The power of one!

Although this article is about a number of significant orthographic principles there are two topics that are particularly pertinent for me:

• Unravelling the 'story' of one word reveals the intertwined 'stories' of many other words.
• Investigating <one> clearly demonstrates that meaning and structure are the main concern of English orthography not pronunciation!

Recently, during math week, we investigated the number words, a wonderfully rich source of orthographic understandings. In education, <one> is generally considered a 'sight word' or a 'high frequency word', often a word memorised in isolation. It only seems logical to me, if words are considered high frequency, then we should be investigating and analysing them to fully understand the 'how' and 'why' of the spelling.

A teacher recently asked, "How can you investigate all the 'sight words'...that seems impossible?"
Do you know the singer/songwriter Paul Kelly? One of the songs he sings strikes a chord with me. Its called "From little things, big things grow." That's what happens when you dig deep with one, small word...learning grows, change happens, hypotheses form!

This is our inquiry into the reason for the initial grapheme <o> and 

the final, single, silent <e> in the spelling of <one>?

What does it mean?

We determined, as a class, that <one>
must be the base because 
we couldn't 'peel away' any 
structural affixes.

As in all orthographic investigations we began with a discussion of the meaning of <one>, which included a discussion about the homophone <won>. We briefly discussed how <won> was the past tense of <win>, hence the initial, single grapheme <w> indicating the connection between these words. The students had no difficulty dealing with the concept: different meanings, different spellings where possible.

What is its structure?
Even though it seems quite obvious that <one> is the base it is important to consistently model the process of providing evidence when identifying the morphemes. We determined that <one> must be a base as we couldn't justify any known affixes.

Also, the children immediately hypothesised that if <one> wasn't spelled with the final, single, silent <e> then it would be the function word <on>. Study Real Spelling's tutorial to understand the lexical and function word convention. Often the final, single, silent <e> is only taught in terms of its function to indicate that a previous vowel is long. However, it has many varied and important roles in English spelling that need to be discovered and investigated.

I wanted the children to begin to understand the various functions of the final, single, silent <e> which we will be investigating soon.

What are its relatives?
Our next task was to identify other words that could be related in meaning and structure.

One student suggested <ones>... "You know, the ones as in the tens and ones".

The children have recently been investigating place value and the numerical position of digits. I was thrilled this student was able to make connections with other learning.
The children were perplexed that they had difficulty thinking of other related words. I suspect this is what happens when words are learned in isolation...we really do limit learners' ability to think 'beyond'. I predicted this would be a challenging part of the investigation, so I had prepared a word bag with possible words.
During this investigation I wanted the children:

• to dig deep to find clear evidence that the hypothesised words were actually related and connected.

Included in the word bag were words such as:

<only> <once> <no-one> <none> <alone> <lonely> <atone> <onion> <lonesome>

Some of these words would be unfamiliar, adding to 

the children's expanding lexicon.

As each word was revealed, the children were surprised and delighted to discover words that they would not have previously thought of. The children also realised the different pronunciations of the <o> in each word. This reinforced the importance of naming the base by announcing it-pronunciations shift according to the affixes that are fixed.

The children loved that <alone> meant 'on your own-just one person', 
now recognising its connection to <one>.
They had no difficulty identifying the <al-> prefix and then constructing the word sum:  
al + one --> alone
However, I did explicitly help the children identify other words where <al-> was also evident as a 
 prefix, such as <altogether> <always>. 
The children hypothesised that <al-> seemed to be like the base <all> in meaning!

<none>  
The children suggested "not any" and I deepened their learning by adding: "like 'not one'."
The children wondered about <n-> as a prefix. A great question...which I briefly discussed, without overloading with too much information. I modelled a hypothesis for the word sum 
n(e) + one --> none  
indicating that <ne-> was an old English prefix meaning 'not, no'. 
With an older group of children this would have been placed on the 'wonderwall' 
for small group or independent investigation. 

<lonesome>: an unfamiliar word for many of the children.

 I told the children that <lonesome> was like a 'cousin' to <one> and that we would discover why with some other words, not yet revealed.

As each word was revealed we discussed the relationship between <lonely> <loneliness> <lonesome> and related the 'story' of how the base <lone> came into the English language.

