The Virginia Model and Word-Study Research

The Virginia studies yielded a model of spelling development that includes five distinct stages.

• Preliterate
  Preliterate spelling is nonphonetic and lacks sound-symbol correspondence. Writing and spelling consist of scribbling and imitation writing. The picture must tell the story. By the end of the preliterate stage, writing becomes more linear and exhibits a definite difference between drawing and letter forms.
  
  
• Letter name
  Students at this stage begin to match letters to sounds. For example, in the sentence I LK TO P KBL (I like to play kickball), the child supplies beginning sounds as well as several ending sounds and the known word to. At the end of this stage, children begin consistently to exhibit correct usage of short vowels and can spell most blends (e.g., bl, pr, st) and digraphs (e.g., ch, th, sh), and the preconsonant nasal found toward the end of words (e.g., m in bump).
  
  
• Within word
  Spellers now begin to understand that two or more letters are often needed to make a long vowel sound. Within-word spellers study the spelling patterns that represent the long vowel sounds and begin to experiment with them. The child may write WE TIDE THE GAEM (We tied the game), exhibiting an understanding of long vowel usage patterns but a still-evolving knowledge of letter groupings. By the time students are leaving the within-word stage, they exhibit consistent correct r control (fork, part) and long vowel spellings.
  
  
• Syllable juncture
  Students at this stage focus on correct affix usage. Spellings at this stage might include ATEND for attend, PLESURE for pleasure, and BARBAR for barber. Students begin to focus on homophones and the influences of meaning on spelling.
  
  
• Derivational constancy
  This stage continues into adulthood. Spelling concepts move beyond letter-sound correspondence into meaning. Syllable structures for spelling regularities focus on syllable accenting. Meaning-based root words also affect spelling (e.g., nation and nationality). Common spellings at this level might include OPPISITION for opposition, CRITASIZE for criticize, and BENAFIT for benefit.

Developmental spelling research also supports the use of instructional spelling level to improve transfer of spelling knowledge (Morris, Blanton, Blanton, & Perney, 1995; Morris, Nelson, & Perney, 1986). In a study with low-achieving third-graders, Morris, Blanton, Blanton, Nowacek, and Perney (1995) investigated the effects of instruction at a lower difficulty level. The treatment group received accelerated instruction on second-grade spelling words and limited instruction on third-grade words; the control group received regular third-grade word instruction. Results indicated that the treatment group scores were better than the control group on the second-grade post-test (75% vs. 64%), almost as good as the control group on the third-grade post-test (47% vs. 50%), and better on the third-grade untaught transfer words (47% vs. 36%). Even though students were not assigned to specific developmental levels, the results do suggest that transfer of spelling knowledge is linked to student understanding of spelling concepts and instructional level.

A prominent instructional activity in the word study Virginia model is word sorting. Two recent experimental studies have investigated the effects of word sort methodology for spelling instruction (Joseph, 2000; Santa & Hoien, 1999, online abstract). Both focused on first-grade spellers. In the Santa and Hoien study, students in the word-sort group significantly outperformed their control peers in spelling achievement. The Joseph study investigated a word box and word sort methodology and found that, for spelling, the word-sort group outperformed the control group. There was no significant difference between the word-sort and word-box group on spelling achievement.

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From “Effects of Traditional Versus Extended Word Study Spelling Instruction on Students’ Orthographic Knowledge,” by Mary Abbott.
Reading Online, www.readingonline.org
Posted October 2001
© 2001 International Reading Association, Inc.   ISSN 1096-1232