Intervention on my LD Learner’s Spelling and Writing Difficulties through spelling instruction and ICTs

The purpose of this article is to develop a lesson plan enhancing my learner’s spelling skills after the non-standardized test that assessed her spelling/ written expression. The lesson will be taught to a group of learners and not only to an individual, as any intervention can be really successful when applied to an inclusive class that accepts all learners regardless of their strengths or weaknesses (Sandmel & Graham, 2011). In the first part, there is a short description of the LD learner’s learning profile and then, there is a description of the teaching context. Moreover, there is a presentation of the aims set in the particular lesson in order to improve the learner’s spelling skills. Then, in the second part, there is a presentation of the actual lesson and a justification upon choices. Finally, there is a conclusion, summarizing all the theoretical concepts mentioned in the previous sections.


The LD student learning profile
The particular learner (Mary) is a 9-year-old girl attending the fourth grade of a Greek private primary school (Larsen & Freeman, 2000).Mary was diagnosed with dysorthography when she was 7 years old.Regarding English, she exhibits a positive stance towards it and she seems to like it.However, she finds difficulty in spelling and writing.According to Rowe (2009), the majority of learners with LD face mostly difficulties in the written language, while some researchers mentioned that especially encoding (spelling) seems to be quite demanding for them (Moats, 2005;Galuschka et al., 2020, Nijakowska, 2010).Generally, Mary is a shy child with low self-esteem and confidence, she is introvert but she shows willingness to cooperate with her classmates in every class activity each time despite her shyness (Nijakowska, 2010).Concerning learning, she is mainly a visual learner, as she prefers watching videos or dealing with flashcards which seem to be quite helpful for her.Also, Mary needs additional time when dealing with written activities, in order to remember and use some spelling tricks/ mnemonics so as to reduce any possible mistakes.According to Schneider & Crombie (2003), learners with LD usually have a slower processing speed and seem to face difficulties in dealing with grammar rules and structures, while at the same time they seem to have poor metacognitive skills (memory/ attention) and difficulty in managing their time (Liang & Li, 2019).

The teaching situation
Concerning the current teaching situation, the particular group consists of 16 monolingual learners that have been learning English since they were in the first grade of primary school.Generally, learners do not face great difficulties in English, but some of them need guidance in spelling.According to the CEFR (2001), their competence level is A1, as they are able to understand short phrases around topics familiar to them, while the majority of learners prefers learning mostly through kinesthetic and visual activities and tasks (Woodward, 2001).
The coursebook taught is called 'I51 Incredible 5' by Express Publishing, while the unit taught that inspired me for choosing the particular topic to work on was unit 3a (A family weekend) (see Appendix IX, p. XV).It is a quite interesting book for learners and it includes a wide range of vocabulary, grammar, reading, listening and speaking activities.However, there are no real communicative activities, group-pair-work activities are missing, while there are not enough projects assigned by the book.So, quite often the teacher makes alterations, designs extra material and assigns plenty group-work activities/ tasks/ projects to learners.Finally, concerning L1, it is used only to avoid misunderstandings or when it is really necessary to give additional guidance and support to learners.Lessons take place 3 times a week for 45 minutes each time.
Concerning the teacher, she has graduated from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and has a Master degree in Special Education.Also, she has attended a 9-month seminar on Learning Difficulties in Aegean University.She has been teaching for 12 years, while at the same time she has taught LD classes for 2 years.
In the particular group, many inclusive education principles are implemented.According to Antoniou (2019), inclusive education is when learners with or without learning difficulties are given the chance to participate actively in the whole learning process in order to achieve their goals, boost their strengths and reduce their weaknesses, while it has numerous benefits for all learners (social inclusion) (Buysee & Bailey, 1993; Feldman, 2004).In other words, a learner's difficulty is not seen as an obstacle in the whole teaching/ learning process, but rather as an asset as it offers all learners an equal chance to practice even more, while labeling and stigmatization (Florian & Black, 2011) and feelings of isolation (Villa & Thousand, 2005) are avoided and prohibited.For the above reasons, the teacher should take into account her learners' needs, interests, strengths and weaknesses and construct a meaningful learning environment treating all of them equally with respect and understanding (Barrat, 2008).Last but not least, apart from the learning objectives set and the material used and/ or designed, it is vital to make various adjustments so as to cater learners' needs.
Thus, the learner is placed close to the teacher and he/she is always part of a team (not excluded), feeling in this way useful and equally important in the whole educational procedure with the rest members that work hard to achieve their goals (learner-learner interaction) (Antoniou & Papakostas, 2019).Also, the teacher constantly praises learners boosting in this way their confidence and creating a welcoming class environment of positive reinforcement and reward.Moreover, she quite often uses highlighters to help learners pay attention to some very important spelling rules, so as to reduce any possible mistakes by enhancing their memory and concentration span while at the same time, she writes down some important notes/ instructions on the board.Finally, the lesson is divided into numerous shorter parts, maintaining thus learners' attention and participation more active.For the above reasons, the application of a multidisciplinary approach is more than necessary, as numerous strategies will be employed so as to satisfy learners' needs (visual, kinesthetic) and lead them to knowledge.

