-low low utility, cognitively overwhelming rule-based instruction. And so in the research, there's a whole handful of high utility generalizations, and Melissa, you mentioned one of them, that are absolutely worth teaching. Things like the floss pattern. So if a one-syllable word contains one short vowel followed by F L, S or Z, we double the final letter, or the one-one-one doubling rule, right? Or dropping the silent E before a vowel suffix or changing Y to I. And those patterns, they're high utility. There's around 10 of them, they really help unlock a lot of words. But beyond that, we know from not only cognitive science and learning science, but a lot of the developmental spelling literature Rebecca Treeman's worked on as well, is that students benefit more from seeing many examples of how English spelling tends to work than from memorizing or rehearsing rules and all these procedures. And so English spelling is more pattern-based and probabilistic than most people realize. Certain spellings are simply more likely in certain contexts and positions in a word. That is what students gradually learn through exposure and not just expose them to the word, but that practice-based exposure, comparison, practice, and also our feedback. And so this really all connects to this idea of statistical learning. Students build knowledge of the spelling system by encountering these patterns repeatedly across words and context that we're asking them to practice in. So a great example for this, I keep going back because the vowels are the bane of my existence when teaching kids who read and to spell, is this example of variant vowel correspondences, like EE and EA, for example. Spelling is really cognitively a decision-making task. Students have to decide which vowel team to use to represent the long E sound in the word. There's 10 plus right ways that we could spell E for a student could spell E. So instead of maybe trying to make everyone fit into a neat rule, which some might do, as adults, we love rules. It keeps things neat, especially teachers. We like rules, so that makes a lot of sense. But instead of having kids memorize either the words at a time or think about all these rules when we might use E or use different spellings of E, I would rather give them word sets that make that pattern visible. C, feet, green, sleep, compared with C, meet, clean, reach is an example. So that comparison helps students notice that English spelling is patterned, even when there's more than one possible spelling for a sound. And so the goal here is not the rule recitation. I see a lot of this sometimes, you know, on social media, like they're not understanding this rule, or when I ask them why they spell it this way, they didn't use the right rule. The goal here really is pattern recognition and transfer. And honestly, I'm all about efficiency. I would rather spend instructional time having students read, sort, spell, retrieve, and apply patterns than defending why a complicated rule technically works in rare edge cases. Again, efficiency, efficiency, efficiency.

Patterns Over Overwhelming Rule Lists

Lori 14:15

This is so helpful. I love this conversation. I feel like you also explained like spelling has layers, and that makes sense, right? What you just said. But these layers come in phonology, orthography, and morphology. So I want to talk a little bit about how these three layers work together when students are just learning to spell.

Sound Print Meaning Work Together

Lori 14:35

Can you say more about that?

Brennan Chandler 14:37

Yeah, I think one of our biggest misconceptions about spelling is that it's only maybe about sound or phonology to orthography, but really spelling, just like word reading, draws on the same linguistic knowledge, those three um sources of word knowledge simultaneously. And so the three big layers that we know from the research are phonology, orthography, morphology. So phonology is all about the sound structure of the word. Can students hear and segment the sounds in the word? Do they have this word in their oral vocabulary, their oral lexicon, right? That's really important. So that phonology piece that then connects to orthography is that spelling system itself, patterns, conventions, and constraints. For example, knowing that English often uses CK after short vowel in a one-syllable word, not at the beginning. We're not going to usually ever, ever, ever, never see CK at the beginning. So that's that orthography. So that's important as well to draw on. And then that morphology piece or semantics too involves meaning. It involves meaningful word parts like prefixes, suffixes, base words. When we think about semantics as well, which is in that same morphology lens in a way, is homophones like weak and weak and neat and neat. And so all those three layers work together during spelling. Students are coordinating that sound pattern, meaning at the same time. And all of those, when they're coordinating them and they're being supported, that's what helps lock in word memory for reading and for spelling. So a good example of this is when a student goes to spell the word jumped, right? Maybe they're spelling the word jumped. I jumped on my trampoline. A student who spells it jumped with the T at the end, J-U-M-T, is actually showing some really strong phonological knowledge. They heard the sounds in the word, they represent them plausibly, but that conventional spelling requires more than sound alone. They also need that orthographic and morphological knowledge. They need to know that English max marks past tense with ED, even when the ending sounds like. So spelling is not just sound it out. I think when I was a teacher, I taught second and third grade early on. Just sound it out, just stretch it. Just sound, that doesn't work all the time. That does only that only gets us so far, though it's incredibly important. But it's about integrating multiple sources of linguistic information into them that stable word representation. And really developmentally, like early on in elementary school and throughout, the weighting of those layers changes over time. Early on, our instruction is gonna lean more heavily on phonology and those basic orthographic patterns. But then later, morphology does become increasingly important as they encounter words: magic, magician, heal, health, where spelling really preserves that meaning. And so the strong spelling really depends on high-quality word knowledge and not just that memorization alone. And so for teachers, I think this practical question becomes what does this word demand? Is it mainly a sound of spelling challenge my students having, a pattern challenge, morphology, or some combination? And that I think question helps teachers decide what to model and also what kind of practice students might need as well.

