Developmental Trends in Spelling and Reading Fluency in the Upper Elementary Grades

The purpose of this study was to examine the usefulness of an experimental measure of reading fluency and an experimental metric of spelling accuracy for documenting literacy development in the third through fifth elementary grades. Reading fluency measures are based on both accuracy and rate of reading, and most are administered orally to individual students. Most systems for scoring spelling are based on whole word correctness. My experimental measure of fluency involved silent reading and could be completed rapidly with groups of children. The experimental metric of spelling was designed to indicate knowledge in various linguistic areas. The results from the experimental measures were compared to criterion standard measures. All tasks were administered at the beginning and end of the fall semester 2010. Results indicated that both experimental and criterion measures were sensitive to within-grade differences. They also yielded differences between Grades 3 and 5; however, Grade 4 overlapped with both. Accuracy of spelling morphological elements, documented only by the experimental spelling metric, resulted in unique developments in Grade 4. Findings indicate positive promise for use of the experimental measures of literacy skills in students in the later elementary grades