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Running Head: Small Leap Spelling
This article was originally published in the March/April issue of TEACHING
Exceptional Children. Since its publication, I’ve received close to 200 letters and e-mails from
around the world asking for more information. This article is an updated version that contains the
information that teachers and researchers were requesting, and is currently under submission to
The Reading Teacher. The teaching technique of Small Leap Spelling was also the subject of my
dissertation research.
Small Leap Spelling: Linking Phonemic Awareness, Spelling, and Reading
to Develop the Alphabetic Principle
Richard M. Oldrieve, Ph.D.
Bowling Green State University
529 Education Building
Bowling Green, Ohio 43403
28359 Center Ridge Rd.
Westlake, OH 44145
oldrieve@aol.com
cell phone: 440-463-4031
home phone and FAX: 440-892-1409
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Abstract
This article will describe how to conduct a Small Leap Spelling lesson. It will also
include a scope and sequence for when to teach particular phonemic/orthographic patterns. Small
Leap Spelling was originally developed as an intervention for remediating urban students with
learning disabilities. In a small randomized study, Small Leap Spelling was shown to help low
performing at-risk urban kindergartners develop the alphabetic principle (Author, 2005). Each 30
minute lesson incorporates three key components of Hatcher, Hulme, and Ellis (1994)
phonological linkage hypothesis: phonemic awareness, spelling, and reading.
Support for linking reading and phonemic awareness comes from a study by Morais,
Cary, Alegria, & Bertelson (1979) which found that phonemic awareness develops in reciprocal
relationship to early reading development. Similarly, support for the importance of early spelling
comes from C. Chomsky (1971), and Read (1971) who have reported that spelling often
develops before reading, while Ehri (2000) has noted reading and spelling are two sides of the
same coin. Most recently, the Early Literacy Panel (Shanahan & Westberg, 2004) has presented
preliminary results of a meta-analysis which has indicated that spelling in pre-school and
kindergarten is the best predictor of success in later high stakes assessments.
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Small Leap Spelling: Linking Phonemic Awareness, Spelling, and Reading
to Develop the Alphabetic Principle
In 1984, I began my career by teaching reading to seventh and eighth grade students with
learning disabilities in the Cleveland Municipal School District. Using the techniques I had been
taught in my class for diagnosing and remediating reading difficulties, I kept assessing my
students to find what they knew and didn’t know. After trying not to embarrass the students by
making it obvious how low I was going to find something they all could do, six weeks into the
grading period I finally wrote the word cat on a piece of newsprint mounted on a homemade
easel. I really don’t remember how many of the students could read the word; instead what I
remember was my mixture of shock and relief when I discovered that most of the students
couldn’t name a word that rhymed with cat. Although, I was horrified that they couldn’t perform
such a simple task, I felt a sense of relief that I finally knew what I needed to teach my students.
Along with reading researchers such as Blachman, 1994, Torgesen (1988), Torgesen,
Wagner, & Rashotte, (1994) and Torgesen, Wagner, Simmons, & Laughon, (1990), I had just
“discovered” the phenomenon of phonological processing disorders. Several of these researchers
began documenting their efforts to develop programs for helping these students to become
phonemically aware and begin to link letter sounds with written letters (Griffith & Olson, 1992;
Haskell, Foorman, & Swank, 1992; Helfgott, 1976; Wylie & Durrell, 1970). In an article
published in the Journal of Learning Disabilities Torgesen, Wagner, & Rashotte (1994, p. 236)
declared that the emerging consensus about the importance of phonological processing abilities
in the acquisition of early reading skills is one of the most exciting developments in reading
research.
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Yet before the almost single-minded focus on phonemic awareness and phonological
processing disorders, Read (1971) and C. Chomsky (1971) had documented that pre-schoolers
often were able to spell before they could read. Furthermore, a decade later, Morais, Cary,
Alegria, and Bertelson (1979) found that Portuguese peasants who were illiterate did poorly on
phonemic awareness assessments. Yet after taking adult literacy classes, these students could
segment words into phonemes and blend phonemes into words. Thus, Morais, et al. had
demonstrated that phonemic awareness develops in reciprocal relationship with real reading.
Then Hatcher, Hulme, and Ellis (1994) proposed a phonological linkage hypothesis which states
that phonemic awareness, reading, and spelling lessons are most effective if they are linked.
More recently, Ehri (2000) has suggested that reading and spelling are two sides of the same
coin.
Without being aware of most of the studies and/or theories, I began developing a
systematic invented spelling method that I now call Small Leap Spelling. I found the program
was quite successful with my students with learning disabilities, and in 1997 I described Small
Leap Spelling in a journal targeting special education teaching techniques and began presenting
the technique at various conferences (Author, 1997, 1998, 1999a, 1999b, 2001).
