TAS: Using Joy Allcock's spelling programme

As part of our teaching as inquiry, we investigated our writing levels. In the past we have used a lot multi-modal lessons to remove the barriers to learning. Although this has yielded some results we want to make sure we are utilising everything into our writing programme.

We looked at the students' writing learning barriers  and the students have identified spelling as their biggest barrier. There were many strategies we taught them use the spellcheck on their device, use speech to text and also use a symbol if you don't know how to spell it. This was great. However, it was enough.  Our writing levels were still showing that our students' weakness was spelling. 

Our school have decided to go and look at Joy Allcock's Spelling programme. So as a team, we decided to first look at breaking those words and training students to identify the sounds. This was fine but we noticed only SOME students were participating.  It wasn't making any impact.
How do we know we were making impact?

We decided to gather data through pseduo-spelling test. According to their results, they were to see certain teachers for  a workshop. 

So our spelling programme looked like this  - 10 minute workshop everyday with certain teacher, looking at phonics and spelling rules, rote learning words combined with some multi-modal tools - e.g. screencastify a spelling pattern, use a song or make a quiz about apostrophes/plurals, speech to text to identify the sounds.....etc. 

At the end of each term, we gathered data to see the progress.  72 students made progress and 4 students did not. This term, we looked at changing our programme for these 4 students. We also will look at consulting with our ESOL  and writing teacher. What can we do next? 

Data