IT’S BACK S-p-e-l-l-i-n-g

Students at Westpark Elementary School in Irvine recently raised $11,000 for the campus library but they didn’t hawk See’s Candy or wrapping paper. They were contestants in the school’s second annual Spell-A-Thon, soliciting pledges of money tied to their spelling acumen.

It’s a good way to raise a few bucks, but more significantly, the Spell-A-Thon illustrates renewed emphasis on a time-honored subject by schools across Orange County.

“We brought it in as a fund-raiser and to make people aware of how important spelling is,” said Kathy Irvine, a Westpark parent who helped organize the Spell-A-Thon.

Capistrano Unified School District and the Centralia School District in Buena Park have beefed up their spelling curriculum in the past year. Others are too, in part because of mediocre spelling scores on last year’s statewide Stanford 9 exam.

Orange County students scored above the national average in math and language, but just below the 50th percentile in reading and spelling. (By definition, the 50th percentile is the national average.) Even students who aced the test scored lower in spelling than in other subjects.

“That definitely pointed out to us that there are some problem areas in spelling,” said Julie Jennings, the spokeswoman at Capistrano Unified, where students scored between the 53rd and 65th percentile in spelling. Overall those students’ percentile rankings were in the 70s.

Test scores aren’t the only reason to increase spelling instruction. Good spellers, according to educational research, usually become good writers and good readers.

“It’s important because it is representative of who that person is,” said Bobbi Mahler, an assistant superintendent in Centralia. “Our society places a heavy emphasis on verbal and written communication.”

“Technology is never going to make spelling obsolete,” said Suzette Lovely, an elementary school administrator at Capistrano Unified.

Some teachers never stopped the rote method of weekly word lists and spelling tests. Others abandoned drills and memorization when California educators adopted a “whole language” philosophy, believing that the mechanics of language and spelling are better learned by total immersion in great books. That approach also called for encouraging children to enjoy writing, in part by not correcting their spelling or having them look up the spellings for words in the dictionary. But whole-language critics said this approach ignored important basic skills.

Centralia teachers met with Mahler this summer to overhaul spelling curriculum in the 5,155-student district that includes parts of Buena Park, La Palma and Anaheim.

Each week, students are given new spelling words that include basic words, which are based on phonics; content words, which come from other subject material; high frequency words, which are commonly used in student writing; and challenge words, which are more difficult to spell.

Spelling is now taught 15 minutes a day and students are tested weekly to see how they’re progressing. To ensure that the curriculum is uniform throughout Centralia’s nine elementary schools, teachers had to attend a full-day workshop on the topic before the start of the current school year.

Is it working? Mahler said she will be studying the results of this year’s Stanford 9 exam, given between the end of March and the end of May. But early signs are encouraging.

“Our teachers seem to believe children have developed an interest in spelling,” she said.

The shift toward more spelling instruction came within the last year, at the same time that the State Board of Education adopted standards for mastering language arts, including spelling, for the first time.

Parents can help children improve their spelling, educators said, beyond drilling them on the words of the week. They can set a tone.

“Parents should say that spelling is important,” Lovely said, “an important foundation for success in other subjects.”