Question about the 1915 Ayres spelling list

[idnib]

I was telling my neighbor about my apparent inability to gauge my own DS's spelling skill. (Just for kicks I had him start Ayres spelling list and am finding out he's ahead of where I thought he was. Way ahead. How could I be so off? Why did I think he had problems with spelling? But that's a topic for another thread.)

 

So I was telling my neighbor and she asked me if I would see where her (public-schooled) son is on the scale. He does well on school spelling tests, although he's given the words to study ahead of time and I gave him the Ayres list cold.

 

Long story short, he came out about a grade level behind. I'm regretting this experiment a bit now and wondering how to explain it. Was the Ayres list designed to be studied ahead of time? That's not how I used it for DS, but perhaps I should have? I skimmed the book in Google books but did not find the answer. Also, I know sometimes there are grade differences between older materials and newer, for example the 2nd grade Mcguffey is now considered 2nd-3rd grade (I think). Would the Ayres list be considered a grade ahead these days?

 

Does anyone have any info to uh...soften the news?

 

 

[FO4UR]

The Ayres list is just a list of the most common words in 1915.  Every curric/teacher uses it in their own way.

 

 

Most schools use the Fry list today b/c it's an updated list.  Your ps friend probably knows the Fry list better...or the Dolche list which represents the most common words in modern *children's* literature.

 

 

[Arcadia]

The Frys list and the Dolch lists are used at my local PS to get kids reading. The Sitton lists are used for spelling.

My younger is bad at spelling cold so other than what was on his PS spelling list, he would have errors.

 

ETA:

The Sitton spelling list

http://www.fssd.org/jesweb/images/SittonList.pdf

[Ellie]

Also, I know sometimes there are grade differences between older materials and newer, for example the 2nd grade Mcguffey is now considered 2nd-3rd grade (I think). Would the Ayres list be considered a grade ahead these days?

 

 

 

Well, I know that the Ayres List wouldn't be studied ahead of time, but my primary familiarity with it is through WRTR, so that's all I got. :-)

 

However, I do have a comment about the McGuffey readers. They were not strictly "grade levels." Children began with the first reader, however old they were, and continued until they finished the eighth reader, however old they were, which is when they graduated.

[idnib]

Thanks everyone. I guess the chart in the book (page 29 of the book, I don't know how to link it directly) is what's getting me. That and the fact that I followed a link (can't find it now) that lured me by saying something about seeing how your kid does on an old-fashioned spelling test, which somehow gave the impression the test was more difficult than today's words. Maybe it was just click-bait.

 

Ellie, thanks for the McGuffey info. Do you happen to know what "graduation" meant at that time? Was it 10th grade? 12th? Was it based solely on skill, so if a 12 year-old finished the curricula for school they were considered to have graduated? I'm just curious at this point but I know you have a lot of knowledge about such topics.

[Tsuga]

How interesting--I was wondering where our schools got these "high frequency" words from but now I know. Our school uses the Sitton test.

 

As for your neighbor, when I looked at Ayer's norms, it doesn't give a cut-off, per se. He has percentiles (painstakingly and somewhat touchingly calculated with a handwritten table in the text!). So I'm struggling to see what you mean by "grade level behind". He is in the 50th% for the previous grade level?

 

Also, if you look at page 40, he specifically writes that the words are  not meant to be studied--he points out that if used as drill lists, the instrument becomes an unreliable judge of spelling/literacy.

 

He also is careful to point out (as any testing should, but unfortunately our test-happy money-making overlords right now aren't keen to do) that the test is least reliable in placing one child, more reliable in placing a class, and most reliable when placing a group of children spread throughout several classes--this is basic social statistics, of course, but especially pertinent to your neighbor's situation. I wouldn't worry about it if the child is doing fine at school and reading well and reading for pleasure.

 

What was your neighbor's score / grade?

[idnib]

I gave him some different lists around the middle of the alphabet (lists are labelled A-Z) and on each I kept track of how many he got right/wrong in each list. At the end I calculated the percents correct and compared them to the chart on p 29. The percents he got correct for each list I gave him were for a grade behind where he actually is in school.