Nonetheless, I always felt that SLS would help many general education kindergartners
and first graders from at-risk socio-economic backgrounds develop the alphabetic principle
before they left first grade, and thereby prevent them from needlessly being labeled learning
disabled in second, third, or fourth grade. Consequently, in the true spirit of the No Child Left
Behind Act (Paige, 2002), I’m pleased to report that in a small randomized sample study
focusing on two contrast teachers who were using their regular curriculum, two experimental
teachers who supplemented the regular curriculum with Small Leap Spelling, and all of their at-
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risk urban students (Author, 2005), I found that compared to matching contrast students,
experimental students who scored below the pre-test mean for a given assessment made 50%
greater gains on post-tests of lower case letter identification, school district mandated sight
words, CVC decoding, and CVC spelling.
Description of a Small Leap Spelling Lesson
A Small Leap Spelling lesson typically takes about thirty minutes to complete. In a
small group setting it can take substantially less time. Each Small Leap Spelling lesson fits
Hatcher et al. (1994) phonological linkage hypothesis by containing linked components of
phonemic awareness, spelling, and reading. Furthermore, all students are required to become
involved in constructing an understanding of the alphabetic principle during each of the three
components of a typical lesson.
Phonemic Awareness Component
The first component of a typical SLS lesson begins with the teacher introducing two
target words and/or sound patterns. Then each student contributes to the class effort to construct
a verbal spelling list of words. Each student names one word that contains the same phonological
feature of the first target word and then each student names one word that contains the same
phonological feature of the second target word. If a student can’t name a new word that fits the
target sound/letter pattern, then the student should be asked to name three words that have
already been named.
Early in the scope and sequence found in Appendix A, students are asked to develop one
spelling list of words that contain the rime at and another list of words that contains the rime am.
Several months later, students will be comparing and contrasting a short vowel CVC word such
as cap with its long vowel CVCe counterpart such as cape. Still later, students will have
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progressed to creating lists of words that contain the beginning digraphs ch, th, and sh, and the
beginning blends such as sl, st, br, and fl.
Invented Spelling Component
For the second component of an SLS lesson, the teacher asks students to invent spell
words from the orally generated spelling lists. For example, in a lesson featuring the rimes of at
and am, the teacher might begin by asking students to spell cat. As students spell cat on their
papers, the teacher should roam the room and ensure that students had spelled cat correctly.
After everyone is done spelling cat, the teacher should call upon a student who has
correctly spelled cat and ask the student to spell it orally while the teacher writes the student’s
spelling onto the board. The teacher and students will then discuss why the spelling written on
the board is correct or incorrect, and after the class settles on a correct spelling of cat, students
who missed the word on their papers are given an opportunity to correct them. (Although I must
admit that one reason why I begin with cat is that I’ve never met an older LD student who
couldn’t spell cat correctly).
The purpose of having students orally spell the words is to help students match the names
of letters with the sounds of words in a semi-natural context. Most students will know the names
of their letters before a teacher begins teaching SLS lessons. Nonetheless, the students who need
SLS lessons the most also tend to be students who are struggling with letter reversals and
inversions, and thus calling on these struggling students to orally spell words, gives these
students the opportunity to orally spell words in the context of known words that they may have
intuitively spelled correctly during the test. Consequently, in my dissertation study (Author,
2005), the students who scored below the mean on lower case letters improved from knowing an
average of 17 letters to 23 letters, while the contrast students merely improved from knowing an
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average of 17 letters to 20 letters. And even though the vast majority of experimental and
contrast students knew all of their upper case letters on the pre-test, there was one student who
received Small Leap Spelling instruction who didn’t make many gains on CVC Decoding or
CVC Spelling, but he did master all of his upper case letters.
After having students invent spell, orally spell, and discuss the correct spelling of several
words that rhyme with cat, the teacher should switch and have students invent spell words that
rhyme with ham. The teacher should expect that some students will struggle, and the teacher
should discuss why ham ends with an m, while hat ends with t. The teacher should then
randomly alternate between contrasting ram with rat, Sam with sat, and Pat with Pam. Each time
the teacher should put little emphasis on correcting capitalization errors and instead should focus
on seizing the teachable moment to help students hear the differences between final consonants
and match them to written letters. Later in the test, the teacher should repeat misspelled words to
give students an opportunity to try to spell the word correctly. If students are writing on
chalkboard slates, or dry erase boards, then bringing back missed words is even easier.
As students become more familiar with the SLS procedures, and the teacher feels more
comfortable with having students discuss why a word might be spelled one way versus another,
the teacher may deliberately call on one student who has spelled the word incorrectly and
another who has spelled it correctly. Then the teacher can lead a discussion as to why both
versions are plausible, but only one is correct.
The design of any given SLS spelling test is emergent (Bogdan & Biklen, 1998). During
each daily lesson and during the course of daily SLS lessons, the teacher should begin with easier
words and build towards harder ones. As already explained, the teacher can begin the tests on
Monday and Tuesday by alternating between words from each word family that have the same
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initial consonant such as hat versus ham, pat versus Pam, and sat versus Sam. Then later in the
week the teacher can immediately begin to randomly present any word from the at and am
families, especially those words such as jam, yam, and dam that cannot be paired with a word
from the at family.
