Investigate the effects of games enhanced strategies on pupil’s academic performance in spellings

Chapter One

Introduction

• Background of the Study

Education is an indispensable tool in the nation’s building. It is a process of systematic training and instruction designed to transmit knowledge and acquisition of skills, potentials and abilities which enables an individual to contribute efficiently to the growth and development of his society and nation. It involves all round development of an individual physically, socially, morally, intellectually and mentally (Osakwe, 2006), Dienye in Niorrison, Nyorere and Elekwa (2013) see education as the preparation of individuals to fit into different roles and activities for the transformation of the society.

This therefore implies that education must involve conscious engagement which includes planning, implementation and evaluation, it also demands that the direction of progress and transformation must be defined if progress must be made.

Education according to Ayodele (2012) is what each generation gives to its younger ones which make them to develop attitude, abilities, skills and other behaviours which are of positive value to the society in which they live.

Early childhood education is defined as comprehensive approach to policies and programmes for children from birth to eight years of age (UNICEF, 2001). It is concerned with the overall development of the child socially, physically, emotionally, morally and intellectually. It lays the foundation of the life long process of bringing up individuals from infancy through adulthood. This process starts from birth through  nurturing proper care ad provision of safe environment, so that the child will be physically secured, socially competent and able to learn.  The Federal Republic of Nigeria (2014) says that early childhood education, pre-primary education is given in an educational institution to children aged 0-5 years before their entry into school. It comprises of crèches, (day care centres), nursery and kindergarten. This period referred to as early years.

Games are regarded as very useful and important strategy to stimulate language activities they are defined as a form of play concerning competition, rules and fun, so teachers should use games in teaching to attract pupils attention,games decreases pupils stress and give them the opportunity to communicate effectively (Deesri, 2002). According, to Jung (2014) games encourages, entertain, teach and promote fluency and communication skills”, infact, games give pupils enjoyment and useful practice, games should be used according to pupils reaction and response . As a result, games are supposed to be attractive and interesting as well as making the pupil to feel happy when they participate in game playing. In addition games, strengthens the relationship between the teacher and the pupils (Camier 2015).

Deesri (2002) added another advantage for games. Is that they increase pupils proficiency (ie) playing games in the classroom can increase pupils ability in using language as pupils have an opportunity to use language with a purpose in the situation provided. There are a lot of techniques in teaching English Language, games are believed to be a good alternative in making classroom interesting and fun. Games also initiate pupils to pay more attention in learning. Games are also beneficial in assisting teacher to develop content in which the language is used. Games also accompanied pupils in building a good relation with other pupils to participate actively in classroom activity.

Pupils communication ability is also built up  through games because they will use their oral communication, to express their thought and also deliberately their writing ability in transferring information to their peers. instructional games can support the experience of using the language in classroom instead of just studying the use of it.

Sigurdardottir (2010) in her study reveals some reasons why games are worth enough to be employ in English Language classroom. First of all, games are fun, which is extremely important, because they can help activate pupils who have been inactive before, due to lack of interest. Keeping pupils active is vital because teachers will never be able to actually teach pupils anything unless they can get them to participate in their own learning process. Hadfield (2002) explained games as “an activity with rules, a goal and an element of fun”.

Deesri (2002) defined games as a form of play governed by rules. They should be enjoyed and fun” According to the above definition games involve many factor; rules, competition, relaxation and learning in particular. Games  also lead to active learning and positive atmosphere.  Jones (2005) believed that motivating and fun activities can be time consuming for teachers to create. Accordingly, the researcher believed that games should have certain rules distinguishing them from other classroom activities such as telling stories, songs, discussion, writing, reading, and role plays. Also games stimulate active participation, generate fun, make good atmosphere and increase pupils motivation. Nga (2013) stated that games are used not only for more fun, but more importantly, for useful practices and review of language lesson. Thus leading towards the goal of improving learners communicative competences.