Student's competence in selected skill
Regarding the administered test, Mary is able to use most of the grammatic, syntactic and linguistic rules (eg.subject verb object structure), she uses tenses correctly while she knows all the necessary for her writing vocabulary.Additionally, she uses capital letters when necessary and she is aware of morphological rules.However, she has great difficulty in spelling and she does not sometimes use the appropriate punctuation marks.The vast majority of errors made were orthographic.

The aims for the enhancement of the skill assessed
The aim of the lesson is to enhance the particular learner's metacognitive and spelling skills, which can be extremely demanding as it is necessary to coordinate various linguistic processes, which is challenging for LD learners (Squires & Wolter, 2016).In doing so, constant guidance is vital along with the multisensory approach and the language-based spelling instruction, as the visual representation of words is not enough (flashcards) (Joshi et al., 2008).So, the teacher should set some goals so as to improve the learner's writing and spelling skills, through the multisensory approach and the explicit instruction of spelling (Graham, 1999).Also, she will employ the Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD), according to which learners have the opportunity to regulate their learning (planning, multiple drafting) and improve their written expression significantly (Gillespie & Graham, 2014).

The lesson plan
The particular lesson plan (see Appendix I, p. V) follows the SRSD instructional approach incorporating the multisensory approach (visual/ auditory/ kinesthetic/ tactile approach-boosting memory) (Jamieson & Simpson, 2006) and the explicit instruction of spelling as well.More specifically, in the SRSD instruction there are six stages, that is the development of background knowledge, discussion, modelling, memorization, support and independent work (Antoniou, 2019).In addition, the stages of process writing are also implemented as the students should get accustomed to the process of editing and re-editing their work through team work and collaborative writing.Thus, Mary and the rest members of the class will focus on the topic of writing (my family) (Jacobs, 1986), while there will be also integration of speaking tasks as students will take part in oral activities both with their teacher and their peers.

