Spelling Mastery produced statistically significant positive effects on all three writing measures in a fourth-grade RCT against Visual Imagery instruction¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causal r2 · q3 · i3 large
Currency · newest study 2014 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q3 i3 In Darch and Simpson (1990), 28 fourth-grade students with learning disabilities randomly assigned to Spelling Mastery significantly outperformed the Visual Imagery comparison group on an author-created spelling test (effect size 1.42) and on the TWS Predictable and Unpredictable Words subtests (effect sizes 1.20 and 1.18). → darch-simpson-1990

Evidence¶

darch-simpson-1990¶

U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, What Works Clearinghouse. (2014, January). Students with Learning Disabilities intervention report: Spelling Mastery. Retrieved from https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/InterventionReport/579

q3 · i3 · causal · r2

Randomized controlled trial of 28 fourth-grade students with learning disabilities at a university-based summer program; students were randomly assigned to Spelling Mastery or Visual Imagery for 25–30 minutes daily over 25 days. Appendix C prints effect sizes of 1.42 (author-created spelling test), 1.20 (TWS Predictable Words), and 1.18 (TWS Unpredictable Words), each with p < 0.01, and a domain average of 1.27 (+40 improvement index).

"Darch and Simpson (1990) found statistically significant positive effects of Spelling Mastery on three measures of writing, including the Predictable Words and Unpredictable Words subtests of the Test of Written Spelling and an author-created spelling test. WWC calculations confirm these findings."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Concreteness, imagery, and verbal associative processes play major roles across multiple educational domains — the general claim this finding bears on, with the studies behind it
• Spelling Mastery has potentially positive effects on writing for students with learning disabilities, based on two RCTs with a small extent of evidence — a broader claim this one bears on
• Spelling Mastery showed substantively important but not statistically significant positive effects on all four writing measures in a grades 2–4 RCT against basal spelling instruction — related
• On the TWS-3 subtests in the 2006 RCT, Spelling Mastery favored the Predictable Words subtest (effect size 0.57, WWC-adjusted p = 0.07) over the Unpredictable Words subtest (effect size 0.11) — related