Once the students have spelled 12 words, several students should be called upon to
compose a spoken sentence that contains at least two words from that day’s test. For example, a
student might say: “The fat cat sat on Sam and Pam.” After several students have recited their
sentences, the teacher should select and/or edit a sentence for the students to spell on their
papers. This sentence should be comprised of a.) words that come from that day’s word list, b.)
words the students had spelled in previous weeks, and c.) common sight words that can already
be found on the class word wall or that are worthy of being added to the word wall. Admittedly,
word family trade books and basal readers have been almost universally derided for containing
no meaning or aesthetic beauty, nonetheless, students enjoy competing to compose the longest
silly sentence and having it chosen for everyone to spell.
It is important to note that if a teacher is truly using an emergent approach, and therefore
is repeating words that students miss early in the test, then it will be extremely rare that on any
given 12-word spelling test students will spell every possible word that contains the same rime or
the same contrasting feature as the two target words. Consequently, teachers should use the same
two target words all week and try to ensure that over the course of the week all of the potential
words but one have been spelled. The purpose in holding back one word is to save it for Friday’s
standard spelling test, so that the teacher can discern whether students are generalizing that
week’s phonological pattern or rule. Furthermore, as students become more proficient late in the
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week, teachers may want to ask students to spell pseudowords that fit one of the two
phonological patterns.
It is also important to point out that because the design of SLS lessons is systematic
invented spelling (Au, 1997), teachers should not assign students to study words for seatwork or
for homework. The goal of Small Leap Spelling is to encourage students to concentrate on how
spoken phonemes are matched to written graphemes. And if word lists are sent home, many
students will mindlessly memorize the spellings without making any phonological linkages.
Therefore, a better homework assignment would be to assign students to make up sentences,
paragraphs, and/or stories which are comprised of from LAST week’s end of the week spelling
test.
Word Wall Component
For the third component of the Small Leap lesson, the students and teacher should
chorally read the list of words from the board several times, and then each day several
individuals should be taken aside to read the list by themselves. In both the choral and
individualized list reading, students should first read the words in the order they are found on the
board, and then the teacher should take out a meter stick and point at words in random order to
ensure that students didn’t just memorize the list of words in order.
End of the week closed-book tests
Every Friday (or the last day of a shortened week), students should be given a standard
20-word closed book spelling test. In contrast to the student constructed lists on the open-book
versions, the teacher should (a) come to class with a prepared list of the hardest words that match
the two target words, (b) skip the phonemic awareness portion of the open-book version, (c)
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establish a formal spelling test “this means business” atmosphere, and (d) then go straight
through the word list without any breaks to discuss how the words should be spelled.
The closed book spelling test provides a score to put into the grade book and a chance to
determine if students should move on or should study the same phonological/orthographic
pattern for another week. For the first few weeks, the test will be shorter than 20 words, but after
the “at” and “am” family of onset-rimes, several review words can be mixed in fill out the 20
word test and to ensure students are remembering previously learned phonological patterns.
Instead of scoring each word in an all or nothing fashion, students should be given on a
sliding partial credit scale:
5 points for a correctly spelled word
1 point deduction for each:
letter reversal such as b for d
letter inversion such as w for m
similar sound letter such as g for j, d for t, or c for k
2 point deduction for each completely wrong letter
Before graduating the class to the next target letter pattern, the student with the lowest skills
should score at least 85 points out of 100 on the Friday exam. And even though time constraints
would make it difficult to formally assess an entire class on the phonemic awareness and reading
components of the word list, each Friday, the teacher should take several students aside to
ascertain whether these selected students are capable of (a) naming at least 3 words that match
each target word pattern and (b) reading the 20-word list while making no more than 3 mistakes
(85% accuracy). If a several students are consistently scoring below 80% on the phonemic
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awareness, spelling or reading components of the SLS lesson, while their classmates are scoring
far above 90%, then the low scoring students should be formed into their own separate group.
Scope and Sequence
Appendix A contains the Scope and Sequence chart for when to teach particular
phonological patterns. My experience is that even students with severe phonological processing
disorders can complete the sequence within 2 to 2 ½ years. This timeframe fits into Stahl’s
(1992) recommendations for good phonics instruction.
A cursory reading of the scope and sequence chart might lead you to conclude that the
analogy approach is how students learn to spell and read the patterns on the daily tests.
Nonetheless, by holding two letters constant in rime analogies, and then other types of analogy
described by Treiman and Zukowski (1996), the student can progress through several stages:
1) Comparing and contrasting between initial consonant sounds.
2) Comparing and contrasting between final consonants.
3) Comparing and contrasting between different vowel sounds.
4) Differentiating between the beginning and final blends and digraphs.
5) Differentiating between the rules for adding morphemes to words.
For example, in the first lesson it appears that the focus is on the rime at. But the purpose
holding the at constant is to allow students to hear the differences in the initial consonants and
thus students are actually learning that cat begins with a c sound, rat begins with an r sound, and
sat begins with an s sound.
