Spokane schools are adopting writing-based spelling curriculum

Spelling bees are a thing of the past in Spokane schools. As are traditional spelling tests.

Under new curriculum adopted by Spokane Public Schools this year for grades two through six, students are no longer asked to memorize lists of words.

“There is no pretest on Monday, post test on Friday and then never look at those words again,” said Lydia Fesler, a literacy coordinator for the district.

The new program, called Sitton Spelling, teaches specific spelling concepts in the context of each student’s own writing, Fesler said.

Instead of memorizing the spelling of specific words, “It’s about how spelling works; looking at patterns in spelling,” Fesler said.

But the new elementary level spelling curriculum this year has drawn criticism from teachers and parents who also have argued that a new math curriculum is “fuzzy.”

After reading about the curriculum in a newsletter, some parents approached Jim Harrison, a sixth-grade teacher at Balboa Elementary School.

“The comments I heard (from parents) were, ‘My God, what’s next?’ ” Harrison said “The feeling is that we are moving away from what has worked for hundreds of years with millions of kids to something that nobody is quite sure of.”

Some teachers also have complained that district officials have told them not to use some parts or exercises in the curriculum. The creator of the program, Rebecca Sitton, who is based in Arizona, said she has heard from “multiple teachers and some principals” from Spokane concerned about those directions.

“My feeling is if they have banned the use of some parts of the program … that they must not understand them,” Sitton said.

Sitton said her curriculum is one of the most widely used spelling programs in the country, and Spokane is the only district she knows of that is removing parts of it.

Fesler said the district’s decision to not use certain exercises – such as word searches – came from a survey given to about 125 teachers who piloted the program last year. The survey asked teachers what parts of the curriculum they found valuable, or didn’t, because the program was too large.

Because of state demands for what a teacher is to cover each day – 90 minutes for reading, 60 minutes each for writing, math and science – teachers have only about 10 to 15 minutes to spend on spelling, Fesler said.

“You have to be an expert in all those areas; you really have to know what’s important,” Fesler said.

Fesler said some other parts of the program, such as proofreading exercises in which students find and correct mistakes, helped student performance on previous standardized tests. But that doesn’t translate well to the WASL – the exam now tied to a student’s graduation from high school and the state’s answer to the federal No Child Left Behind law.

In an informal training session for teachers at Balboa this week, one teacher wondered why the district would spend money on a curriculum when teachers can’t use all of it.

“You are never going to find the perfect curriculum unless you write it yourself,” said principal Pat Lynass. “Spelling is best learned in the context of writing.”