The campfire flickered at just the right height for a cool July evening in the Georgia mountains during a teachers’ retreat.
The soft murmur of fireside conversations mixed with the rhythmic chirping of cicadas.
A glass of wine in hand, I chatted with a teacher who had been leading a 6-to-9 elementary classroom for two years.
Suddenly, she turned to me, tears running down her cheeks.
“Today my head of school called and put me on a 90-day probation. I’m afraid I’m going to lose my job.”
“Surely your head of school has some objectives she wants you to meet. That should be doable,” I replied.
“She told me that parents have come to her upset because their children are not good spellers. Their handwriting is messy. And the upper elementary teacher has complained that my students aren’t good readers when they move into her class. How can I fix that in 90 days? I can’t. I don’t know how. Maybe I should turn in my resignation when I get back home.”
Jenn wiped the tears off her face, and covered her eyes with her hands, and took several deep breaths. We sat in silence for a few minutes.
As an experienced teacher and head of school, where should I start? How could I help?
“Jenn,” I began, “do you mind if we try to analyze what is happening? I think if we get a clearer picture of what you’re dealing with in your classroom, I can offer some teaching strategies that may help.”
“Let’s do it,” Jenn replied.
“First, how many of your students do you think fall into this ‘not good spellers’ category?”
Jenn took a minute to mentally sort through her students.
“It’s close to half.”
“And how do you teach spelling?” I asked.
“I don’t know that I do teach spelling. We use the Moveable Alphabet. I give the language lessons. I make individual spelling dictionaries with my students, but they don’t seem to use them. As a matter of fact, they seem to lose them. I’m always finding one in the trash bin.”
“These students who aren’t good spellers—what does their handwriting look like?”
Jenn chuckled a bit, a good sign.
“Their handwriting is all over the place. Capital letters, lowercase letters, cursive letters—all in one word. They seem to have a hard time writing small enough to stay within the lines. They either press so hard they break the pencil lead, or their writing is so spidery you can barely see it,” Jenn told me.
“When you look at their writing, are they using phonetic spelling? Are they hearing the individual sounds in a word?” I asked.
“Hmmm. Now that you mention it, many of them tend to leave out vowels and ending sounds. That must mean they aren’t hearing those sounds.”
Jenn, I thought, was beginning to see a pattern.
“Why do you think you’re seeing these occurrences of mismatched letters, writing forcefully or with almost no pressure on the paper, along with leaving out vowels and ending sounds?” I asked. “Oh, and losing their personalized spelling dictionaries.”
“Well, I’d have to say they don’t have the skill set to do those things,” Jenn said. “So how do I help them learn those things? In 90 days? I don’t know how to do that.”
“Jenn, when I started teaching, I had a lot to learn. We all do. But if we watch the children in our classrooms and analyze what they are doing, they teach us what to do.”
“I was lucky enough,” I continued, “to have my husband’s aunt, Sister Bernice, a Benedictine nun with almost 50 years of teaching experience, tell me about a spelling program she and her schools had used with great success.”
“Sister Bernice gave me the materials and, in an afternoon, got me started with the basics of the program. If you’d like, tomorrow afternoon I can explain it in more detail. When I get back home, I can send you the materials, and we can talk over the phone to help you get started.”
That conversation took place more than 25 years ago.
We worked together by phone and fax before school started, and during the first months of the school year we talked every couple of weeks about the children’s progress.
Shortly after Halloween, Jenn called me, excited.
“I just got out of a meeting with my head of school. She is so impressed with the progress my students have made in the past two months. I was able to easily show her each child’s progress—and it is impressive. Not only are they spelling better, but their handwriting has improved too. I must say, I’m enjoying teaching again.”
Since helping Jenn more than 25 years ago, I’ve shown hundreds of teachers how I incorporated that spelling program into my Montessori elementary and junior high classrooms.
A campfire. A glass of wine. A teacher in distress. That’s how Unscramble Spelling was born—and how a simple conversation grew into a tool that has helped hundreds of teachers and thousands of children.
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