Similarly, once two rime patterns are contrasted at the same time, there will be some
focus on learning new initial consonant sounds, but the main focus will be on comparing and
contrasting the final consonant sound. For example, as explained earlier, when you ask the
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students to spell words from the at and am families, you should be emphasizing the comparing
and contrasting between the final consonants by having the students spell hat followed
immediately by ham. And then you could have the students spell Sam followed by sat; pat
followed by Pam and of course at followed by am.
As noted on the scope and sequence chart, going through all of short a rimes will take
several months. In fact with students with hard core phonological processing disorders, I have
found that students might take five weeks to learn how to spell the nine words within the at
family. Students take so long because they are learning to “hear” consonants in beginning and
final positions and they are constructing a knowledge base of how the initial and final consonant
sounds in a word relate to its spelling. And finally they are learning how a word’s spelling relates
to its pronunciation. Each subsequent letter/sound pattern takes a bit less time to learn.
Once all the phonetically consistent CVC words containing short a are learned, then the
focus will shift to the medial vowels. For example, by comparing the at and it family words
judiciously, the teacher can ensure that the initial and final consonants are held constant and the
student focuses on differentiating between short a and short i, by comparing and contrasting bat
with bit; fat with fit, and most importantly at with it. Then, the following week students can
compare jam with Jim; ram, with rim; and ham with him.
To the teacher, each step will seem like a baby step and the whole process might seem all
too easy and all too obvious, and thus the temptation will be to consolidate all the rimes that
contain a short i and teach them in only a week or two. But the whole point of the Small Leap
Spelling approach is to break the scope and sequence of learning letter sounds down into small
enough steps that students will be making the small leaps between steps on their own. Even at
the beginning of the week, students should only be missing 3 or 4 words out of the 12 possible
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words. Then, by Wednesday and Thursday of each week there should be little discussion as to
the correct spelling of words since students should be correctly spelling almost all of them.
If the scope and sequence is taught too quickly, then only some of the students will truly
be inventing the connections for themselves, while the other students will be mimicking the good
students to get through the each day’s test. Then you’ll discover these students might know this
week’s words, but they can’t remember how to spell words from three weeks ago. Thus, it is
important to remember that if taught at the deliberate pace set in the scope and sequence chart—
which includes bringing back comparisons to early rime patterns throughout—even students with
phonological processing disorders will learn the alphabetic principle within two years.
Remember, the intent of Small Leap Spelling is to ensure that NO students reach the third
grade guarantee of the NCLB Act, let alone seventh and eighth grade, unable to name a word
that rhymes with cat. If ALL of your students are scoring above 90% on the end of the week
tests, then some steps on the scope and sequence chart can probably be consolidated.
Initial Consonant, Final Consonant, Medial Vowel.
To help make it easier to remember and reconstruct the scope and sequence chart, I’ll reemphasize that forty years ago Bruce (1964) documented that the first sound kindergarten
students can distinguish is the Initial Consonant within words. Then once they learn how to
distinguish between initial consonants, kindergartners begin to “hear” Final Consonants. Next,
once they have learned to distinguish between final consonants, they begin to “hear” medial
vowels.
The scope and sequence chart in Appendix A is designed to help students make this slow
progression because it is structured around how easily speech sounds can distinguished and
formed by students. And thus when you are selecting phonemic awareness activities to use
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during other parts of the school day, please remember to select activities that match the
developmental level of the spelling lessons. For example, if students are focusing on the initial
consonants and rimes within the at and am families during Small Leap Spelling lessons, then
they probably won’t be able to segment the words down to the medial vowel on the Yopp-Singer
(Yopp, 1995) or on DIBELS (Kamii &Manning, 2004). Nor will they be able to blend all three
letters together in CVC words (Chall, Roswell, & Blumenthal, 1963). As noted by Smith (1999),
some phonemic awareness activities can only be done if the student knows how to read and spell
the word.
Consequently, when working with the early short a rimes, teach phonemic awareness
activities such as blending and segmenting initial consonants with various rimes, finding the
rhyming words in poems and Dr. Suess books, and verbally composing alliterative tongue
twisters such as “She sells sea shells by sea shore.”
Contrast in Consonant Sounds
The order in which the rimes are introduced on the scope and sequence chart is also
important. On the chart, students are first asked to differentiate between sounds with two
different linguistic features such as the hard stop of the t found in the at rime, and then the nasal
sound of the m. While phonemes that are only off by one linguistic feature (Edwards, 1974; N.
Chomsky & Halle, 1968) are separated by several other rimes in the scope and sequence chart.
One example of an off by one feature is the comparison of hard stops of d and t that vary only by
how the tongue presses against the mouth. Another example would be the fricatives f and v that
vary only by the fact that v is voiced, while f is unvoiced. Similarly, even though m and n are
actually off by two features, they seem similar to students because both letter sounds are nasals.