Lori 17:34

Yeah, I just want to say, Brendan, that makes so much sense that it really uh needs this deeper understanding of words. It's like almost what you said earlier. You know, if a student is struggling with that phonology and they have that um J-U-R-M-T spelling, showing them the correct spelling and then explaining why is a really helpful tool. It's not like repeating, right? It's helping that student understand the word that this part, the E D shows a past tense, like you said. And you know, here's and the sound is that's really tricky in this word. You know, I mean, just just talking through it and explaining it with that explicit instruction. And and that's helpful for the students as they're learning. So I really appreciate that explanation.

Brennan Chandler 18:18

Yeah, of course. I think oftentimes too, it's that that it's those small little teachable moments. That's not a full-blown lesson, right? Our reading programs are only gonna get us so far with spelling because they have spelling usually embedded in them, right? But we need to go a little deeper, especially when spelling, and that's gonna help them unlock so many other words than oh, the past 10 to I spell wanted. It's a different, it's the same marker, E D, but I'm spelling it a different way. But it doesn't matter because the phonology diverges, but those more, though those morphemes, those spellings retain their stable, they retain their spellings.

Melissa 18:51

Yeah, can we talk a little bit more about morphology there? Because I know that I always thought, and I think it's kind of out there, that morphology is for the upper grades, right? You wait until like third grade and above, and that's when you can start digging into morphology because then they're done with their phonics instruction. Um, but you know, thinking about it, it's like when I heard just how many times even that the plural s doesn't actually make the z sound, right? Like in dogs, it's the zzz sound, right? Like, I mean, it really does like come in at the earliest stages. That's you know, part of morphology there, and has such an impact on spelling. Um, so can you just talk a little bit about like what should this look like even in the early grades?

Brennan Chandler 19:33

Yeah, I'm so glad you brought that up, Melissa, because I do agree. I think morphology oftentimes, and I've sort of hinted at framing it this way too, gets framed as advanced literacy, right? But the reality is that young children, early elementary, kindergarten, first, second grade, are already drawing not only on phonology and orthography, but also that morphology in very early development. And we have lots of research. Again, Mike keeps saying Rebecca Treeman, she did a lot of this developmental spelling work from the early, early stages. And so exactly what Melissa said, those the moment students work with plurals, past tense endings, contractions, compound words, or words like jumped, cats, dogs, right? They're already interacting with morphology. And so early morphology instruction in terms of spelling does not need to look like a graduate linguistics course. It can be really concrete and really connected to spelling a meeting. So, for example, if a student spells jumped, like right with the T at the end, again, useful teaching moment. The student heard the sounds reasonably well, but now we can teach that English marks that past tense with E D, even when the sounds like t d and d, and they're all spelled that same way. And so that is morphology in terms of spelling, right? Spelling preserves that meaning, phonology diverges, spelling remains stable. Another example of those plurals. Like think about box and then spelling boxes, right? How do I spell that? What can I do? Students are gonna begin to notice how those endings change meaning too, and not just pronunciation. We want to draw their attention to that. And so young students, because I've worked on, I've worked with a lot of young students on this recently too, they're very capable of thinking about how meaningful word parts or meaningful word parts when we as teachers make them explicit and visible. And so this morphology gives students another pathway into understanding then and remembering words. And again, I love morphology and I love thinking about it embedded in spelling and reading instruction because it helps get it also as well, like comprehension, right? Too like we're unlocking that in a way. It's that sort of structural clarity, right? And then that semantic um sort of understanding there as well. And so it does become increasingly complex and important across the grades, like as students encounter more complex academic vocabulary, but we don't need to wait till fourth or fifth grade to really begin starting to build that foundation.

Lori 21:44

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I think that building that word awareness from day one is really important. And doing it in a way that's, you know, I mean, I think sometimes there are moments that are it, it might not be like quote, explicit. It's just going to be an in the moment teaching moment. But really planning for those other moments where you know you're going to be teaching certain words or you're pulling out something for this vocabulary that has these morphological components in it okay, we're in first or second grade. That's a great time to point that out because I think what it does is it builds that word curiosity for students and that awareness. And then they start, the wheels start turning in their head, right? So then they they can become those like little avid uh word learners as they're looking at the words. So I I think that um, you know, it's it makes it easier for the older grade teachers too, if we start that in younger grade.

Brennan Chandler 22:37

It does. I'm so glad you brought that up, Lori, because I think for that reason, I'm less of a strict stage or phase theory person when we think about spelling development when it comes to that, and more of this connection to stinker because we know that students are gradually building connections among sound spelling and meaning all the way. So waiting until some magical point in fourth grade for that morphology to suddenly appear puts a little more weight on those teachers, the student as well. Again, little small teachable moments, no like no graduate linguistics course. I'm never, you know, training students to be mini-linguist. I'm not one myself either. But if we can the moment support that as well, I think we're gonna be doing um, I'm we're gonna be doing a great service to our students.

