Our Teaching Method – Direct Instruction – Spelling
At Firefly Education, we teach the full range of Direct Instruction programs. Each program is built around the core Direct Instruction principles of consistent language, carefully sequenced material, highly individualized delivery, and continuous assessment and skillful correction. The following are selected samples of Direct Instruction spelling programs that we teach, all of which are available for our online teaching service:
Spelling Mastery
Spelling Mastery teaches dependable spelling skills that students need to become proficient readers and writers by interweaving concentrated instruction in three approaches – phonemic, morphemic, and whole-word strategies – to make learning easier. The phonemic strategy helps beginning spellers to use sound-symbol correspondence as a foundation for spelling, learn and apply relationships between spoken sound and written letters to spelling, and generalize the spelling of many words and word parts that follow in regular patterns. The morphemic strategy teaches advanced spellers how to spell meaningful prefixes, suffixes, and word bases, and combine words and word parts to spell multisyllabic words. The intensive whole-word approach helps students at all levels to spell common, high-frequency words which are irregular in their letter sounds, and commit these potentially troublesome words to memory. Systematic and explicit teaching of reliable rules and their applications reduces the number of words students must memorize, providing the skills needed to spell thousands of words. Ample practice and ongoing, cumulative review of every skill, pattern, and rule ensures long-term retention and a solid understanding of how words are spelled.
Spelling Through Morphographs
Spelling Through Morphographs is a corrective program designed to give older students the tools they need to learn to spell. The program teaches a variety of morphographs — prefixes, suffixes, and word bases — and a small set of rules for combining them so that students learn a spelling strategy they can apply to thousands of words. Fast-paced lessons and a systematic review of every morphograph, combined with a few simple spelling rules, ensure that spelling strategies are mastered. In the first half of the program alone, students learn over 252 morphographs and the rules needed to spell over 3,000 words. By the end of the program, they learn over 500 morphographs, and are able to spell over 12,000 words. The fact that morphographs have meaning not only helps students remember their spelling, but it also helps them figure out the meaning of unfamiliar words. Writing and proofreading activities reinforce the connection between spelling and composition.