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Thus, with a couple of other features mixed in between, the scope and sequence of Appendix A
has students first learn to spell pat, then Pam, then pad, and finally pan.
In fact, teachers should always be aware and introduce extremely dissimilar features
when students are learning a concept and then focus on similar sounds near the end of the week.
For example, just like Bradley and Bryant (1983) used in their seminal study of phonemic
awareness, the first four initial letters when teaching the at rime should be the c in cat, the m in
mat, the f in fat, and the s in sat. The second advantage of introducing m, f, and s are that they
can all be held in the mouth and can be emphasized as in ffffffat, ssssssat, and mmmmmat.
Please note, that unless teachers specifically confuse students by introducing the rule
of hard and soft c, beginning spellers won’t even notice that an alternative spelling for cat is kat,
and that an alternative spelling for sat is the soft c cat.
No Short “e”
Compared to the tradition of introducing vowel sounds in the alphabetical order of a, e, i,
o, and u, the scope and sequence of Appendix A is different because short “e” words isn’t
introduced until after all of the other vowel sounds have been learned. One reason for making
this switch is that the short e in many U.S. dialects several short e words such as get are
pronounced as a short i. A second reason that is related to the first is that Calfee, Gilman,
Norman, 1998) reported that short a, i, o, and u are pronounced in the mouth with the spacing of
white keys on the piano, while short e is spaced like a black key located halfway between short a
and short i. Thus, short e is not only pronounced inconsistently, it is tough to “hear” and “speak”
correctly.
Pure Vowel Sounds First and then R-controlled and L-controlled Vowels Later
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Similar to the reasoning of skipping the short e sound, the scope and sequence in
Appendix A moves through the pure short vowel words that are formed in CVC spelling
patterns, then the pure long vowels words that can be spelled using CVCe, before coming back
later to pick up the semi-pure r-controlled and l-controlled “short” vowels found in CVC words
such as car, for, and pal. In essence, Small Leap Spelling systematicizes the invented spelling of
Read (1971) and C. Chomsky (1971) so that students can learn the alphabetic principle without
ambiguity, while complex letter patterns and the 8-different ways to spell the long a sound, and
other variations on the irregularities of English are generally left to later spelling programs.
Breaking the Developmental Sequence
Admittedly, in their strategy of Making Words, Patricia M. Cunningham and James W.
Cunningham (1992) advocate mixing in digraphs, blends, and complex letter patterns early in
their scope and sequence in order to keep all members of a class engaged in the lesson. In
contrast, the scope and sequence I’ve outlined pays more attention to the developmental
sequence that students learn speech sounds. More importantly, because Small Leap Spelling
doesn’t use a limited number of tiles, but requires students to write out answers, it forces students
to choose between all 26 available letters and their available sounds. In particular, SLS forces
students to choose between letters with off by one features, while there are few opportunities in
the Cunninghams’s typical 7-letter secret word to choose between the tiles m and n, d and t, f and
v, s and z, or the hardest triumvirate of b, d, and p. Further research will be needed to determine
which method is best in which circumstances, but I tend to think that the Cunninghams’s Making
Words strategy will work best with older higher SES students where the danger is boring
students, while my strategy is better for younger students in situations where the school is
providing the only academic support for many students.
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Teachable Moments
Another advantage of the systematic invented spelling of Small Leap Spelling is that
teachers don’t have to wait for students to make a spelling error in their written work for the
teacher to address the student’s misconception. Furthermore, many errors made by students in
their written work are far outside their Zone of Proximal Development, and therefore either the
student won’t understand the mini-lesson of the teacher, or the student will use a synonym he or
she already knows how to spell.
Important Concept Number 1: Draw out sounds
Researchers (Begley, 1994; Helenius, Uutela, & Hari, 1999; McPherson & Ackerman
(1999; Nagarajan, Mahncke, Salz, Tallal, Roberts, & Merzenich, 1999; Pihko, Leppanen,
Eklund, Cheour, Guttorm, & Lyytinen, 1999; Travis, 1996) have found that students with
phonological processing deficits have difficulties hearing sounds that take less than
approximately a ¼ second to pronounce. Consequently, many of these researchers suggest that
students more easily learn how to hear the sounds of words, if they are “held” and extended for
over a ¼ second. As noted earlier, f, m, and s are good consonants to work with because they can
be held for several seconds without distorting how they are formed in the mouth. Similarly, when
comparing and contrasting various vowel sounds, because they can also be held without
distortion, I will ask the students to stretch out the words to emphasize the vowel in the rhyming
process, in the spelling process, and in the reading the list of words process. For example when
the student is comparing and contrasting “hat” with “hit”, I will have the students say,
“haaaaaaaaaat” and “hiiiiiiiiiiiiit.” In particular, I will have the students stretch and pay attention
to the vowel sound when we are working on two letter VC words that don’t have an initial
consonant such as “at” and “it”.