Less Talking More Student Learning

Lori 23:17

Yeah. So I said I've also taught primary grades and then I've taught upper elementary. And I mean, it's just such a help when students have that word awareness. Um, Brennan, I do want to ask you about though, you've emphasized this idea of less talking and more learning. What does that mean? I will talk less and let you talk more.

Brennan Chandler 23:37

Yeah, let me talk. I can talk all day, actually. So I had a this is a principle for myself that I have to remember often because so the the this idea of less talking, more learning, or using concise language comes from learning and instructional sciences. We know that clear, concise language reduces cognitive load for students. It increases the probability of them that they're going to learn what we want them to learn, really. Because again, we want our time spent, not us talking, we want to get in, get out, and get to the practice. And so sometimes in spelling instruction, what I've done before previously, and what I've observed as well, is that teachers sometimes accidentally overload students with too much explanation. We might spend five minutes talking about a spelling pattern instead of getting students actively retrieving that spelling pattern and applying it. And so for me, that teacher talk should be quick, clear, purposeful. Name the pattern, explain the logic briefly if it makes sense, model a few examples, and then move students into practice. And so we don't need to spend five minutes on a history lesson about how apron evolved from an apron in Middle English or a deep dive into every exception or edge case before students can successfully spell words with that target pattern. And the question I really want teachers asking, and I often ask myself too, is does this explanation help students spell, read, or understand this word or concept more efficiently? And if the answer is no, it's probably interesting, but it's not instructionally relevant really, right? And so we don't need to have spelling become a detour of every uh become a distortion of every historical detour in English. Would be really, really cool to do that. But so we know students learn about these words by spelling them, retrieving patterns and applying them and not little not listening to as much as us, even if they think it's interesting. And so for that case, too, I want instruction that's highly efficient, high leverage, fewer teacher words, more student thinking and responding.

Lori 25:25

Yeah, I keep thinking in order to do that, you have to be incredibly prepared, right? I have to know what words I'm teaching. I have to know what words I'm ready for it. Now, there might be moments where I'm jumping in, but the overall majority of that explicit instruction has to come from preparation and you know, not sporadic instruction in spelling. Would you agree with that?

Brennan Chandler 25:48

I would, and honestly, I've talked with a lot of teachers about this when I work with schools and teachers, and I think about this in a way, and this is how I do it and how I would do it still, is when I think about teaching a target pattern, I'm going back to CK, just make it a quick, clear example. I want to think about on a post and note, I want to jot down exactly how I'm gonna explain this because I want that language, I'm explaining that target pattern to be incredibly concise, but then again, consistent. I don't want to, I want to use the same exact words to explain that pattern every time I bring it back. And so when I have it written down somewhere, it's gonna be the full-blown lesson plan with scripting one sentence, a phrase. How am I gonna explain this? We use CK in a one-syllable word after like after short about and repeating that and really owning that language. So it's just this jot it down, make some help us keep us accountable to make sure we're not overloading our students with all the things that they don't need to know, but also keeping that consistent across the year, across the semester, whatever it is, to make sure that they're, oh, that's what it is, that's what I'm doing with CK. And then they'll start rehearsing that internally too, if we keep that consistent with them.

Melissa 26:53

Yeah, it reminds me so much, Lori, of when we write anything, literally, me and you together. And like the first time we're just like, get it all out there, and we like it's it's just babbling. And then we like, like, cut that, cut that, cut that, cut that until it's like really concise. And that's what, like you said, Lori, like to prepare in that way of like how can I say this in the most concise way? And then save time, which is what teachers need the most, right? They need those minutes back.

Brennan Chandler 27:18

Exactly. It's gonna get you minutes back too from doing that. Because I've walked in. If I didn't do that before teaching CK, I'd be like, okay, everybody. Today, here's what we're gonna learn. We're gonna talk about CK. Oh, English is so tricky. Oh, so C and a K together, like right, we're on the fly is not great. And it's just wasting time. I love efficiency. So, yeah, all of those things because we could go on forever, but make it tight, make it quick, write it down, jot it down, use that explanation consistently. That goes for any really anything we're teaching, anybody to do, any novice to do, right?

Melissa 27:47

All right,

Ditch Friday Tests For Retrieval

Melissa 27:48

so we talked a lot about teach practices. So let's get into practice now. Um the first thing we want to talk about is this idea of ditching the Friday test, which you know, I think most of our listeners probably grew up doing. And I know Lori and I both did this. We had our notebooks full of our list of words that we copied over and over again. We wrote them in a sentence, we did all those things, we took our test on Friday, and then probably forgot how to spell half those words, if not more. Um, so what is a better way for us to practice other than this Friday test?