 

I agree the words are still common today but I was wondering if perhaps children were expected to know the same words earlier in more rigorous times. When his mom asks I'd feel more comfortable telling her a possible reason that just telling her he's spelling a year behind. But it could be possible; he has some academic difficulties with words. He's good at math, though.

 

Anyway, that's why I asked but I can see that perhaps he is doing okay. At this point I'm more curious about whether things have become less rigorous over time.

[Tsuga]

 

At the end I calculated the percents correct and compared them to the chart on p 29.

 

No, those are percentiles, not percents.

 

One second... I will type out an explanation. It is supposed to be, what percentage of children get 100% of words in that list right...

 

Darn, lost my response.

 

Okay. So for example, suppose your neighbor is in 2nd grade. If he got 100% of the words in list "L" correct, then he would be in the 50th percentile of 2nd graders. (See the first row with that table on it.) On the contrary if he got 100% of list A, that just tells you that he is in at least the 1st percentile.

 

But let's say he got all the words in "I" right and not all the words in "J" right. In that case, he would be between the 12th (100% total, 88% scored at least as well as he did) and 16th (84% got all of these right) percentile.

 

However, again, it is important to note that this tool was NOT designed for grade placement, but instead to rate populations against one another. The statistical validity for n=1 is not strong enough that I'd burden a child with it.

 

What we learn from his chart was that even way back when in 1915 only 50% of 8th graders could correctly spell judgment, recommend and allege! So that explains a lot, LOL.

 

Never mind--you referred to a page number given by Google and I was thinking you were looking above, so was reading from the section where they talked about norming the scores. Sorry!

 

I still think that it's hard to say a "grade level behind" reading it as a scaled chart--after all, an average fourth grader would be spelling 50% of R correctly, but still a full 34% of fifth graders and 21% of sixth graders would not be achieving that.

 

 

[idnib]

I'm following the idea outlined on p 37:

 

 

 

By means of these groupings a child's spelling ability may be located in terms of grades. Thus if a child were given a 20 word spelling test from the words of column 0 and spelled 15 words or 75 per cent of them correctly it would be proper to say that he showed fourth grade spelling ability. If he spelled correctly 17 words or 85 per cent he would show fifth grade ability and so on.

 

 

This what I mean when I'm talking about the neighbor's kid being a year behind his grade level and my kid being ahead. I'm using the percents correct against the chart on p 28 [corrected].

 

I've been working on the list with my son, who I thought had spelling difficulties, and he's ahead of grade using this method. How far ahead I do not know, as I keep giving him the next list and he gets 99% or 100% so I move to the next one. I'm waiting for him to "fail" but it hasn't happened yet so I'm not sure where he's at. (Don't ask how I could have been so wrong. I'm wondering myself.)

 

Am I doing this incorrectly, then?

[Tsuga]

You know what--he has two references and you keep referring to a page that has no chart on it in what I'm looking at, so maybe I am doing it wrong. Let me check.

[Ellie]

Thanks everyone. I guess the chart in the book (page 29 of the book, I don't know how to link it directly) is what's getting me. That and the fact that I followed a link (can't find it now) that lured me by saying something about seeing how your kid does on an old-fashioned spelling test, which somehow gave the impression the test was more difficult than today's words. Maybe it was just click-bait.

 

Ellie, thanks for the McGuffey info. Do you happen to know what "graduation" meant at that time? Was it 10th grade? 12th? Was it based solely on skill, so if a 12 year-old finished the curricula for school they were considered to have graduated? I'm just curious at this point but I know you have a lot of knowledge about such topics.

 

I have not studied this in-depth, you understand, but what I was told (and it made sense to me) was that children were graduated when they completed the 8th reader.

 

The concept of children being in "grades" and doing everything according to "grades," and that there must be 12 of those grades, is very recent in the history of the world. And it makes no sense for homeschooled children to be locked into those grades. I owned/administered an umbrella-type program for 16 years; our policy on graduating our students was to do it when the parents, the children and I decided they had learned as much at home as they were going to. I graduated both of mine on their 16th birthdays, because both were taking full loads at the community college.