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Important Rule 2: Refer to vowel sounds themselves
When working with students, do not refer to words as short and long vowel words,
because this adds a level of unnecessary thinking. When students hear the word cap in an Small
Leap Spelling lesson, they only need to identify the a sound found in the word cap or cape with
and then write down a in the middle of the appropriate CVC or CVCe word construction.
Similarly, when you ask students to identify the vowel sound in cap or cape, they should give
you the appropriate a sound.
To me, there is something humorous and yet tragic about observing a student first
identify the sound in cap as “long a,” look at her teacher’s facial expression, see a grimace, and
then change her response to “short a.” There is no way anyone can know for sure whether the
student knows the appropriate sound but doesn’t know its name, or whether the student is merely
wildly guessing in hopes of seeing a smile. And let’s be honest, how is the student supposed to
know what a short a sound is if a teacher believes pat, par, pal, and paw all contain short a
sounds just because they are all CVC words?
Importance of Student Dialect and Vocabulary
Teachers should always be aware that what seems to be a perfect rhyme in their own
dialect might not be the same rhyme in their students’ dialect. Thus, the teacher should listen to
what students are saying, and if a particular word doesn’t seem to rhyme with other words in the
same word family, then it should not be used on the daily or Friday spelling test.
For example, even though I suspect Kenneth Goodman would probably dislike the
systematic phonics instruction found in Small Leap Spelling, on page 44 of Phonics Pfacts
(1993), Goodman states that in his Midwestern dialect: bog, cog, grog, jog, smog and tog have a
short o that sounds different than the short o in dog, fog, frog, hog, and log. In contrast, in my
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North East Ohio suburban dialect, all the words with the og rime do rhyme. Yet, none of the og
family words are pronounced with the same short o sound as in hot, hop, lock. Consequently,
when working with students who have my dialect, it would be appropriate for me to compare and
contrast hog with jog, but it would NOT be appropriate for me to compare and contrast hog with
hot. Similarly, I suspect unless they are teaching in an English prep school, most teachers
shouldn’t try to compare and contrast the word the with he, she, be, we, and me.
Focus on Known Words
Similarly, teachers should not try to teach new vocabulary words at the same time
students are learning to spell. For example, even though vat rhymes with cat, since most
kindergarten, first grade, and/or struggling readers wouldn’t know its meaning, vat should be
treated as a pseudoword and only be taught once students feel comfortable spelling the real
words that fit a given pattern.
Don’t Worry Too Much about Capitalization Errors
In my teaching, I never worried too much about the capitalization errors students
made. My point in developing Small Leap Spelling was to help students learn how each sound in
a word is represented by a letter. In my dissertation research, I found that every single student
made at least one capitalization error on their post-test.
Remember to Repeat Words that Students Miss
If students misspell a word early on the daily spelling test, remember to repeat this
word several times during the same spelling lesson and then throughout the rest of the week. One
reason that going through the cat family might take up to five weeks for students with severe
phonological processing errors is that they are essentially learning the words by rote association,
while also trying to focus on why the words fit the pattern. Probably, this learning process could
Small Leap Spelling -- page 20 of 30
be shortened for this particular word family by teaching the pattern more explicitly, but the point
is that students eventually begin to focus on the patterns and each week’s set of words takes less
and less time to learn.
In future research, I hope to find the exact amount of time general education
kindergarten and first grade students typically take to learn the patterns. Teachers who want to
participate in this research may contact me via e-mail.
Other Benefits of Small Leap Spelling
Using structured lesson plans, spelling tests, oral reading, student self-correction, and
other aspects of the Small Leap Spelling program can benefit students in many ways:

By concentrating on words that follow strict rules, students are less likely to seem
to know a word today only to have forgotten it by tomorrow. Also, they are less apt to treat
words as if they were Chinese Ideographs or Egyptian Hieroglyphics by being able to sight
read Sam, am, and ram without being able to decode jam and ham.

The lesson format can be carried forward to teach more complicated spelling rules
such as doubling the final consonant in short-vowel words and dropping the final “e” in long
vowel words.

Students not only learn how to spell words; they also learn how to pronounce
them. At the beginning of the 1993-94 academic year, one of my students with a speech
disability pronounced all words that rhymed with cat as tat. Amazingly, he seemed to think
he was pronouncing them differently. Within two weeks it was obvious he was spelling them
differently. Then two weeks later the student was pronouncing them differently. Shortly
thereafter the student’s general education teacher came by and asked me what I was doing to
Small Leap Spelling -- page 21 of 30
help her student’s speech difficulty. All of which makes sense within Hatcher et al’s (1994)
phonological linkage hypothesis.

Many teachers complain that students with learning disabilities don’t transfer
isolated skills back to their comprehensive reading or their story-writing. Small Leap Spelling
can alleviate much of this transference problem, because during reading group all students
can be encouraged to use the compare-and-contrast method (P. M. Cunningham, Arthur, J.
W. Cunningham, 1977) to decode new words. Students who know about comparing onsetrimes, but who haven’t even learned final blends or irregular vowel sounds, can still be
shown a guide word such as arm, and when told the pronunciation, be able to decode harm or
charm.

