Spelling Inventory – Back to School Baseline Assessments

Lower elementary students won’t always spell words the right way. “Invented spelling” is a powerful tool to enable students to write words even when they can’t spell them yet. Still, spelling reveals what students know about phonics patterns. Students who spell the long e sound with just the letter e, a silent e at the end of the word, or a digraph such as ee or ea show three different levels of phonics understanding. A spelling inventory can help you see what spelling patterns your students know and can use.

The Words Their Way spelling inventories provide a list of words for students to spell and a feature guide for teachers to use for scoring. Rather than a simple correct or incorrect score, teachers look for features of the spelling such as beginning and ending consonants, short and long vowels, and consonant and vowel digraphs. A teacher can add all the feature points a student earns to determine the student’s spelling stage.

A spelling inventory can be given in a whole-group setting, much like a regular spelling test. You may want to walk around to see how your students are doing, because you can stop the test early if it seems like your students have missed several words in a row. Instructions for administering a spelling inventory and the features guides for scoring are available here. If you are starting the school year online, the Seesaw Community Library has some spelling inventory activities available for you to use. I like the Sweet Home WTW spelling inventories by Andrew Stella.

My whole Grade 2 team is starting the year with a spelling inventory so that we can use it to guide our phonics instruction for the year. Have you used a spelling inventory before, or do you plan to use one this year? Let me know how it goes using the form on the “Contact Us” page!