Brennan Chandler 28:22

Yeah, before everybody gets to be in trouble too, I want to be clear. I'm not anti-assessment. So we're not anti-assessment. Spelling assessment is incredibly important when it's designed well. And so there are some excellent spelling measures that can help teachers understand development, monitor progress, analyze soon errors, things like spelling CBMs, correct letter sequence scoring, diagnostic spelling inventories are a great window that can help us make some instructional decisions. So, my issue with the Friday test is that it's not assessment. The issue here is that it's using the Friday test as the primary means of instruction. And so, too often, and this is what when I was a student in school, in K6, when I was a teacher, you know, this is how the weekly cycle is introduce a list on Monday, copy words on Tuesday, do rainbow words on Wednesday, word search Friday, test Friday, Thursday, test Friday, and then we're never revisiting those words or patterns again. And so that model often produces short-term performance of those words, maybe, but not durable learning. We're not unlocking patterns really. We're not really helping. And so, what the cognitive and learning sciences tell us is that students remember more when they have to actually retrieve information from memory and not just re-expose themselves from it. Even copying is not really helpful here. And so instead of copying words, they benefit more from practice. Like we know from you guys had some great interviews with a lot of different folks that talk a lot about learning science principles, but active recall, it's the same with spelling. I think it's even more important with spelling because of that decision-making process that we have to go through. And so we want students to hear a word and spell it, retrieve previously learned patterns, compare spellings, write words for memory, and then apply those in connected writing. And so these students re remember all of us things that are then we're asked to actively bring them back to mind. And that retrieval is what strengthens memory, which is one part of it. We want to retrieve to remember. So we want students to retrieve spellings and maybe do a dictation routine. We could talk about different routines here later. Um, but that's retrieval is important. They retrieve it. We get dictated to them, they have to spell it out from memory. But spacing those patterns out, we're teaching those word properties and cumulative review matter so much as well. So we want those patterns, not like we with the Friday text, but we want them to come back across days and weeks. So students have to retrieve them after for after some forgetting has occurred. That forgetting curve, we want to bring those, you know, we want to bring those words back in here. And so that effortful retrieval, spelling is so hard, but it's what makes learning stick. And so instead of abandoning a pattern after Friday's quiz, maybe we revisit it. We mix old and new patterns together, we embed review into our warmups, we use brief dictation routines and build that cumulative practice over time. So I'm gonna go back to Val Teams, maybe for an example, if that's okay. Um, a good example of that is that instead of studying maybe only EE words that say E, like in C for one week and then moving on to E A the next week or forever, students continue to make those decisions across patterns. E E, E A, maybe we throw in AI, A Y, and so on. And again, this matters because spelling fundamentally is that decision-making task. What spelling pattern am I using to represent the sound in my language? And they need those repeated opportunities to retrieve those patterns and not just spell them on Friday after doing some really fun rainbow word things. I remember one of my favorite, we had a tic-tac-toe board when I was, I think in fourth grade. My favorite thing to do was use we got to go on Microsoft Word and use like word art to like make our spelling list and words. I wasn't learning anything about those spelling words. I was too concerned about how pretty and beautiful my word art was going to be. That was just an activity, but it wasn't really leading to learning, and I loved it. I spent so much, I spent hours on that every week.

Lori 32:06

Yeah, were you making an ombre blue word, you know?

Brennan Chandler 32:08

Of course I was. Of course. All of those things. I was trying it all out. I was like downloading different fonts online. So that really wasn't leading them to learning, right? Because that activity wasn't really tied to the architecture of what we are or what we're doing cognitively when we are when but when we're spelling and what we need to remember things as well.

Lori 32:26

Yeah. You know, the one thing I'm thinking about, first of all, we've had Carl Hendrick on and he talks about that retrieval practice a lot. But one thing that you said that stood out to me, Brennan, is this is hard, right? It's effortful. And I feel like like we as teachers, we know we're doing it right, if students say, like this is this is hard, huh? Like this is hard to do in a way that is pushing them to retrieve that information and to to give that forpelling effort. Like it shouldn't be easy to retrieve necessarily. It might be easier for some than others, it might be easier for some patterns than others. But overall, we're asking effort from our students. So it I I really think that's a good kind of barometer. Like, is this difficult? Is it is it pushing my students to retrieve?

Brennan Chandler 33:13

No, I'm so glad you said that because I do think that it might be spelling and seeing how it's happening in schools right now, it might be be getting abandoned a little bit because it is hard and effortful, right? But anything worth learning is sticky, it's tricky, it's worthwhile. Me learning stats during my PhD was really hard. But now, on the other end, right, we did it because it's that, and Carl talks about this too. This the this idea of desirable difficulty, and it really will be in spelling too. And we want it to be. I was copying words too. I had them right there. I wasn't retrieving anything. And so I think, and I always say this well with teachers is make it, do something aloud. Say, you know what, spelling is hard. Maybe it was hard for me. You know what? It's not this easy thing we're gonna do, but we're gonna practice it and we're gonna get better. And there's ways we could this out of principle, but to embed some of that, maybe we graphed how many spelling words we got correct on this, on this practice, you know, or whatever it may be. But embedding that, you know, some of that self-determination, that goal setting is really, I think, can be important when things are hard, like spelling is.