[idnib]

Ack. Sorry, I meant p 28.

[Tsuga]

I modified my reply above based on your changed reference. I was thinking this was about the non-normed test but you are right in that it is % correct.

 

I still wouldn't assign a kid a below-grade level based on that. As the author mentions, the test becomes less valid when the words have been drilled, and on top of that, the frequency was determined by books read at that time--and I'm willing to bet a lot fewer Bibles are read today (at least percentage-wise) than back then if for no other reason than we have access to way more books. Thanks, Mr. Rockefeller.

[idnib]

I modified my reply above based on your changed reference. I was thinking this was about the non-normed test but you are right in that it is % correct.

 

I still wouldn't assign a kid a below-grade level based on that. As the author mentions, the test becomes less valid when the words have been drilled, and on top of that, the frequency was determined by books read at that time--and I'm willing to bet a lot fewer Bibles are read today (at least percentage-wise) than back them if for no other reason than we have access to way more books. Thanks, Mr. Rockefeller.

 

Thanks for your help. I find the entire exercise of creating the Ayres list to be fascinating. Thanks for chatting with me about it. I think if I brought it up in real life people would think (know?) I'm even weirder than first believed.

[Tsuga]

Thanks for bringing this up. I wish I had time to read more about it.

[Elisabet1]

You got yourself in a hard one. The lesson here is..never ever test other people's children!

 

Public schools are barely teaching spelling. My son is barely on grade level for Spelling Workout, but won the spelling bee for his grade at public school. I would imagine back in 1915, kids were even more advanced.

[idnib]

You got yourself in a hard one. The lesson here is..never ever test other people's children!

 

Public schools are barely teaching spelling. My son is barely on grade level for Spelling Workout, but won the spelling bee for his grade at public school. I would imagine back in 1915, kids were even more advanced.

 

Yeah, I probably should have declined. Lesson learned. It wasn't completely out of the blue, though. Last year I tutored him in grammar and this year I've just started tutoring him in phonics. He's doing okay in school, with some problems that his mom and I think are mostly related to lack of drill and practice. He's a bright kid, he just needs more repetition than most and he has some minor eye tracking problems. She and I have talked a lot about the school not meeting his needs. So the request/acceptance wasn't as out of the blue as it may seem. But yeah.

 

The schools around here are doing what they did when I was in elementary in the 1970s. Here's a list of words, test next week. Retest the following week on any missed words. I don't know what they're doing for kids who have trouble, though. We had an aide in the classroom to help kids who were falling behind. I don't think they have that.

 

Congrats on the spelling bee!

[Tsuga]

idnib I wish I lived next to you!

[idnib]

idnib I wish I lived next to you!

 

:001_wub:

 

Right back at ya!

[Tsuga]

I'd pay you so much money to homeschool my kids over the summer. You'd really love me.

[Hunter]

The McGuffey readers are NOT grades, as we know them now. Some schools did call the time spent in a reader a "grade" but students often spent more than a year in a "grade".

 

The original McGuffey series had 4 readers. THe Eclectic version had a primer and 6 readers. Later series by other authors sometimes had a primer and 8 readers. Most of the readers covered the same age students, but as books became more affordable, the series were expanded. You cannot compare an 1850's 4th reader to a 1920's 4th reader. They are NOT the same level.

 

Google books has an explosion of reading series all published about the time of the Eclectic McGuffeys series and are pretty compatible with the series of a primer and 6 readers. There are earlier and later series, too, that are not compatible in difficulty.

 

Times were just differnet, then. We have neither dumbed down or increased the rigor. We just do things differently, with a focus on different skills and content. And English has been dumbed down a bit, but mostly it's just changed.

 

I would tell the neighbor that the ayers list includes antiquated words that makes it invalid to use on a child that has not been schooled with as many older books as modern books. Just like IQ test are rewritten to make sure they are relevent to what a child is experiencing.

 

The Ayers list can be used on homeschooled children who are familiar with the words on the list, but I wouldn't use it on most public schooled students.