An examination of the orthographic and phonological spelling knowledge observed in a sample of independent writing completed by 267 children with specific literacy difficulties

This paper considers spelling in samples of writing collected in October 2019 (pre COVID-19) from 267 children in the 8–9 age range in 143 mainstream primary schools who were identified by their schools as presenting with the most severe specific literacy difficulties in their age group. They were referred to the Northern Ireland Education Authority Psychology Service for assessment and were formally assessed to provide standardized scores for literacy attainment and cognitive profile. They presented with a cognitive profile which included a standardized score of 90 or above in one or more of the subtests of the Wechsler (2016) Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC). Spelling in independent writing samples was analysed to establish what sources of linguistic knowledge (phonemic, orthographic and morphemic) the children were drawing on to spell words. It was evident from the analysis of these writing samples that children were dependent on phoneme-to-grapheme correspondence when spelling, often selecting letters that did represent the phonemes but it was the wrong selection of letters for phonemes with multiple mappings. The observed pattern of errors indicates that these 267 children had difficulty developing orthographic knowledge resulting in phonologically plausible spelling choices impacting spelling accuracy. The development of orthographic knowledge was limited or had failed to develop for this group of children.