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I have attempted to explore concepts and idea in greater depth through wide
reading
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Can daily phonics interventions help raise the spelling attainment of lower
ability KS2 students?
726450
06/06/2016
PGDE

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Contents
Page 4 – Section 1 - Introduction
Page 5 – Section 2 - Literature Review
Page 8 – Section 3 – Research Methodologies
Page 10 – Section 4 – Presentation of findings
Page 15 – Section 5 - Discussion
Page 17 – Conclusion
Page 19 - References

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Section 1 – Introduction
During my placement in School X, I was given the opportunity to teach English to the
year five class
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The Majority of the lower ability students in
particular were consistently spelling word incorrectly, and this was leading to lower
attainment levels when they were assessed
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After
conversation with my class teacher, it was decided that these children would benefit
from phonics interventions and from that my action research question came into
fruition; can daily phonics interventions help raise the spelling attainment of lower
ability KS2 students
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It would also cultivate a more
research focus practice in my teaching, allowing me to better assimilate the results of
assessments and interventions into my practice and allow me to better see the
effects of certain teachings on the learning if my students
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I will go on to discuss the methodology of my interventions and present the
findings of the study
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Section 2 Literature Review
Since the Rose Report (2005), phonics has been one of the stalwarts in education
and in teaching young children to read and write
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While there is some debate to
the types of phonics schools should use, and its’ over-all effectiveness, phonics is an
important part in the curriculum, with all children in year one having to take part in
the ‘phonics screening check’ (DfE, 2016)
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Synthetic vs analytical
When teaching phonics, there are two types that schools tend to use; synthetic and
analytic
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3), for example
‘b’ would produce words such as bag, bill, bog
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3)
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Children are encouraged then to figure out the pronunciation of unfamiliar words by
using known letter sounds
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Johnston, McGeown and Watsons’s five-year study into the effects of synthetic vs
analytic phonics (2011), showed that generally, the group that was taught via
synthetic phonics attained higher levels in spelling, reading, and writing than those

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who were taught via the analytic method
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4)
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It is important to note however, that there is some criticism of
synthetic phonics and the results found by the Rose Review (2005)
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While there are now phonics programmes that sit between the
two (such as Progression in Phonics and Playing with Sounds), School X has a
strictly synthetic phonics policy, so it was decided that my intervention would imitate
this
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Orthographical knowledge (that is to say the spelling of words) is
one of the four key components of written English (Beck, 2006)
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(1962)

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believed that a lack of understanding in orthographical systems would lead to poorer
reading ability, and this in turn would lead to lower levels of attainment in English,
and it would seem that the two are interconnected
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However, the very nature of phonics, and
the emphasis on phonemes and blending, lends its self well to the development of
spelling ability
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Berends and
Reitsma, (2007) agree with this idea, affirming that by concentrating on individual
parts of the word would help develop ‘more detailed word specific orthographic
representations in the mental lexicon’ (p
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Further evidence comes from
Johnston and Watson seven-year longitudinal study investigating the effects of
synthetic phonics on reading and spelling attainment (2005)
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This highlights the connectivity between phonological and
orthographical knowledge, allowing me to build an intervention in the knowledge that
greater phonological awareness has been shown to raise spelling attainment
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147), and 85% of students are expected to be secure in phonics by the end
of year 1 (Jollife and Waugh, 2012)
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While some of the difficulties may be related to SEN,
there is a very real problem that comes with confidence in reading
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Revisiting that learning in KS2 may provide the
lower attainers with the confidence and equipment necessary to tackle new words,
and in doing so, open up the opportunity to read more fluently and become better
learners and vicariously as such, improve attainment in spelling
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Section 3 – Research methodology
Action Research within a school setting has three main benefits;


It adds to knowledge;



It improves practice, and;



It can inform policy (Creswell, 2008)

By using research, we can explore educational issues that arise and thus can gain a
deeper understanding of them allowing practitioners to identify specific areas of
development
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By emphasizing these areas, suggestions can be made which, based
on research, can offer new ways or ideas to improve practice
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There are however some limitations to the type of data
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presented by action research, as occasionally, results can be too vague, research
methods for data collection can be poor, and actual data collected may be uncertain
or ambiguous (Creswell, 2008)
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The main body of data would be collected via three formal spelling tests over the
four weeks
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The amount of
words that the children got correct would serve as a baseline mark, which would be
compared to the results of the same test undertaken at the end of second week after
eight sessions of phonics interventions
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Using Letters and sounds (2007) and the CLLD ‘Phonics at
KS2’ (2009) as a basis for my phonics interventions, I used observational
assessment to assess whether the children had understood each new phoneme
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I tried to choose words that linked to both the Year 3 and Year 4 statutory
spelling lists that are found in the National Curriculum (DfE, 2013)
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Students were chosen based on their prior attainment in spelling tests, and their
ability grouping within the cohort (all children were classed as ‘lower ability’)
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This posed the question as to whether the intervention was going against the
children’s right to not participate (Newman and Brown, 1996)
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The accountability for the
children improvement fell upon both myself and the class teacher, and it was felt that
permission was not needed, much in the same way that permission in not asked for
other areas of teaching
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7)
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Overview
Overall, the data suggests that during the course of the interventions, children’s
attainment increased with varying degrees of success
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For all four of the students, these was an increase in the percentage of correct
answers; Pupil 1’s correct answers increased by 8%, Pupils 2 and 3 had an increase
of 28%, while Pupil 4 gave 25% more correct answers in their final test when
compared to there first
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While the children all
started at a different level of spelling ability, three out of four students improved at a
consistent rate over the course of the four weeks, with the average improvement
from test to test being between 13% and 15%
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The following tables show the percentage of correct
answers (Table 1), and those percentages broken down into their marks out of forty
(Table 2)
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Below I will break down these
results further into boys/girls and disadvantaged/non-disadvantaged children
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Within my chosen participants, there were two boys and two girls
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Over the course of the intervention it
was apparent that the girls’ attainment was better than the boys, even though the
girls scored less, as an average, on the first test, as Figure 3 shows below:

Correct answers over the course of the
intervention
Test 3

Test2

Test 1
0

5

10

15
Girls

20

25

30

Boys

Figure 3
The girls also, it would seem, made higher levels of progress during the intervention,
as they increase their correct answers by an average of 26% compared to the boys’
18%
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Disadvantaged VS Non Disadvantaged
I also wanted to look at the progress made by the disadvantaged students against
the non-disadvantaged
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Figure 4 below shows this
comparison, and is taken from the Schools Data Dashboard (Ofsted, 2013):

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Figure 4
Interestingly, when compared with the findings from my interventions, it was the
disadvantaged children who fared better over the course of the interventions
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Figures 5 and 6
below show this trend
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Section 5 – Discussion
The findings from my interventions suggest that teaching phonics at KS2 in year 5
does have a profound effect on raising the levels of attainment in spelling for lower
ability students
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75% for the four students
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This supports the findings from Johnston and Watsons’ study (2011) and the
finding of the Rose Review (2005) as well as the research from Jolliffe and Waugh
(2012)
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Upon conclusion of the intervention, it appears that it was a success
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The first and most obvious issue with my intervention, I feel, is the nature of the
spelling tests themselves
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The
effects of rote learning on spelling has been explored by Glanzer (1962), Montague
(1953) and Frith (1980) and it may have been that by doing these test three times
the children remembered the spelling for some of the words, rather than used the
phonological knowledge that they had acquired
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The very nature of quantitative data means that the focus is on
numbers, for example how much progression did the children make, or how many
more correct answers did they get compared to the first test
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(Muijs,2004)
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As well as this I feel that the selection process for the pupil was flawed
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The child in question was picked
because in class they are regarded as being low ability for English
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Finally, I feel that the group size and length of study, and the arguments presented
above, compromised the generalisability of my study
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As we have already seen the
findings in the intervention may have been may have been compromised by a
number of factors, meaning, in effect, the results are not reliable or valid
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If I were to perform
this action research again, I would now be in a far better position to conduct a quality
piece of quantitative data analysis due to a better understanding of the importance of
validity, reliability and generalisability when conducting research
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Thanks to research undertaken, as part of the literature review, I
primarily had formulated a hypothesis that the phonics interventions I would hold
would indeed have a positive impact on the children’s spelling, and, as the data
suggest, that hypothesis proved to be correct
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However, as I have
discussed about, that is only half of the story
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However, research
undertaken by Johnston and Watson would suggest that there is a causal link, and

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so I feel that this Action Research still holds some value, as it will have large
implications on my future teaching practice
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Knowing now
more about effective, reliable and viable research methods, I will be able to carry out
a study with a far higher degree of accuracy than this one
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This will
allow me to implement the most effective strategies to raise spelling attainment in the
future depending on the abilities of the individual child
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As all children
made progress in some way, it will be interesting to see if the results are only
because of rote learning of the words they were tested on, or if the greater
phonological knowledge that they now have can be used to make better
orthographical judgements when it comes to writing and spelling
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It will only be after the data from these observations have been analysed
extensively that I will truly know if my intervention were a success
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(2006)
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New York, N
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: Guilford Press
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and Reitsma, P
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Orthographic analysis of words during fluency
training promotes reading of new similar words
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129-139
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(2012)
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Los Angeles: SAGE
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CLLD Phonics at Key Stage 2
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gov
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leics
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uk/clld_phonics_ks2_01058_1_
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2016]
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(2008)
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Upper Saddle River, N
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: Pearson/Merrill
Prentice Hall
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The national curriculum - GOV
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[online] Gov
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Available at:
https://www
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uk/national-curriculum/overview [Accessed 6 Jun
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DfES, (2007)
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[online] DfES
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gov
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pdf [Accessed 1 Jun
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Fontaine, S
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(1998)
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Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Publishers
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(1980)
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Group, 83, p
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Gibson, E
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, Osser, H
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(1962)
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The American Journal of
Psychology, 75(4), p
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Glanzer, M
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Grammatical category: A rote learning and word association
analysis
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31-41
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uk
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Section 7: Phonics screening check - 2016 Key stage 1: assessment
and reporting arrangements (ARA) - Guidance - GOV
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[online] Available at:
https://www
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uk/guidance/2016-key-stage-1-assessment-and-reportingarrangements-ara/section-7-phonics-screening-check [Accessed 6 Jun
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Johnston, R
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(2003)
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[online] Research Gate
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researchgate
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_Insight/links/00b49537dee8356ec8000000
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2016]
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S
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E
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A seven year study of the effects of
synthetic phonics teaching on reading and spelling attainment
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Johnston, R
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(2014)
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Los Angeles: SAGE
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, McGeown, S
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(2011)
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Read Writ, 25(6), pp
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Jolliffe, W
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and Carss, A
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Teaching systematic synthetic phonics
in primary schools
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Montague, E
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The role of anxiety in serial rote learning
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91-96
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(2004)
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London:
SAGE
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(2010)
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Pearson Education
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and Brown, R
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Applied ethics for program evaluation
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Ofsted, (2013)
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[online] Dashboard
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gov
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Available
at: http://dashboard
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gov
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2016]
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(2005)
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Department for education and skills
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(2009)
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Wyse, D
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(2007)
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Literacy, 41(1), pp
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