3

Elementary schools across the US often give weekly spelling lists that the students will be tested on at the end of the week.

Clearly schools believe having kids learn to spell these words helps them with reading and/or writing if they keep doing it.

Does the evidence support this?

JRE
  • 5,088
  • 3
  • 29
  • 22
dsollen
  • 10,062
  • 12
  • 43
  • 71
  • Discussion about whether this question is notable has been [moved to chat](https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/132034/discussion-on-question-by-dsollen-do-school-spelling-tests-increasing-reading-or). Do not extend that discussion here. – Oddthinking Dec 04 '21 at 00:19
  • 7
    One way it could be improved for example is by linking to specific justification for a spelling curriculum ( eg https://www.k12reader.com/spelling-curriculum-design/ ) and specifically indicate which claims they are skeptical about. – TimRias Dec 04 '21 at 10:23
  • 1
    isn't this self-evident? it's hard to write a word if you don't know how to spell it. if you grade writing performance as correctly writing words, then how could proper spelling not improve results? – dandavis Dec 08 '21 at 20:29
  • 2
    @dandavis, no, it is not self-evident. As a counter-example, the vast majority of my spelling skill comes from reading everything I could get my hands on -- if spelling lists were a significant contribution, my written vocabulary would be much smaller, at a maximum of 4000 words. – Mark Dec 09 '21 at 02:10
  • 2
    Why single out spelling? We could ask: Do school tests in any subject increase student performance? If not, maybe they are designed to **measure** student performance, rather than to **increase** it. – GEdgar Sep 20 '22 at 18:42
  • 1
    @GEdgar mostly due to how frequent they are. New words each week, tested at the end of the week, is different then spending a month on a topic and then testing how one retained it. – dsollen Sep 21 '22 at 13:33
  • @dsollen I think I once read a paper proving that frequent repeated testing with quick feedback improved long-term retention; how often these spelling tests reuse words? – Danila Smirnov Sep 28 '22 at 09:21
  • 1
    @danila never for my school, or my 'little brother' (from BBBS), I assume that's true across the board but I have no evidence of that. – dsollen Sep 28 '22 at 13:10

0 Answers0