Importantly, even without prompting, both teachers involved in my dissertation
study noted how their students were writing longer paragraphs after using Small Leap
Spelling.

Small Leap Spelling can make open houses and parent conferences more
meaningful, because a teacher can demonstrate each student’s progress by showing his or her
parents a beginning of the year placement test and a recent closed-book spelling test.

Most importantly, students know they are making progress, which fosters self-
esteem based on achievement instead of mere encouragement.
Conclusion
On the surface, there are many aspects about Small Leap Spelling that don’t seem
particularly new. For instance, teachers have focused on word families for decades. Nonetheless,
as is suggested by (Hatcher et al, 1994) Small Leap Spelling’s three component lesson structure
explicitly links phonemic awareness, spelling, and reading. Additionally, the scope and sequence
Small Leap Spelling -- page 22 of 30
of SLS explicitly helps students isolate individual letter sounds in the initial, final, or medial
position by holding the other sounds constant. Also, the invented spelling aspect of SLS helps
students link sounds to letters, and doesn’t let students off the hook by allowing them to
memorize a spelling and move on. Similarly, the recursive nature of the scope and sequence
found in Appendix A should ensure that students don’t just learn a word family, and forget it
three weeks later. For example, seven months down the road, students are still using the cat
family words when comparing hat, hit, hot, and hut, eight months later when students are
learning how to distinguish hat from hate, and ten months later when students are learning how
to double the final consonant when spelling batter, matter and shatter, but leaving the final
consonant single when spelling dating, rating, and skating.
Ultimately, the most important aspect is that teachers and students know that every
student is accountable for spelling every word correctly. The written spelling requires the student
to commit not only to the letter but the correct representation of CVC for short vowels and CVCe
for long vowels.
Certainly, Small leap Spelling is not the most exciting lesson format for kindergarten and
first grade students. It doesn’t promise that with a few short nursery rhymes per day and/or
twenty minutes on the computer playing phonemic awareness games, most students might learn
the alphabetic principle. Instead, for the “cost” of a short 30 to 40 minute lesson per day that is
moderately boring, ALL students should be able to complete second grade by correctly spelling
and decoding words such as chasing, traded, sharks, and slippery.
Small Leap Spelling -- page 23 of 30
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Small Leap Spelling -- page 27 of 30
Appendix A. Scope and Sequence Chart
Key: cvc -- stands for “consonant - vowel - consonant”.
vc -- stands for “consonant -vowel - consonant”.
A. Common cvc onset-rimes with short a.
Week 1&2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Week 6
Week 7
Bat
bam
Cap
Bag
Bad
ban tan
Cat
dam
Gap
Gag
Dad
Can van
Fat
ham
Lap
Nag
Had
Dan
hat
jam
Map
Rag
Mad
Fan
mat
mam
Nap
Sag
Pad
Jan
pat
Pam
Rap
Tag
sad
man
rat
ram
Tap
Wag
pan
sat
Sam
Zap
Ran
(Please note that some uncommon words are not included--spelling is not vocabulary.)
B. Common cvc onset-rimes with short i.
Week 1&2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Week 6
bit
dip
big
Dim
bid
fit
hip
dig
Him
did
hit
Kip
fig
Kim
hid
kit
lip
jig
Jim
kid
lit
rip
pig
Rim
lid
pit
sip
rig
Tim
rid
sit
tip
wig
Sid
zip
zig-zag
(Remember that short a onset-rime words should be mixed into actual tests.)
Week 7
bin win
Fin
gin
kin
Lin
pin
Sin
Tin
C. Common vc onset-rimes with short a, i, u, and o.
Week 1 & 2
ad
if
up
on
am
in
us
Odd
as
is
.
Oz
at
it
(A major point of these vc words is to emphasize the short vowel in isolation, and to have
students draw out the short vowel as in “aaaaaat”, and “uuuuuup”.)
D. Common cvc onset-rimes with short u.
Week 1&2
Week 3
Week 4
but
bum
cup
cut
gum
pup
etc.
etc.
yup
Week 5
Bug
Dug
etc.
Week 6
bud
mud
etc.
Week 7
bun
Fun
Etc.
Week 8
ban tan
can van
Dan
fan
Jan
man
pan
ran
Small Leap Spelling -- page 28 of 30
E. Common cvc onset-rimes with short o.
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
dot
mom
cop
got
Tom
pop
etc.
pompom
etc.
Week 4
Dog
Fog
etc.
Week 5
rod
Tod
etc.
Week 6
con
Ron
etc.
F. Mix of all short vowels with final ck ending
Week 1
Week 2
sack
back
Rick
ck words
sick
kick
pack
mixed with
cvc words
sock
lock
etc. etc.
suck
luck
etc. etc.
(Students should be able to learn ALL the ck words within two weeks, if they can’t, they still
aren’t phonologically processing the short vowel sounds and should be moved back to the
appropriate spot on the scope and sequence chart.)