Lori 34:18

Yeah, a lot of that, like, you know, this is hard and I can do it, helping students get through that mentality. Um, so kind of like along those lines, Brennan, I want to talk about that I a principle and idea that you have of fixing mistakes while they're fresh.

Fix Errors While They’re Fresh

Lori 34:34

And I like that. You know, if you get too far down the pike and you're making a mistake over and over again, oh, I'm probably gonna keep making that mistake. Um, because I've not I haven't been told that it's it's incorrect. I'll give you a good example. We moved into our house five years ago, and for the first six months, I said my neighbor's name wrong. Um, I pronounced it wrong. And then finally one day I heard someone else say it and I was like, oh my God, I'm mortified, right? It's almost embarrassing to be making a mistake over and over again. I want it to be fixed the first time. So um, we want to fix those mistakes while they're fresh, optimally the first time they're happening for our students. So, Brennan, can you tell us a little bit why like immediate feedback is really important when students are learning how to spell?

Brennan Chandler 35:20

Yeah, it this is again in life, right? Learning anything, somebody's name, learning in math, learning in reading and writing, it's all the same. Let's talk about it. Immediate feedback matters, especially in spelling, because spelling is learned through production. Every time a student spells a word, they're strengthening their representation of that word for better or for worse, if they're spelling it incorrectly. And if that incorrect spelling is left uncorrected, students may rehearse and reinforce that wrong pattern repeatedly, which we do not want to happen. And so immediate feedback and error correction helps interrupt that process while the word is still active in working memory. It's really important. And so this is one of the most consistent findings in the spelling intervention research is this idea of air correction, along with spelling, along with explicit instruction. And so in spelling, that timing, Lori 2, is so important as well because the closer that feedback is to the air, the more instructionally useful it becomes. And it's going to lead to a higher probability of learning. That retrieval practice is so powerful, but it's not self-correcting. You know, we can have students retrieve all they want, but we have to give them feedback along the way to make sure that they're not building incorrect word representations. And so effective feedback to do that, it's usually brief, specific, and connected to the future being taught. Again, concise language. So for example, if that student spells the word jumped with a T at the end, I would not just say wrong. I might say, you heard the final sound correctly, but this word is past tense. So English spelling, English in English spells that ending E D, right? That might be a way, that's not my favorite way, I'll tell you the best way. But that kind of gets sometimes teachers warmed up to this idea because that response acknowledges what the student did correctly while redirecting attention to the orthographic or morphological feature that matters. But the instructional error correction procedure that I really like comes from big DI direct instruction programs because it's fast, it's explicit, and it's highly efficient. And it's basically four, four, four stages. Model, lead, test, delay test. You model, here's the correct spelling. Make yours match mine. That's where that lead is. Model, here's the correct spelling, lead, write the correct spelling and cross out yours. We don't want students to erase their spellings. We want them to see the progression from the incorrect response to then the correct response. And then we test them. It's like I do, we do, you do. You model it. Here it is. We do write the correct spelling and cross out yours, make it match mine. Now test or in or you do, cover it up and now spell it again. We're going back to recall again. So they have another progress opportunity. And then we want, we want to be really cool is a delayed test where with those students, maybe it's an error that a lot of students are making, or are you working in a small group or you're working one-on-one? You want them to come back later, not during that session or lesson or whatever, maybe the next day, maybe the next block, and retrieve it again. And so what I love about that sequence, model lead test, delay test, is that it combines correction with retrieval, right? So you're getting another practice opportunity. We're trying to undo that mistake in a way. And the students don't just see the correction because I should, I could say, oh, jump this spell like this, look at my board, right? Or even if they cross it off and make it incorrect, right? They don't just see that, they immediately produce the correct spelling themselves. And so when I work with teachers in schools, I want them to understand that these errors are not these detours from instruction. They are so instructionally important. They're part of instruction. And once I started embedding that to when I was teaching, and same thing in reading instruction, or reading fluency, student mispronounces a word. Oh, not quite. That word is jumped. What word? Jumped. Go back to the beginning of the sentence and read that again, right? We want to be responsive. So the goal is this responsive air correction during instructional practice, especially around those recently taught patterns and high utility features. And so this effect, I can't stress how important this air correction is. Because Lori, if your neighbor even would have, you know, corrected you and said, Oh, my name is this is the here's how you actually say my name would have led to you being a little maybe awkward for a second, but it's like had, you know, being embarrassed now for months or however long, right? That's not fun for anybody, but for our students in spelling, right? I take the air correction procedure really seriously and to practice it and get used to it and use it across content areas too, when you're working with more of these skills that are more kin's train, like spelling.