Stage 1
In the first stage, the teacher presents the objectives of the lesson and activates learners' background knowledge.So, in the beginning she informs learners that they will talk and write about a topic quite familiar to them after following some specific steps leading to the final product (actual writing) and then, she sticks the schedule on the whiteboard, so as it can be easily seen by everyone.The aim of the lesson is to focus on some vocabulary items related to family (through mnemonics, activities), practice them through pair-group-work activities and prepare a short writing about their family.After doing so, she presents some pictures to them (visual elements) (see Appendix II, p. XI) showing different types of families and she asks them to guess the content of their lesson (guessing process/ prediction skills), activating thus their background schemata.Then, she shows them a very short video on YouTube about family members (see Appendix III, p. XII), where they can see, listen and repeat family vocabulary, while they can also sing a quite interesting and joyful family song (see Appendix IV, p. XII), practicing thus their listening skills, too.Generally speaking, this multisensory activity including audio and visual elements contributes significantly to the learners' graphemic and phonemic development (Galuschka et al , 2020).Afterwards, she designs a box on the board entitled 'my family' composed of two categories, female and male family members.Learners are divided into three groups and they are supposed to write down as many family members they remember from the previous tasks into the correct category (female members: mummy/ sister).For this task, every team is given only two minutes, so they must run quickly (kinesthetic), while the team that wins is the one with the most correct answers.After the game, all three teams are given positive and constructive feedback by their teacher.Finally, learners are encouraged to work in pairs, use a blue playdough and 'write' properly the family members (mummy/ daddy/ granny/ brother/ sister/ grandfather/ grandmother/ father/ mother) on the desk.When they deal with a word whose suffix is 'y' (granny), they should use red to create it and green color when it is 'ther' (mother).This is a mnemonic trick for all learners assisting them to use the correct spelling when writing a word finishing in 'y' or 'ther', as there are numerous learners using 'i' or 'e' instead of 'y' in the end of the words.Additionally, the use of a playdough in writing words is a very useful and enjoyable tactile and kinesthetics approach employed.Finally, the teacher provides learners valuable feedback about their creations and teaches them explicitly some spelling rules mostly focusing on the use of 'y' and 'ther' as a suffix (explicit spelling instruction).

Stage 2
In the second stage (discussion), the teacher presents and justifies to learners the strategy and the mnemonics to be used throughout the lesson, while she tries to maintain their motivation, effort and concentration as high as possible.Then, they talk about the benefits of this collaborative process writing work for their personal and academic development, while some of their metacognitive skills will be boosted as well (Zamel, 1985).

Stage 3
In the third stage (modelling), the teacher who has informed learners in detail about the process to be followed, implements these strategies.To begin with, at the planning stage, she creates a mindmap of a different topic on the board and invites learners to imitate what she did and collaborate in pairs in order to organize and make theirs on the topic assigned earlier (my family).Additionally, she stresses emphasis on the importance of a plan for the writing process and the need to create and follow it each time they are called to write a composition.At the same time, she mentions what they should do after completing their writing task (check for possible mistakes/ proofreading).After doing so, they are given a short self-evaluation form to complete around their mindmap (see Appendix V, p. XII), while in the end the teacher provides them with positive reinforcement for their effort.

Stage 4
In the memorization stage, learners are supposed to take part into engaging tasks and activities which are helpful in order to memorize what they have learnt.Thus, they divided in groups of four and they are given a text about a family (see Appendix VI, p. XIII), two highlighters and two lasers.Each member has a distinct role.For example, two of the members are responsible of reading the text, while the other two of detecting the family vocabulary in it.The first two members are told to read aloud again only the words shown by their peers (family members) and point them in the text by using their lasers, while their peers are called to highlight the suffixes of the words and pay attention to them.In the end, they exchange constructive peer-feedback.Then, the teacher hands in a self-check questionnaire (see Appendix VII, p. XIV) before learners start writing in order to assist them organize their thoughts in order to create a wellstructured written text.Afterwards, they are supposed to produce their first draft within 12 minutes, which they exchange later on with their peers so as to exchange feedback (McCroathy & Zhu, 1997).In this part, the teacher writes down the difficulties Mary faces in her spelling/ organization of ideas and writing in order to plan her future teaching instruction and help her deal with them.

Step 5
In this step (support), according to the SRSD method, learners are exposed to a direct writing activity implementing collaborative writing with the teacher's guidance though (Antoniou, 2019).Therefore, learners are supposed to produce their second draft (multiple drafting) and then, the final one based on the feedback they were provided in the previous stages by their peers and teacher.So, they must check carefully for any possible spelling, grammar, punctuation, correct use of vocabulary and other points that may need improvement (Antoniou, 2019).