Stories have a significant impact on young children's learning (or probably any age really)...

...stories stick, they make sense-it's how the brain remembers 

important information and makes connections.

Each time we discovered a word we attempted to construct a word sum to identify if the word had <one> as part of its structure. They loved discovering the story of <only>, realising the word sum as: one + ly --> onely.The children wanted to study this word further to discover what happened to the <e>...and agreed that it should be part of the spelling. So much rich discussion and thought from just one small word!

What about <onion>?

Did you know that <one> and <onion> were related?

Such a surprising but important discovery.

Revealing the word <onion> caused much surprise and laughter and exclamations that <onion> couldn't possibly be related.

"Well let's check first...how about we find the word in our word origin book. 
Remember how we discovered that <turn> and <turnip> were related?"

I modelled how to locate and read the necessary information to the children. Surprisingly we discovered that onion came from the Anglo French 'union' and was clearly related to 'one,unity'.

To help the children absorb and understand this information I drew an onion...we discussed the part that lived under the soil (the bulb)...the  part that we eat. Then I drew garlic (the children knew garlic as it is a major ingredient in many Indonesian dishes and so were familiar with it) and we discovered that garlic had lots of bulbs but onion only had one bulb.

Then by constructing the word sum <one/ + ion --->onion> we were able to 

provide evidence of the same structure.

The kids loved this and were very eager to share this amazing information with their families.
For the full story view Gina Cooke's inspiring TED movie Making Sense of Spelling explaining the connection of onion to one. Brilliant!


To finish this first session the children chose a word and shared its meaning as a reflection of their learning and understanding.

We placed the selected words on the word web, 
beginning to make sense of the base <one>.

The children hypothesised which words belonged to the 'inner family' and which they thought belonged to the 'outer family', like cousins. Initially the children were unsure about the connection of <once> but understood that it meant 'at one time'.

Discovering more: origins of <one>.

 This student is recording important information
about the word <onion> and its connection to <one>.

The following day we returned to our investigation and revisited what we had previously discovered.

I started this session with John Ayto's Word Origin books. In pairs, the children identified <one> and I summarised their findings. We discovered that <one> was an Old English word spelled <an> and was also the source of 'an' and 'a' and was pronounced in the same way as <only> during this period of time!

We then constructed a more permanent word web. Each student recorded the 'story' of one word to add to the word web. As each child scribed their word they were reminded to announce the morphemes and graphemes.

<atone> a new word for the children
<at + one --> atone>
literally 'at one' with oneself.

We had an interesting discussion 
about <once> and decided it 
should belong in the 'inner' word family 
because of its history 
 OE 'anes' (same root as 'one').

This is our word web identifying words related in meaning and structure.

"The word web doesn't have all the words...it's not complete...it doesn't have all the story... BUT it's enough for now to help these children 

truly deepen their learning in so many ways."

Maybe our hypotheses will change as we come across more evidence.
How many words have we discovered and investigated, just from one word?

And I'm absolutely certain that these children not only know how to spell <one> but more importantly know why!

The children also shared their learning at the school assembly! 

 

This was a rich investigation involving inquiry, questioning, study, leading to our next investigation:                              <two> and why the <w>?

 

 One student described <twilight> 
as "the zone between
midnight and sunlight!" 

The children identified the grapheme sequence (t+w) as having the meaning of 'twoness'.

The joy of unravelling the stories!

For further orthographic study refer to the Real Spelling Toolbox2:

• Kit 3 Theme J  The spelling of numbers
• Kit 1 Theme D The functions of final, single, non-syllabic <e>

Give me a shout! 

If you happen to be using my blog please drop me a line and let me know what you think, what you would like to see, what you enjoyed!  inquiry.beyondtheword@gmail.com

Teaching Orthography in the Early Years: word webs for young children

The primary function of English spelling is to represent MEANING. 

Implementing orthography, 
through scientific inquiry, in the early years. 

As I continue on my learning journey, and work with young children in a variety of learning settings, it is consistently validated that teaching morphology to the youngest is not only essential but critical to their success as proficient language users.  

As we know and understand from research, morphology is the building block, the solid foundation, for understanding how the English spelling system works. It provides a meaningful structure for teaching and learning phonology in an effective and authentic way.

