A Teacher Created Approach to Spelling Vs. A Textbook Approach to Spelling

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of two different approaches to spelling reinforcement. The first approach used solely textbook activities and the second approach used teacher directed activities. The study included 19 students from a suburban upstate New York school district. The subjects were second grade students consisting of twelve girls and seven boys. The study took approximately 12 weeks to complete. The first ten, weeks consisted of a pretest at the beginning of each week containing 15-18 second grade spelling words. Each week the pretest was followed by either textbook reinforcement activities or teacher created activities. A posttest was given every Friday using the 15-18 spelling words to see the progress made by each student. On the 12th week two cumulative tests were given one day apart consisting of 20 words each. Each test contained ten words from each spelling approach. Two tests were given so that there was a more representative sample of words. A t test was used for the purpose of determining whether there was a significant difference between the teacher created activities and the workbook activities. The data analysis showed that there was no statistically significant difference between workbook spelling activities and teacher created spelling activities. Both methods have proven to be equally effective and would produce similar outcomes for the students. This finding also implies that since both methods are similar in outcome the teacher has more freedom to choose either method at the time of instructing a particular concept.