Stage 6
In the last stage (independent work), learners are asked to work autonomously and independently, practice the new strategies they acquired and produce their final written product.What is worth mentioning is that learners are given a real reason to write their final texts as their teacher informs them that all writings will be published in the school blog (real audience).The fact that every single composition will be published offers all learners even the ones with LD, such as Mary, motivation to work as they feel equally important and useful (Antoniou, 2019).Afterwards, learners will reflect upon their writing by exchanging peer feedback (see Appendix VIII, p. XIV) upon the difficulties they dealt and the interesting parts.

The rationale of the lesson
Before designing the particular lesson, the teacher took into consideration her LD learner's test.In doing so, she decided to focus on improving both Mary's and the rest of the class's spelling and written expression through the use of explicit spelling instruction, the SRSD approach, the multisensory approach and process writing.Each one of them had a really significant role in the whole teaching and learning process.
To begin with, through the explicit spelling instruction learners are offered the opportunity to learn some of the soundspelling patterns of the English language and understand how language really works, while they are able to learn some useful mnemonics that are applicable into numerous words (we put 'y' when we hear 'e' in the end of a word, such as mummy, Monday, sunny, etc.).Actually, they will be able to understand some rules by recognizing some patterns (Treiman,1993) in order to spell a word correctly and not just memorize it after repeating/ writing it (Joshi et al, 2008;Mather & Wendling, 2012).Finally, it is a quite efficient method both for students learning differently according to Vaughn andBos (2009, in Simmons &Carpenter, 2010) and LD learners with spelling difficulties, as it can teach them how to develop their linguistic awareness skills (Masterson & Apel, 2010).
Regarding the multisensory approach, learners are able to learn in numerous interesting ways (auditory/ visual/ kinesthetic/ tactile) instead of just writing down words or deal with drilling activities.In this way, they can engage into activities leading to real knowledge, critical thinking and understanding, memory training (Antoniou, 2019), developing thus their metacognitive skills as well (Jamieson & Simpson, 2006).
Additionally, process writing is of utmost importance as learners are supposed to follow a process of multiple drafting and editing in order to produce a final product (writing itself), developing thus many of their skills, while there is constant positive reinforcement and praise (Zamel, 1985).
Finally, the Self-Regulated Strategy Development is a quite effective process as learners have the chance to plan, compose and edit while they can develop some of their skills, such as monitoring, self-monitoring and self-assessment (Gillespie & Graham, 2014).

Differentiation techniques
The particular spelling and written expression-oriented lesson focuses on improving Mary's and her classmates' skills and developing their cognitive, metacognitive and interpersonal skills.The teacher employs various differentiation techniques in doing so.The term 'differentiation techniques' refers to the measures taken and the processes followed by the teacher in order to offer all learners an equal opportunity to learn in a welcoming and supportive class of acceptance and respect.In this effort, it is crucial to make various adaptations based on learners' profile, needs, strengths, weaknesses and readiness (Tomlinson, 1999).
In the particular case, several differentiation techniques are employed by the teacher quite successfully.First of all, the teacher informs learners about the objectives of the lesson and sticks the plan on the whiteboard so as they can have access to it (Antoniou & Protopapas, 2019), decreasing thus their anxiety and stress.Secondly, she adapts the pace of the lesson to her learners' abilities so as they can all-with and without LD-follow her teaching and participate actively in the class activities.Also, she assigns mostly group-pair-work tasks to learners, making them more engaged in the process, willing to participate, less shy and bored, while she boosts their self-confidence and self-esteem.She also groups learners based on their abilities and skills and not only the weaker with the better students, so that they can all be benefited from each other.Regarding the content taught, the teacher in the beginning of the lesson activates learners' background schemata around the topic of family, assisting them in learning new structures more easily, while she teaches them a limited number of words (belonging to a specific context), as the point is to make learners understand particular spelling rules and produce a written text on their own following a specific process and not the teaching of topic vocabulary.Moreover, she chooses deliberately to teach the particular spelling rules, which may seem very easy for the proficiency level of learners but she does so, as she takes into account Mary's profile and difficulties and the fact that she cannot use these two suffixes correctly when necessary.Furthermore, the use of the multisensory approach is quite beneficial for learners' experiential learning and mental memory, while at the same time it makes the whole lesson even more interesting.In this way, learners listen to a song, play games in groups-teams, participate actively in singing, use playdough in 'writing' and learning the spelling rules, employ lasers, highlighters and various useful mnemonics.Regarding planning, the teacher employs mind maps when necessary, so as to assist her learners organize and manage their thoughts even more (Nijakowska et al., 2016).Finally, all the above differentiation techniques constitute a successful and effective way to assist a learner with LD improve her spelling and writing (Tomlinson & Imbeau, 2010).
More specifically the purpose of this assignment was to develop a lesson plan enhancing my learner's spelling skills within an inclusive context that respects all learners regardless of their strengths or weaknesses.The lesson plan followed both the SRSD approach and the process writing method, as its main purpose was to include the LD learner in the learning process and make her focus on the whole writing process instead of the final product, while there was explicit spelling instruction, as through it the learner could better memorize and learn important spelling rules, developing thus her metacognitive skills as well (Moats, 2005;Joshi et al., 2008).Thus, the spelling intervention lesson was an essential tool in catering the particular learner's needs, while the results showed the need for future interventions in the EFL class when necessary (Antoniou & Papakostas, 2019).

