Sara Mcginnis

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Outline

Definition

Last of the Spelling Stages

Word Study

Examples of Word Study at the Derivational Stage

Reference

Derivational Relations

Definition

Derivational Relations is the last of the Spelling Stages. At this stage students are able to spell most words correctly and can use most vowel and consonant alterations. This stage focuses on the structure or morphology of written words. Students at this level systematically examine how the spelling of a word visually represents morphemes (Bear, Invernizzi, & Johnston, 2006).

Last of the spelling stages

There are five developmental stages of spelling, which include Emergent Stage, Letter Name Stage, Within-Word Patterns, Syllables and Affixes, and Derivational Relations (Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton, & Johnston, 2004). Each stage has its own distinct characteristics that explains the patterns that a student could be having trouble at that stage.

At the Derivational stage of development, students’s struggle with difficulties created by sound variations across common roots and stems. Students could have difficulty with vowel alternations such as “insane” and “insanity” and vowel reductions such as “normal” and “normality” or “complete” and “competition”. Students -at- who are in this stage are just beginning to get a grasp on consonant alternation such as “medicine” and “medical” and consonants that are either silent or sounded such as “column” and “columnist”. So students may write “insannity” for “insanity”, “normel” for “normal”, ”computition” for “competition”, “medickal” for “medical”, and “colum” for “column”. Students at this stage also work at with the appropriate applications of prefixes and suffixes (Schlagal, 2001). Students have to learn to attend to the meaning and spelling connection in upper vocabulary at this stage. This also is the stage that draws student’s attention to Greek and Latin roots. Changing the meaning of the base or root word can present subtle and not so subtle spelling issues (Bloodgood & Pacifici, 2004).

One of the biggest challenges that these learners will run into is when they are dealing with assimilated prefixes, prefixes that retain its meaning but changes the spelling to fit the root word for example “irregular, illegal, impossible, accept, apprehend, and aggravate.” Students could be very confused about why there would be an “m” instead of “n” but the answer goes back to history when the “Lazy Tongue” developed (Bloodgood, 2004).

Word Study

Word Study at this stage focuses primarily on the morphology of written words. At this stage the Derivational Relations stage students are fairly competent spellers, so the errors that they make are at a higher level, this requires more advanced foundation of spelling and vocabulary knowledge that needs to address. Because of this, word studies at this level focus as much on vocabulary development as it does on spelling development. This helps the student to analyze the spelling of words which in turns supports vocabulary growth, and vocabulary growth provides to be helpful in supporting higher-level spelling development (Bear, Invernizzi, & Johnston, 2006).

Word Studies are great activities for students to participate in to help their spelling development. They can be used as a group activity, individually at their desk or in a center, and they can also be used in a one on one tutoring setting. Word studies are one way to keep students meaningfully engaged with activities that will further their understanding of reading with or without the teacher (Opitz & Ford, 2004).

Examples of Word Study at the Derivational Relations Stage

This is one of the first Word Sorts that a student would complete at this level. It discusses the prefixes un, re, dis, and mis (Bear, Invernizzi, & Johnston, 2006).

Un –

Unopened

Unread

Unheated

Unattached

Unplanned

Unglued

Re -

Repackage

Reinstall

Reconsider

Reaction

Reform

Reassure

Dis -

Discontinue

Distrust

Disorder

Disengage

Disease

Disclose

Mis -

Misfortune

Mislead

Misconduct

Misplace

Misstep

Mistake

This is an example of a word sort that is towards the end of this stage. This sort discuses the Latin roots –man, -scib/-script, -cred, and –fac (Bear, Invernizzi, & Johnston, 2006).

-man

Manual

Manuscript

Manicure

Manure

Mandate

Maneuver

-scib/script

Circumscribe

Prescribe

Prescription

Inscribe

Inscription

Transcribe

Postscript

Ascribe

-cred

Incredible

Credible

Credence

Discredit

Incredulous

-fac

Factory

Manufacture

Facsimile

Facilitate

Artifact

Reference:

Bloodgood, J. W. & Pacifici, L. C. (2004). The Reading Teacher. Bringing word study to intermediate classrooms, 58(3), 250-263.

Flynt, E. S. & Cooter, R. B. (2005). The Reading Teacher. Improving middle-grades

reading in urban schools: The Memphis Comprehension Framework, 58(8), 774-780.

Hauerwas, L. B. & Walker, J. (2004). What can children’s spelling of running and

jumped tell us about their need for spelling instruction?. The Reading Teacher, 58(2), 168-176.

Johnston, F., Bear, D. R., & Invernizzi, M. (2006). Word Sorts for Derivational Relations Spellers. Columbus, OH: Pearson.

Optiz, M. F. & Ford, M. P. (2004). What do I do with the rest of the kids? Ideas for

meaningful independent activities during small-group reading instruction. The Reading Teacher, 58(4), 394-396.

Perkins, J. H. & Cooter, R. B. (2005). Evidence-based literacy education and the African American child. The Reading Teacher, 59(2), 194-198.

Pikulski, J. J. & Chard, D. J. (2005). Fluency: Bridge between decoding and reading

comprehension. The Reading Teacher, 58(6), 510-519.

Schlagal, B. (2001). Traditional, developmental, and structured language approaches to

spelling. Yearbook of the American Reading Forum, 18, 25-41.

External Links:

International Reading Association

Derivational Relations

Word Study Link

Examples of each Spelling Stage

Activity to use with Students

commentary by Kelly Murphy

Sara, You have written a wonderful paper on the derivational relations spelling stage. This is a stage that I am not too familiar with since I teach 1st grade. I have never taught a student in this stage before. However, I learned a lot for your wiki page. I think it was also important that you included links to the other spelling stages so the reader can easliy navigate through these to develop a full understanding of all the stages.

Here are a few mistakes I found:

paragraph 3 - Students at this stage -- STUDENTS WHO ARE IN THIS STAGE

paragraph 4 - I found the following sentence confusing: One of the biggest challenges that these learners will run into is when they are dealing with assimilated prefixes, prefixes that retain its meaning but changes the spelling to fit the root word for example “irregular, illegal, impossible, accept, apprehend, and aggravate.” Mybe it could read LEARNERS IN THE DERIVATIONAL RELATIONS STAGE ARE CHALLENGED BY ASSIMILATED PREFIXES.

In paragraph 5 I thought you might like to link to the word study link on the topics page.

paragraph 7 - Word study is great activities - WORD STUDY IS A GREAT ACTIVITY or WORD STUDIES ARE GREAT ACTIVITIES. Also in this paragraph you could link to the word study page.

Once again, you have written a wonderful wiki, wiki, wiki.

Sara you did a great job with this wiki topic. It is very imformative. One thing that confused me was this sentence....Students could be very confused about why there would be an “m” instead of “n” but the answer goes back to history when the “lazy tongue” developed (Bloodgood, 2004). Maybe you could define the "lazy tongue." Another thing you could add is the age group or reading level commonly associated with the derivational relations stage. I have students at the derivational stage of spelling and I will use the word sorts you mentioned with them. You could also add more instructional and independent activities to implement with students at this stage.

Commentary by Elizabeth Walker

Hey Sara Thought that you paper had alot of good information in it.

I only have a couple of suggestions:

1. In paragraph 2 the last sentence for clarity I would suggest saying Each stage has it (needs to be its) own distinct characteristics that explains the patterns within each stage; therefore, this could help discover the exact stage a student is having trouble or a difficulty with.

2. Under Word Study the first paragraph I think focus should be focuses.