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The Strategic Spelling Skills of Students with Learning Disabilities: The Results of Two Studies

Journal of Instructional Psychology, March, 2000 by Craig Darch, Soobang Kim, Susan Johnson, Hollis James

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In order to determine the relative effectiveness of two different approaches for teaching spelling to students with learning disabilities, subjects were randomly assigned to either a group who received instruction in using rule-based strategies for spelling or another group who received instruction in a commercial program that implemented activities centered around word practice, exposure to spelling rules, and sentence and story writing. The program used to teach students rule-based spelling strategies was the Spelling ,Mastery Level C (Dixon & Engelmann, 1990). The students who were assigned to the alternative treatment group were taught from activities taken from the Laidlaw Spelling Program. Table 3 provides a comparison of the two treatment groups on six critical instructional features.

Table 3 Means, Standard Deviations, and Percentage Correct on Spelling Words on Three Probe Measures

                           Treatment

             Spelling Mastery              Traditional

                          %                     %
Test       M     SD    correct    M    SD    correct   t-test

Probe 1    8.7   1.3     87      6.3   3.1     63      p <.01
Probe 2    8.3   1.4     83      5.0   2.2     50      p < 0.1
Probe3     7.0   1.8     70      4.2   3.1     42      p <.01
Posttest   22    2.2     73      16    4.3     53      p <.01

Probe contained 10 items Post test contained 30 items

To increase the internal validity of this study, critical features of the instructional programs were controlled. Students in both treatment groups received instruction for 12 instructional sessions. The length of these daily instructional lessons was the same for both instructional groups, about 20 minutes. The same spelling words were used in both treatment groups. In addition, lessons for both treatment groups were semi-scripted which ensured that the lessons from each treatment group were taught as they were designed.

Spelling Mastery Program: A Rule-Based Approach. The Spelling Mastery Program Level C (Dixon & Engelmann, 1990) served as one of the instructional programs evaluated in this study. This commercial spelling program contains 137 lessons and is designed to teach students spelling rules in an intensive fashion. Students assigned to this treatment group received instruction based on activities taken from the first 50 lessons of the program. This direct instruction program (Gersten, Woodward, & Darch, 1986) has scripted lessons with scripts that provide to the teacher specific teaching activities. The critical aspect of this program is that it teaches students spelling using carefully sequenced rule-based strategies. Figure 2 provides an example of one of the scripts from this treatment group which is designed to teach students a morphographic analysis.

Students are taught the morphographic units of a series of words. The students are asked to identify these units, learn the meaning and spelling of the presented morphograph. The two other spelling strategies, phonemic analysis and final e rule were presented to students in this group in a similar fashion. For example, when students were taught phonemic analysis, students were taught how to sound out the individual letters in words that were phonetically regular (e.g., cat). Next students practiced using this strategy on a carefully selected group of words.

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The Strategic Spelling Skills of Students with Learning Disabilities: The Results of Two Studies

Journal of Instructional Psychology, March, 2000 by Craig Darch, Soobang Kim, Susan Johnson, Hollis James

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