However, games need to be selected well before applying it into the classroom. Therefore when games are used in the classroom the teacher must keep this in mind and control the games in the right way. Also he or she must make sure that every participant has a positive experience because the classroom must not become a place where pupils feel vulnerable or picked on. Another thing that is important to acknowledge is the fact that not all games fit the classroom environment or all groups of pupils and that it can be hard finding the right games. Infact, it is good to keep in mind when selecting a game that a recipe for a good educational game is one that balances both fun and challenge (Sugar, 2008).

Teachers need to keep in mind is to choose wisely when it comes to selecting a game to use in the classroom because, although game  might be perfect for one teacher or a particular  group of pupils, it can be terrible for another teacher of group of pupils. First of all the teacher has to look at the group that will be participating in the game and he or she then has to set out a goal for a goal for the group which the game should aim toward (Jones 2008)

Selecting an appropriate game for a specific group of pupils who are working towards specific goal can be tricky because for example they need to make sure that the game is relevant to the subject, and the pupils age, the teacher must remember not to select a game that is too complicated because that might result to loss of interest among the pupils The purpose of using games in language classroom according Wright et al (2006) must be central on learning. it can be used to support the lesson plan, to reinforce a topic, or to teach in on indirect way, But it must never be to waste the valuable time. the use of language games must be implemented in class for academic issues, and the aim must be learning. The research will focus on three types of games. The first game is Boggle games. Boggle is a word game in which players connect neighboring letters in a 2×2 grid the game is win by the player who finds the longest word (Toma, Alexander, Dasculu, Decosus & Matu, 2017).

The second game is spelling Bee which is defined as a contest in which participant are asked to spell words in a round-robin format where each person get a turn to spell a word that is suitable for his or her level when teacher uses game in their class, pupils will get some advantage from this game refers to a word game that is letter of a word in a gird that sally has a rectangle or square shape. The objective of this puzzle is to find and marks all the words hidden inside the box. The word may be horizontally, vertically or diagonally (Vulianto, 2011).

The Third game is word search game: word search game is a challenging word game that develops spelling skill as well as critical thinking of ability. Word search is like a puzzle that plays to looking for words in a random word to solve.

Spelling is one curriculum area in which neither creativity nor divergent thinking is encouraged, only one pattern or arrangement of letter can be accepted, no compromise is possible. what makes spelling so difficult is that the written form of English language has an inconsistent pattern; there is no correlation between the spoken sounds of English and the written form of the language, therefore spelling is not an easy task, even for people who do not have spelling difficulties. Spelling a word is much more difficult than reading a word. In reading, several clues-content phonics, structural analysis and configuration helps the reader to recognize a word in print. Spelling words are skilled in recognizing them in reading. However, individual who are poor in decoding words in reading are almost always poor in spelling as well. Spelling is crucial to pupils’ reading and writing success because spelling errors makes text more difficult to read and comprehend (Grahan, 2014). Poor spellers are often limited in their ability to communicate, and spelling plays a critical role in reading and writing fluency, as well as in developing capacity of students to become articulate speaker. The spelling instruction has been in the school system for a long period of time and primary  school teachers have included spelling instruction as part of their regular teaching practice for decades. Yet the question many educators still ask is; what is the best method for teaching spelling. Research reveals that most teachers teach spelling following a traditional approach that involves memorizing lists of last words. One purpose of this study is to explore games enhanced strategies on spelling and compare different practices to pupils spelling performance to determine if some of the games enhance strategies produce greater gains than conventional method. The ability to spell words requires the ability to apply specific linguistic knowledge including: phonemic awareness, phonemes grapheme correspondent (ability to connect phonemes to graphemes within the spelling of specific word) orthographic knowledge, morpho-graphic knowledge (understanding that particular letter clusters carry meaning), memory for specific words by applying knowledge of the spelling and analogy to known words (Ehri, 2013).