Melissa 39:41

Yeah, and that makes so much sense. I'm thinking like back to those Friday tests that I used to get back. And you know, you would just get an X and maybe like the correct spelling from the teacher with their red pen, you know, and you're just like, okay, like three days later, you're like, what do I do with this? Fine. But you know, if you're right there in the moment still thinking about that word, and you're like, oh, okay, that's it's that letter for this reason. I see. Now I can do something with that versus just like, all right, I guess I got that wrong.

Brennan Chandler 40:09

Yeah, no. And something, something I also like to do, especially for students that are really, that really struggle to spell, maybe they have dyslexia, is have given them a highlighter and when you're doing that air correction procedure, having it handy. Mistakes are proofs that we're learning. They are for us as adults, right? Too. That's a really common thing. I'm sure it's on a Hobby Lobby sign somewhere. But we can do this. We have a highlighter, highlight that, highlight where you made that mistake or and then highlight what the correct response is. If it's a if it's a switch up of some letters or if it's a more phonological air and morphographic, whatever it is, drawing attention to what the correct response is to can help them see also have more of a visual input and really see clearly what their what their mistake was and what they should do with that and going forward with that word.

Choosing Words That Teach Patterns

Melissa 40:51

Brennan, I know one question that a lot of people are going to have after listening to all of this about spelling is choosing words, like which which words, which list? Is there lists out there? Um, how do I get these words? And I'm curious about your, you know, what does the research say about choosing words? And also, like, I'm wondering if there's a difference between if I'm a K2 and I have a foundational skills program. Should they connect to that? And if I'm uh, you know, above third, third grade and above and I have no program to align to, how do I choose words there?

Brennan Chandler 41:23

Oh, let's get into this. I might be a little long-winded here. I'm gonna keep it tight though, if I can. Okay.

Lori 41:29

We'll ask follow-up questions. I feel like we might have some here.

Brennan Chandler 41:33

I think there's really three big ideas teachers across development, across grades should keep in mind when selecting what we're doing in spelling, if that's words, patterns, anything. Really, we want to choose words that reveal a pattern, choose words that support that decision-making process, and then choosing words that also in a way that match these students' developmental needs. And so, first, spelling words should teach something beyond themselves, right? They shouldn't just teach that word. A good spelling word earns its place by helping students understand how the system works. So instead of random or purely thematic lists that I do see still on Friday's spelling tests, maybe the list is pumpkin, October, Scarecrow, leaves, right? No, I want to see words organized around a meaningful orthographic target. Back, sick, luck, rock, duck, right? Maybe we're adding in other review words as well. So the issue here is that not that whether thematic or vocabulary words for spelling instruction are bad. It's whether the word set is instructionally coherent, which is easier said than done. And we're working on something with our research to try to help with this. And it's not a, I'll talk about the difference between maybe a phonic scope and sequence and spelling scope and sequence here in a second, but they are different. And so strong words in spelling, when we're choosing them for instruction or for practice, helps students build what we call orthographic expectancy. Students begin developing expectations about what spellings are likely, where and why. And then, second, going back to that spelling is fundamentally that decision-making process. When students hear a sound, there's all these options available. Long E being another, again, in that example. If they hear it e, is it e? Is it e? Is it y? Is it e? Or occasionally E E, which is really what rare 1% of the time we're gonna spell it with E consonant E. And this is where spelling and phonics scope and sequences start to diverge in important ways. And I think this is important because a phonic scope and sequence, they mean K2, systematic explicit phonic scope and sequence, is typically organized around complexity and consistency. Students are learning to recognize a pattern and from print and produce its sound, right? So you see the print, we're gonna say the sound. If it's, you know, M is usually a really common first one, right? Of sound, right? M, and then we do we do short A, right? So that's what they're doing. They're producing the sound. But a skill, a spelling scope, and sequence. Or rather, when we think about where we should be doing, where our spelling, like the rules or lists or words come from, has to account a little more for frequency, probability, and function. So students are learning to choose the most likely spelling for a sound. In other words, phonics moves from like grapheme to phoneme. We see a grapheme, we retrieve, we see the phoneme. Spelling is from phoneme then to grapheme. And that's cognitively harder because there's far more options going from sound to print and print to sound. It just is. It's the way that our words work, right? And so while a phonics program might introduce e consonant early because it's a relatively clean and consistent decoding pattern, that doesn't necessarily mean students are going to need practice spelling e consonant e, because again, 1% of the time they'll actually spell a word with that, right? If we think about this probabilistically in English, the English, the most common spelling of long E is at the end of the words with Y. Babe, E, canned E, Prit. Not E consonant E, not E, not I, not E E, right? It's Y. So students get comparatively little explicit encoding practice with that pattern because it might appear later in the phonics open sequence, or it might receive less emphasis in phonics programs. Phonics programs are supposed to teach kids write phonics, the code, crack the code so they can decode and read, right? There is encoding practice in there, but I don't think it's enough. And I know it's not enough because teachers want help supporting and intensifying their spelling. So I don't want teachers to feel locked into a rigid spelling scope and sequence or a sequence that's directly tied to their phonics program beyond really, I see this more middle of first grade to second, right? Following that course phonic scope and sequence is absolutely appropriate early instruction to support spelling. So if I'm practicing short A in my phonic scoping sequence, we're gonna practice spelling, right? Short A or E or con or short E or M or all those consonants, right? But in that late first to second grade, they're gonna often need additional strategic spelling practice beyond the program. And so there's this developmental lag that happens developmentally between reading and spelling. Students can frequently recognize a pattern in reading and actually retrieve it correctly and say those words a lot more, a lot more than they can produce it accurately in spelling. Us as adults, we can read more words and we can spell precisely and correctly, right? I read the word practitioner a lot. I really struggle to spell that still. Same thing with restaurant. I could read it because reading does not require precision, that spelling does. And so add in those vowels, it becomes rarely, it becomes really visible, right? With these vowels. And so English gives students many possible spellings. So we have to think about when we design word sets and what we're thinking about in spelling, we should prioritize high probability graph phonium grafting correspondences, variant vowel spellings, these cumul these contrasts like in those spellings like E E versus E A or A Y versus AI, right? And also high frequency, irregular words that are often function words that students are constantly using in writing. Said, does, was, the, right? These words I want them to be when we think about selecting words for instruction, not just items to practice, but these examples that students learn from, because we want them to build that pattern knowledge and spelling expectations. And honestly, I think about this like a large language model. We want to feed our, we feed large language models our data. We want to feed our students data in spelling. We want to have them all these different words, right, that they're practicing to build those, we build that orthographic expectancy. We want to feed them data like a machine to practice in a way. So then they implicitly, we explicitly explain things, but a lot of that spelling comes implicitly as they are as they're practicing it as well through those words that we select.

