For my inquiry, I decided to do a spelling inventory on the boy that I babysit. I will refer to him as S in this paper. Since I have begun working with S, I have recognized his love of writing and reading. S is homeschooled, is in the second grade, and his mother is his teacher. She informed that S truly fell in love with writing and reading, when she began to let him choose whatever he wanted to write or read about. She truly believes this is how he has become such an advanced reader and writer. Before giving him the test, I predicted that he would not be challenged enough if I gave him the test around his grade level, so I choose the test for third through fifth grade.
When I began the test, S, gave me a look and said, “Really? Bed? This is too easy.” He seemed annoyed at first with all of the easy words, but as we went on, he began to see the challenge increase as the words become more complex. S correctly spelled seventeen out of twenty-five words. The majority of the words he missed were due to him doubling the wrong letter or using an “a” instead of an “i”. According to the rating scale, Samuel needs review in the “within word pattern,” because he missed the ight in bright. He spelled all of the words correctly in the “suffixes and affixes” stage, and then the next stage, “derivational relations” is where he needs to be explicitly taught. Overall I was extremely impressed with his ability to spell as many words as he did correctly.
I think it is a good idea to start with easier words and then move to harder words. This gives the child good self esteem on their reading skills and encourages them that they can do the harder words.
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