Words Their Way Report

Kate Lomazzo

Student Description: Andy (name has been changed) is an eighth grade student who attends a rural middle
school in downstate New York. He frequently works with a special education teacher because he has
ADHD and a learning disability in reading. Andy generally has a negative attitude towards schooling
because he finds it to be boring. He does not read or write for pleasure or outside of school.
Experience Description: Given his ADHD, learning disability, and attitude toward learning, I was
interested in assessing Andy with the Words Their Way Upper-Level Spelling Inventory. Since I am a
friend of his brother, Andy was happy to take the assessment for me. We completed the assessment at his
kitchen table, so the environment was calm and he viewed the experience differently from a school
setting. I encouraged him to try his best despite the fact that he wasnt in school or being graded. He
seemed very motivated to show his brother how well he could spell.
Data: Andy spelled 26/31 words correctly and earned 63/68 feature points for a total score of 89/99.
Specifically, Andy got 8/9 feature points for Vowels, 6/7 for Complex Consonants, 9/10 for Affixes, and
5/6 for Assimilated Prefixes; all other feature point areas received full credit. There were certainly a few
very notable and interesting spellings. For example, it is notable that Andy technically only received 5/7
points for Complex Consonants. Instead of writing pounce, Andy wrote pets immediately after
saying, The last two sentences had to do with pets! Therefore, I did not count this as a true error and I
attributed it to his ADHD and a reliance on semantics. Based on this adjustment, Andy did not miss more
than one feature point on any given feature. He missed the kn feature of knotted so I would like to
further assess this complex consonant. He spelled medicinal as medicional and, when prompted to
look at the word at a later date, said Wait, thats how it looks if you write it in Spanish! so I attribute
this to interference form his Spanish class. He also missed one assimilated prefix, the mm in
commotion, but got all of the others. I did, however, notice a pattern in examining the Words Spelled
Correctly column. Andy spelled dominance correctly, but spelled confidence as confidance and
circumference as circumferance which suggests an overgeneralization of the -ance word pattern.
Outcome: As a result of Andys assessment (which showed limited patterns in terms of missed feature
points), I placed him in the Early Derivational Relations stage. I made this decision based on his few

Words Their Way Report

Kate Lomazzo

errors throughout the assessment (including towards the more difficult end of the list) and his using but
confusing of the -ance pattern, which falls under the Affixes category between the Late
Syllables/Affixes and Early Derivational Relations stages.
Suggestions for Next Steps: First of all, I would be interested in reassessing Andy on the missed feature
points, including the kn replacement with n. I might do this using the kn words provided in
Appendix E of Words Their Way. However, since none of these areas contained more than one error, I
would like to assess them further but would focus instruction on the Affixes feature area. This would also
address Goal 4 of Cunninghams (2009) word fluency goals. Specifically, to teach the difference between
words ending in -ence and -ance in a motivating and tactile way, I would use the following activities:
1. Open Word Sort: I would create an open word sort containing some words ending in -ence and
others in -ance so that Andy could focus on this word ending in particular. I would suggest the open
sort in particular since this type is the most satisfying to students, which is of high importance given
Andys negative attitude toward school. Once the words were sorted according to this pattern, Andy and I
would discuss the relationship between the orthographic pattern and sound, and he will likely draw the
conclusion that -ance and -ence sound extremely similar. I will guide Andy to consider some
derivations of the base word part (i.e. confident for confidence, dominant for dominance) so that
he realizes the relationship between word endings of the same base word part (i.e. ant and ance
following domin-, ent and ence following confid-).
2. Defiance or Patience Game: This card game encourages students to make as many groups (of 2, 3, or 4
words) with the same word derivation as possible. The teacher creates a deck of cards with suits made
of different word parts (i.e. radiate, radiant, radiance or attend, attendance, attendant). Like in Go-Fish,
players examine their own cards and ask others for certain cards that would make a match (i.e. Tim, give
me all of your radiants, which could potentially result in the student getting both radiate and
radiance cards). Students are also allowed to play single cards on other players matched sets. The
game is scored based on the number of words matched under one deviation (1 point for a single card
added to another players set, 2 points for a pair, 6 points for triples, 10 points for a group of four, etc.).

Words Their Way Report

Kate Lomazzo
References

Bear, D., Invernizzi, M., Templeton, S. & Johnston, F. (2012). Words their way: Word study for phonics,
vocabulary, and spelling instruction (5th ed.). Boston: Pearson.
Cunningham, P. M. (2009). Phonics they use: Words for reading and writing (5th ed.). Boston: Pearson.