Lori 47:58

Oh my gosh. That was amazing. That was amazing. I I feel like I'm gonna listen to that over and over again and just keep letting it sink in. I that's really helpful. I think the you know, my number one takeaway there, Brendan, is reading doesn't require the precision that spelling does. And if we think about this word set uh for instruction and assessment as being instructionally coherent, and then all those great reminders that you gave us, um, you know, what to look for, I think that's a really helpful way to think about it. Um so I I appreciate that very much.

Making Spelling Transfer To Writing

Lori 48:32

I'm hopeful that we can kind of turn the corner now into the final phase, which is apply. So you say that spelling shouldn't live on a worksheet. We totally agree. Although I will say, I you know, I taught second grade 20 years ago. It lived on a worksheet. So let's uh let's think about other ways to do spelling. So, what does it mean to teach spelling so that it transfers into actually being able to read and write well?

Brennan Chandler 48:58

Yeah, this is something I've been thinking about a lot lately, this idea of teaching for transfer. We just did a paper on this, an assessment for effective intervention, looking at how we're even measuring these spelling outcomes. And really, again, I don't care about spelling for spelling's sake. I care about spelling because I care about writing. And spelling is the tool that makes writing possible, right? And so this big idea in the apply phase is that spelling knowledge is not fully learned when a student can spell a word correctly on a worksheet, on a Friday quiz, on a test, whatever. It becomes truly useful when they can retrieve and use that knowledge when during authentic reading and really more writing tasks. What is authentic? Going and writing an essay in English class, texting their friends. That's authentic writing. That's what we want. We want that effortless retrieval during that. That's our goal. We really want to go from isolated word-level performance to transfer. And I think that in spelling instruction, that is not often the case. We stay at that word level in reading, right? We care so much about reading fluency practice and connected text practice to get it to reading comprehension. Same thing in writing. We want a lot of connected text practice, thinking about teaching for transfer and really teaching for the outcome that we want, which my outcome I want is good writers, proficient writers. And so my spelling instruction has to add that a little bit in there. It's not a full-blown, you know, writing block, maybe my writing block, but I might come back to that if they are doing some authentic writing tasks, some reminders, having them do some peer revisions and see where am I misspelling things that I know that we've that my teacher has taught me or we've talked about. Because something that I hear constantly when I work with schools and districts is teachers will say, they can spell it here, like in small group or in class, but not use it there during writing time. Like here, doing it here and not there, thinking about instructional or the instructional hierarchy as well, right? Acquisition, fluency, generalization, and adaptation. We have to get from the acquisition phase of being able to even spell the word correctly to then like an orchestra, right? Like the reading is writing is the same way. We want to work have this work all together. And so that is exactly this transfer problem. Students might have some emerging word-level knowledge, but it's not stable or automatic to then generalize to survive the cognitive load that writing demands. So, our instructional job as teachers is to build that bridge from here, whatever here is, to there, from word-level spelling practice to maybe sentence dictation practice, which is important as well, but then really to writing in the wild, which is really hard for us sometimes if we're living in a really we don't think about structured literacy and everything, everything's super structured. We want there to be unstructured time for writing. I know that's probably really hard to hear. It's hard for me to hear sometimes. When I say authentic, sometimes I'm like, oof, I'm getting, you know, different vibes. But that's really what we want to do. Some of the good studies actually, in the same time, they're maybe they're teaching spelling for 10, 15 minutes, right after they're doing their text level, their more their discourse level, whatever they're doing for writing instruction time, threading that needle through spelling with some of these reminders. And so transfer, spelling is hard. Transfer for kids in spelling is really hard. Because they can spell ring correctly during dictation, does not mean they're going to use a pattern correctly when writing a paragraph and generating ideas. And so that performance during practice is not the same as transfer during writing. And that's why this apply principle is really, really important because spelling knowledge has to, again, survive the cognitive load of real, real writing tasks.

