Oral Presentations: UC 327
How are First Grade Children Learning to Spell?
Presentation Type
Presentation
Abstract / Artist's Statement
Morphological awareness, the metalinguistic ability to understand, think about, and manipulate the parts of words that bear meaning, is important to literacy success for school-age children. Many professionals working in school settings subscribe to the stage theory oflanguage development. In the stage theory, children develop language by mastering skills before using new skills. These professionals use the stage theory to justify waiting until third grade before introducing morphological awareness. Recent evidence suggests that morphological awareness facilitates reading and writing skills in children as early as first grade with and without typical language development. This evidence does not align with the stage theory, but with the repertoire theory oflanguage development, in which children develop language by applying multiple linguistic skills at once. This project seeks to determine if first graders are using morphological awareness by examining the relationship between morphological awareness and spelling success in early school-age children. 78 children with typical language development abilities were provided an experimental morphological awareness assessment as well as spelling measures. A linguistic analysis of spelling, a tool to identify which skills children are using, was conducted. Currently, statistical analysis is underway and will include looking at correlations between spelling and morphological awareness skills. It is hypothesized that morphological awareness will significantly contribute to spelling, which would be in line with findings from other studies. Additionally, it is hypothesized that first grade children will use morphological awareness to spell, providing further support for the repertoire theory. Discussion will be presented regarding how language underpinnings help facilitate literacy success, specifically spelling, for young children.
Category
Social Sciences
How are First Grade Children Learning to Spell?
UC 327
Morphological awareness, the metalinguistic ability to understand, think about, and manipulate the parts of words that bear meaning, is important to literacy success for school-age children. Many professionals working in school settings subscribe to the stage theory oflanguage development. In the stage theory, children develop language by mastering skills before using new skills. These professionals use the stage theory to justify waiting until third grade before introducing morphological awareness. Recent evidence suggests that morphological awareness facilitates reading and writing skills in children as early as first grade with and without typical language development. This evidence does not align with the stage theory, but with the repertoire theory oflanguage development, in which children develop language by applying multiple linguistic skills at once. This project seeks to determine if first graders are using morphological awareness by examining the relationship between morphological awareness and spelling success in early school-age children. 78 children with typical language development abilities were provided an experimental morphological awareness assessment as well as spelling measures. A linguistic analysis of spelling, a tool to identify which skills children are using, was conducted. Currently, statistical analysis is underway and will include looking at correlations between spelling and morphological awareness skills. It is hypothesized that morphological awareness will significantly contribute to spelling, which would be in line with findings from other studies. Additionally, it is hypothesized that first grade children will use morphological awareness to spell, providing further support for the repertoire theory. Discussion will be presented regarding how language underpinnings help facilitate literacy success, specifically spelling, for young children.