Specific objectives
Learners will be able to: The teacher shows them some pictures presenting different types of families and she asks them to guess the content of their lesson T-Ss To activate Ls' background schemata.
To foster their prediction skills.Learners are divided into three groups and they are supposed to write down as many family members into the correct category in a box designed by the teacher on the board.For this task, every team is given only two minutes, so they must run quickly.

Ss-Ss
To check comprehension.
To enhance learners' writing skills.
To promote Ls' interaction skills.To boost Ls' critical thinking skills.
To develop kinesthetic/timemanagement skills.Ss are asked to work in pairs using a blue playdough and 'write' properly the family members on their desk.When they deal with a word whose suffix is 'y' (granny), they should use red to create it and green color when it is 'ther' (mother).

Ss-Ss
To check comprehension.
To enhance learners' writing skills.
To promote Ls' interaction skills.To boost Ls' critical thinking skills.
To develop kinesthetic skills.
To develop their creativity.7 The T provides Ls feedback about their work and teaches them explicitly some spelling rules on the use of 'y' and 'ther' as a suffix.

T -Ss
To provide Ls feedback.
To develop their awareness on spelling rules/ tricks.The T asks Ls to collaborate in pairs to make theirs on the topic assigned earlier (my family).

Ss-Ss
To create a mindmap.
To enhance Ls' writing/ critical thinking skills.
To promote Ls' interaction skills.In groups of four, they are given a text about a family, two highlighters and two lasers and they must read it aloud, detect all the family members, with the assistance of lasers and highlight the suffixes of these words.

Ss-Ss
To enhance Ls' reading skills.
To develop their critical thinking skills.
To promote Ls' interaction and cooperation skills.

T-Ss
To assist them in organizing their thoughts in order to create a well-structured written text.
2 min (2 nd hour) Afterwards, they are supposed to produce their first draft, which they exchange later on with their peers so as to provide/ receive feedback.

Ss-Ss
To learn how to use the strategies of drafting.
To learn how to collaborate.
To learn how to assess others.

1 .
Recognize spelling patterns (-y/ -ther) 2. Apply the spelling rules into practice 3. Organize their writing/ plan on their own 4. Produce a structured text after multiple drafting using the appropriate spelling (-y/ -ther) a short YouTube video about family members and asks them to listen and repeat family vocabulary, while they can also sing a quite interesting family song.
to complete a short selfevaluation form around their mindmap.
in a self-check questionnaire before learners start writing.

1
In the last stage (independent work), Ls are asked to work autonomously, practice the new strategies they acquired and produce their final written product.Ss-SsTo learn how to implement all the corrections in the final draft 15 min.(3 rd hour) In the discussion stage, the T presents to Ls the strategy and the mnemonics to be used.Then, they talk about the benefits of collaborative work and process writing.