TEMA – 10. Spelling. English language codes. Sound-spelling relationship.

Proposals for the teaching of

writing code. Applications for spelling in written productions.

Esquema. Bibliografia.

Marc legislatiu.

The ultimate goal of english teaching is that our student achieve a communicative competence. In order to reach this goal, we have to teach in an
integrated way, where the four skills are contemplated and several subjects are involved. For this reason, it’s important that teachers of diferent
specialities coordinate and establish strategies to connect diferent areas and help our students be successful at communicating in english. The
language teaching will be more meaningful to our students if this is presented in a context and through real life situations, so the students can connect
what they learn in class with their everyday life. We can’t forget to show our students the cultural aspects of the language, as it’s importsnt to
understand the background of a country and the plurilingual dimension in which students learn to stablish similarities and differences between
languages. Finally, teachers have to avoid a discriminatory use of the language and do not lose sight of the important of the gender perspective.
According to decree 150/2017, we have to adapt our teaching to the diversity of the class (DUA) to offer the same opportunities to all our student to
reach the ability to communicate in english.
I’d like to relate this topic to competence 5 and 9. The competence 5 is the production of diferent simple written texts with accuracy and cohesion
applying many strategies. The competence number 9, refers to the iniciation of the development of the lingüístic conscience in order to use the
appropiate terminology taking into account the students’ repertoire. These competences are reflected in our educational catalan decree 175/2022. In
this topic we are also going to deal with english spelling rules, the use of punctuation marks in order to organize a written text and make hiphotesis
about spelling and gramatical aspects of english.

Spelling rules

 Floss rule: When a one syllable word ends in f, l or s, we double the final f, l or s. For example, mess, sniff, stuff, fill.
 The silent E: House, cheese...
 Change the Y into I: fly -> flies , country -> countries
 Plurals: There are regular nouns that when we make the plural we just add an –s or -es. For example, house -> houses, car -> cars. Then, there
are the irregular nouns which do not follow any pattern. For example, child -> children, sheep -> sheep.
 We dont use a/an with plurals
 Letter sound correspondance. Orthography processing and orthographic mapping. When we start learning a language we first unserstand what
 we read but we are not ready to produce yet. This is the orthographic processin while the mapping is when we are capable of reading and
writting. (D. Kilpatrick)

Punctuation marks

When we teach the written code its important our students are familiar with punctuation marks (commas, dots, question and exclamation marks...). We
can practise this aspect correcting sentences punctuation, showing examples of how punctuation marks can change the meaning of a sentence, through
dictations...

Proposals for teaching the written code (How can we apply all of this into our lessons? What strategies?)

Writing is the most difficult skill to teach because there is a great difference between spesking and writing. When we speak we tend to make mistakes,
use contractions (gona, ain’t..), omit words.. and it’s ok because the aim is to communicate and have certain fluency. But when we write, we have to
do it accurately, and it demands a higher level of correction in spelling and grammar. So, the strategies students must develop are:
- Writing words and simple sentences correctly
- Write according to the context
- Write with coherence
In the first cycle of primary, oral skills must be taught first but we can start teaching writen skills through simple words.
In the second cycle, they are more competent, we can write sentences and texts but always with a good scafolding.
We have to teach written skills following the three stages:
1. Control stage: In this stage we have to organize activities where our students can reinforce spelling, memorizing the word and the proper way
to write it. For example: Copy words, running dictations, missing words, order letters, hangman, classify words according to a tòpic...
2. Guided stage: In this stage the teacher can offer activities where the students have to complete sentences, put sentences in order, spot
mistakes, spelling...
3. Free production: In this stage students should be able to produce, write their own texts using a model (scafolding and substitution tables).

More examples to practise written skills: Spelling, running dictations, matching diferents oarts of sentences, put words in order, answering qüestions
about a text, write short texts, grammar exercises where students have to build qüestions, information gap activities... We have a lot of ICT tools that
are very useful to practise writing, for example, wordwall, quizlet, duolingo, wordreference...

Orthographic applications to writen productions

When students write, they have to write with a purpose and in a context, so the audience is very important. It’s not the same to write a letter for the
teacher than for a friend that lives on the other side of the planet (eTwinning). They can also write to make a book (book creator), make a poster for
the class, write in a blog or for the school magazine. When we organize a writing activity we can’t forget to include the other skills as it’s important to
keep working on reading, listening and speaking. The writing part can just be the last one of a longer sequence.

When we carry out a writing activity in class, we have to apply the three stages reflected in our catalan currículum (Competence 5: produce diferent
simple written texts with accuracy and cohesion applying many strategies; planification, revision, correction...).
- 1st stage -> Organize the ideas of the text taking into account the communicative purpose and selecting the most remarkable information to
include in the text.
- 2nd stage -> Textualise, what is the same, translate ideas into sentences and paragraphs.
- 3rd stage -> Revise the text according to the communicative situation and the function of the language. It’s important to use check lists so
students can see what they have forget and what is correct.

Last but not least, we always have to provide our students with a right scafolding (substitution tables and a model). First, they can read the model text,
then break down the information into a table and finally revise their own production. In the foreign language area, students must be able to plan
simple written texts such as notes, short messages, postcards, short stories, posters, descriptions…

Conclusions
When we organize writting activities, we have to think of real purposes and a real audience, otherwise students will not be motivated to write. We
have to still work on the four skills and bear in mind that oral skills must be taught first as if students are not able to speak in english, they will not be
able to write it. It’s important to help our students establish similarities and diferences between languages and compare words in order to work on the
plurilingual competence of our currículum. Last but not least, we have to deal with sociocultural aspects, so we have to take this into account when
we are selecting texts to write and do not forget diferent strategies to attend the diversity of the class.