Lori 52:35

Yeah, which is hard enough already. It's hard enough already to do those writing tasks, adding spelling on top of it. But if we're we get really fluent in spelling, then we're we're good to go. So I'm so glad you pointed that out.

Melissa 52:45

Yeah, and I was just gonna say, I've had my son in mind the past couple conversations you've had here because he is in late first grade. Um, and so you know, he's doing doing great with phonics, doing great with reading. And that includes some spelling, but it's very tied to what they're learning, right? The pattern they learned, they're writing that. Um, but when he has time to just write, it's so interesting to see some of like how he decides to spell those words. You know, like you he shocks me with the words he can read. Like he would read the word citizen the other day, and I was like, what in the world? How do you know how to say that word? But then when I'm reading his like free writing, um, the word soccer, which is a word that I would think he would know how to spell because he loves soccer and he probably sees that word a lot, but he spelled it S-O-C-R. And I was like, oh yeah, like look at that. Um, but it's again not a word that they're they're they're learning, so it's not directly applied. So um I love the things you're saying here about like transfer and you know, teaching words that might not be directly tied to what what is happening in their phonics instruction because it's very different and a lot more difficult.

Brennan Chandler 53:50

It is, and I'm hoping that the work we're doing, we're trying to develop some sort of flexible, it's kind of scope and sequence idea where if I'm I have students struggling with long vowel teams, or if like, oh, what are the what's the most, what's the highest probability of the oh spelling, right, that they're gonna have to spell and make a decision from and then sort of designing our practice around that. So it's a lot of this is easier always said than done. And so having that sort of opportunities to even transfer, I'm happy to start with connected text transfer or spelling, spelling sentence dictation, but then really, yeah, doing those things and connecting that because it's really, it's just it's so incredibly important.

Next Episode Teaser And Ways To Connect

Lori 54:27

Brennan, I want to bring us to a close here. You talked today about the principles of effective spelling instruction. This is so important. I know teachers are going to have so many amazing takeaways here, but we're doing something that we've never done before with anyone, and we're so glad that you're willing to do this. Um, you're gonna come back on the podcast and talk again because we know we're itching for some really practical routines. Like, what does this actually look like in my classroom? And you know that's where Melissa and I really love to go, right? That's what actually makes the change happen. So you're gonna come back on. You're gonna talk about uh routines. Uh, do you wanna kind of give a little teaser for that before we before we leave today?

Brennan Chandler 55:09

Yeah, no, I'm so excited. So I think it was really important that we unpack like what instructionally matters, right, in spelling, which is these are higher level ideas, but then it is we're gonna get into next time. Okay, what should I do on Monday? What should I do if I have 15 minutes? What should I prioritize? And what are some of these routines that I can hold in my back pocket that I can consistently come back to? And I think about these as the active ingredients in effective spelling instruction. Like what active ingredients meaning instructionally, not principles that we talked about today, but what we should have students practicing, what our explicit instruction might exactly sound like. So I'm excited to get into some of those. We're calling those the spell squads. So we're gonna talk about some fun routines that we can have um have our students do in elementary grades to help, to help boost their spelling performance, um, even when their reading performance is okay. Because again, really different, really different outcome here, reading and writing. Even though they're so connected, we have to think about these sometimes in separate ways, although we want to also integrate as much as we can.

Lori 56:10

Yeah, it's going to be so much fun. Um, I love that we now have kind of that foundational knowledge from this conversation. We can take this foundational knowledge into the next one and really get those very specific, very drilled down routines to take off, uh, you know, make the learning take off for our students and actually make teaching spelling easier for us. So thank you so much for being here today. This was awesome, and you're so much fun to talk to. We just appreciate your knowledge so much.

Brennan Chandler 56:36

Yeah, thank you both for having me anytime. Love being back.

Melissa 56:43

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Lori 56:53

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Melissa 57:02

Just a quick reminder that the views and opinions expressed by the hosts and guests of the Melissa and Lori Love Literacy podcast are not necessarily the opinions of Great Minds PBC or its employees.

Lori 57:14

We appreciate you so much, and we're so glad you're here to learn with us.