G. Compare contrast short a with Magic “e” long a words.
Week 1&2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
at ate
am game
cap ape
bag age
fat fate
bam lame
gap cape
gag cage
hat hate
dam name
lap rape
nag page
mat mate
ham same
map tape
rag rage
rat rate
jam tame
nap
sag wage
bat late
mam
rap
tag
cat date
Pam
tap
wag
sat gate
ram
zap
Sam
Week 6
ad fade
bad jade
dad made
had wade
mad
pad
sad
Week 7
ban cane
can Jane
Dan lane
fan mane
Jan sane
man vane
pan
ran
tan
van
(When eliciting rhyming long vowel words, it is important to praise rhyming words that don’t
follow the magic e rule--such as wait, gain, and paid--and explain that they
will be taught in the future.)
H. Compare contrast short i, u, o with Magic “e” long i, u, o words.
Week 1-3
Week 4&5
Week 5&6
Week 7&8
Week 9&10 Week 11-14
bit bite
us use
hop hope
Compare
Compare
Compare &
kit kite
bus fuse
top rope
contrast
contrast all
contrast all
lit dime
gum fume
mop nope
all short
magic e
magic e
him lime
mud rude
on bone
vowel
long vowel
long vowels
rip ripe
gum tube
got vote
words with
words with
and all
zip wide
rub lube
lot dove
each other.
each other.
short vowels
win wine
gun tune
rob robe
with each
pig line
hug huge
Tom home
other.
etc. etc.
etc. etc.
etc. etc.
(At this point the onset-rime should be an increasingly small part of the lesson, and
students should be increasingly encouraged to hear actual phonemes. Also note, now is the
time to add in relatively uncommon final consonants such as b, v, and s.
Small Leap Spelling -- page 29 of 30
I.) Initial s blends -- st, sl, sm, sp, sn, sk, sw. (i.e. stick, slam, smoke, spot, snack, swim.)
EACH blend will take about a week.
J.) Initial r blends -- br, cr, dr, fr, gr, pr, tr. (i.e. brick, cram, drove, frame, grape, prize, trip.)
Probably two or three weeks for them all with "dr" being the most difficult.
K.) Initial l blends -- bl, cl, fl, gl, pl, sl. (i.e. block, clam, flame, globe, plate, slam.)
Probably two of three weeks for them all.
L.) Initial digraphs of ch, sh, and th -- (i.e. chop, shape, thick.)
Probably one week for each.
M.) Three letter words that end with y -- (i.e. shy, try, cry.)
Probably one or two weeks.
N.) Words ending with ght -- (i.e. light, bright, flight, weight, freight, and eight.)
Probably two weeks.
O.) Four letter words that end with ay -- (i.e. pray, gray, stay.)
Probably one or two weeks total.
P.) Final double letters of ll,
Probably two total.
ff, and ss -- (i.e. small, spell, stuff, grass.)
Q.) Final r-controlled words of ar,
Probably a week for each.
scare, and or.
R.) Final digraphs of ch, sh, and th -- (i.e. math, with, much, rich, flash, swish.)
Probably two weeks total.
S.) Words that begin with qu -- (i.e. quick, quit, quite, and quiz.)
Probably one week.
T.) Words that end in ng -- (i.e. bang, wing, song, hung, and bring).
Probably two weeks total.
U.) Final s blends of , sk, sp, and st -- (i.e. brisk, husk, crisp, grasp, fast, lost, chest, and rust.)
Probably two weeks total.
V.) Final r-controlled blends of rb, rd, rk, rm, rn, rp, and rt -- (i.e. carb, card, cork, arm, born, harp, and
fort.) Probably two or three weeks for entire set.
W.) Final m-controlled blends of mp -- (i.e. camp, ramp, limp, lump, clump, and chomp.)
Probably a week .
X.) Final l-controlled blends of lb,
Probably two weeks total.
ld, lk, lm, ln, lp, and lt -- (i.e. bulb, hold, folk, calm, kiln, help, and melt.)
Small Leap Spelling -- page 30 of 30
Y.) Final n-controlled blends of nd, nk,
Probably one or two weeks total.
np, and nt -- (i.e. hand, grand, honk, chunk, kil, help, and melt.)
Z.) Initial three letter blends and digraphs -- spr, str,
string,and throne.) Probably two weeks total.
spl, shrand thr -- (i.e. sprint, strike, splash, shrink,
XX.) Adding the plural s. (i.e. dogs, cats, springs).
Probably a week.
YY.) Doubled final consonant by adding er, ing, ed, and y -- (i.e. hopping, zipped, happy, and slipper.)
Probably a week for each, and another two to combine them all.
ZZ.) Dropped final e when adding er and ing -- (i.e. hoping compared to hopping.)
Probably two weeks to get dropping 'e' by itself, and then another two weeks to
combine with doubling rule.
beyond 2nd grade) Compare and contrast other spelling rules and patterns such as ai, ee, ea, and ies.
Probably a week on each.