Why is my child not coming home with words to practice?
This is a great question, and for families new to Hozho this may seem very odd at first. You may have even asked for some only for the response to be something along the lines of "We have a structured/unique literacy program that our teachers are trained in and we do not want to confuse the students." As a former teacher at Hozho, this was also the elevator pitch I would give my parents. It is not wrong, it is simply the quick, on-the-go answer that saves the parents from what could easily be an hour-long conversation.
Well, now as a literacy coach with a literacy corner, I can offer a more in-depth explanation.
Most literacy/spelling/reading programs often look some like this...
- Student receives 10 new spelling words for the week.
- Students drill the spelling words at home and in the classroom.
- Student receives homework assignments such as writing a sentence for each spelling word or writing each spelling word three times
- Student takes a spelling test on Friday.
- Repeat with new words the next week.
Does this sound familiar? It is how many of us were taught to spell. Well, this methodology is based on what was called the "whole word approach" from the early 19th century. The whole word approach taught students to spell through memorizing words, skipping many key foundational skills and jumping to the words as a whole. It was thought that if students simply memorized words, the patterns and spelling 'tricks' would eventually click.
Well, I do not know about you, but it was not until college that I learned why /Y/ is sometimes a consonant and sometimes a vowel (did anyone else learn the vowels as a e i o u and sometimes y?). That is also why we learn these 'tricks' that often contradict themselves such as;
i before e except after c ( isn't that simply deceiving?) and why we have words spelled similarly but pronounced differently; though thought - rough thorough
So what does Hozho do differently? We teach those subskills first. We teach our students how to spell before they learn how to read starting with the 42 sounds in the English language, the 72 ways to spell them, and the corresponding orthographic rules that accompany each sound. For example, instead of i before e except after c, students learn the various phonograms that say /E/ (ie, ei, e, ey...etc) and when we likely use them (for example you will not find ei at the end of an English word because English words do not end with the letter i.) They learn the foreign roots of many words as well as the prefixes and suffixes that change the meaning of a word (proper versus improper).
These subskills are taught through structured, multi-sensory techniques (cued choral responses, hand motions...etc) in which your child's teacher is well trained. Because of this method, students learn upwards of 30 words per week, not just 10, and at the end of two weeks take a test on approximately 50 words. They are not memorizing the words, they are learning the foundations of the English language and using those skills in order to spell and read complex vocabulary.
That being said, when your child does come home with a spelling list, it is because they have already tested on those words. At this time, students may practice drilling the words because they have learned to spell them (and most importantly why they are spelled the way they are spelled) and now simply need to practice being able to automatically recall the words.