In this post, I would like to share a wonderful learning story of a group of young children who are currently embarking on a journey of orthographic understanding.

This structured word inquiry was explicitly embedded in an authentic literacy learning experience, integrating all forms of language.

Throughout the learning experience the children clearly demonstrated their deep understanding of how words are connected in meaning and structure. 

We started this particular learning journey by rereading a well loved story, Mrs Wishy Washy by Joy Cowley.The children were delighted to read the story to me, which they did with great enthusiasm and understanding.They clearly viewed themselves as proficient readers, by explaining and discussing the underlying ideas and meaning of the story. 

I shared my favourite part of the story, by writing a sentence to demonstrate and model my thought processes, emphasising the word <jumped>. Hence, the starter base for this investigation is <jump>.

The cow jumped in the mud. 

I have also observed  a teacher of another prep class require the children to draw their thinking about the starter base before embarking on the word family activity. A very valuable, authentic assessment of children's understanding and learning!

Concept attainment:

We then dived into the 'bag of words' and pulled out the word    <jumped>, written on a large chart. 

             jumped

"Jumped," shouted the children with glee. 

By ensuring the children had meaningfully encountered this word in a reading and writing context all the children were able to make true sense of the word. 

I modelled how to announce the spelling of <j-u-m-p-ed> by spelling aloud the single letter graphemes and the suffix. This word was placed inside a hoop. The children orally shared their understanding of the meaning of the word through their own life experiences. 

The bag of words also contained <jumped> <jumping> <jumper> <jumps> as well as two others <rolled> and <paddled>.

We then proceeded to pull out further words making decisions together if the word belonged inside the hoop or outside the hoop. Each time we viewed a word I announced the morphemes and graphemes. 

In pairs, the children discussed the words inside the hoop and then shared their hypotheses of why <jumped> <jumping> <jumps> and <jumper> belonged to the same morphological word family but <rolled> and <paddled> did not. The children did this with exceptional focus and interest.

The children recorded their thinking by illustrating the meaning of the words in the hoop. As the children were writing their chosen word, this created further opportunities to model the spelling out strategy.

After recording their thinking the children created a word web to record how the words are linked in meaning and structure. 

 

Again I announced the morphemes and graphemes, reinforcing new terminology and concepts. The children decided they needed to construct additional word webs for <rolled> and <paddled> and I have no doubt that they could accomplish this effectively through a similar inquiry investigation.

Every time I share this activity with children it confirms, consolidates and ratifies the utmost importance of implementing morphology in the early years. Right from the very beginning young children need to fully understand that the primary function of English spelling is meaning.

Now, let's think about the phonological connections 

that are explicitly embedded in this activity.

During this particular SWI lesson the children are consistently revisiting and consolidating the names of 4 alphabet letters 

<j> <u> <m> and <p> 

They are implicitly introduced to four single letter graphemes 

<j-u-m-p>

and the phonemes these graphemes are representing in the base word <jump>

/dʒ/ /u/ /m/ /p/

In the following weeks you could choose another starter base, like <play> and highlight the circumstances of the single letter grapheme <p> in this base word and compare it to the circumstance of the single letter grapheme <p> in <jump>.

The children can investigate and discuss if <p> represents the same or a different phoneme when the <p> is in the initial and final positions of these two base words.

<play> presents a meaningful introduction to the digraph <ay>, a team of letters working together to represent the phoneme long /a/, in the final position.

Additionally, this would naturally lead into an introduction of the six vowel letters, and an investigation, of the importance of these letters in understanding the spelling of a base. Please refer to the blog post The Power of Kinaesthetic Learning for further information regarding the teaching of vowels.

In just one lesson the children have been meaningfully introduced to a variety of important morphological and phonological 

concepts and terminology. 

Understanding how words are related through MEANING and SPELLING

Building 'word webs' through a collaborative approach.

Using a collaborative strategy, Round Table Word Webs, students will develop an understanding of the importance of connecting SPELLING with MEANING, 
the essence of the English spelling system. 

The students will have an opportunity to build a number of different word webs, by collecting words that all have a common base. This activity will help students to understand how and why words are related in 'word families' and how this essential knowledge demonstrates the key to the spelling.

Read on for further details regarding this collaborative activity by clicking on the link.