According to Ehri (2013), children learn to form connections between the spellings of written words and their pronunciation and meaning in memory, there is a relationship between reading and spelling because sight word learning is enhanced by drawing attention to the spelling of written words. According to Ehri, spelling is a developmental process that occurs in stages or phases and the rate of progression form one phrase to the next varies for each individual. Spelling ability is develops over time with appropriate instruction and exposure to language system. However, spelling places a greater demand on these processes, because there is more attention to the individual letters of words than is needed for reading (Wasowicz, 2010). According to Perney, (2013), sight words learning is a connection forming process. Children learn to make connection between the spelling of written words and their pronunciation and meaning in memory. The ability to spell and read words has been reported in a variety of studies. Students’ ability to spell words has been found to be related to their ability to read words accurately (Ehri, 2013 and Petscher, 2010).

Morris, (2008) identified a relationship between spelling and word reading in first grade pupils’ they found that a child’s ability to identify and write the sound in spoken word predicted how well they could read words. Conrad (2010) compared the effects of practicing pupils spelling and reading specific words on the orthographic representations in memory in typically developing readers in second grade. The results indicated that transfer from spelling to reading was greater than transfer from reading to spelling. Motor memory is also a factor in spelling because the speller must remember how the word “felt” or recall the motor movement when the word was previously written. Children with motor memory problems need additional practice with writing the spelling words. Motor memory is the ability to store and recall the muscle movements for performing different tasks and sets of movement, sometimes children forget how to form shapes and letters previously taught and this makes the spelling of words difficult spelling refers to central processing movement production and it is related to the peripheral processing level which comes from neuropsychological studies Baxter and (Warrington, 2006) Spelling refers to words because it involves selection and activation of orthographic (orthographic lexenes). This allows for recall of words, letter components and their organization.

However, spelling places a greater demand on these processes because there is more attention to the individual letters of words than is needed for reading  (Wasowicz, 2010). According to Perney, (2013), sight word learning is a connection forming process. Children learn to make connections between the spelling of written words and their pronunciations and meanings in memory. “The connections are formed out of readers’ knowledge of the alphabetic system. This includes knowledge of grapheme-phoneme relations and phonemic awareness, that is, knowing how to distinguish the separate phonemes in pronunciations of words. This also includes knowledge of spelling patterns that recur in different words. There is a relationship between reading and spelling because sight word learning is enhanced by drawing attention to the spelling of written words. During the pre-alphabetic phase, children know little about the alphabetic system, they do not form letter-sound connections to read words and they use visual features to remember words (i.e. environmental print). Children in the partial alphabetic phase learn the names or sounds of alphabet letters and use these to remember how to read words, they form connections between some of the letters and sounds in words, but lack full knowledge of the alphabetic system. Children in the full alphabetic phase learn sight words by forming complete connections between letters in spellings and phonemes in pronunciations, they know the major grapheme-phoneme correspondences and they can segment pronunciations into phonemes that match the graphemes. Children in the consolidated phase retain more sight words in memory, and grapheme-phoneme. Connections become consolidated into larger units including rimes, syllables, morphemes (the smallest meaningful units in words). To reach the consolidated phase, children must have complete knowledge of the alphabetic system in orders to form connections that bond spellings to pronunciations in memory which in turn will enhance their sight word learning and memory for vocabulary words (Ehri, 2013).

The ability to spell and read words has been reported in ta variety of studies. Students’ ability to spell words has been found to be related to their ability to read words accurately (Ehri, 2013 and Petscher, 2010). Morris (2008) identified a relationship between spelling and word reading in first grade students. They found that a child’s ability to identify and write the sounds in spoken words predicted how they could read words. Conrad (2008) compared the effects of practicing spelling and reading specific words on the orthographic representations in memory in typically developing readers in second grade. The results indicated that transfer from spelling to reading was greater than transfer from reading to spelling.

According to Caramazza, 2000 in Miceli, 2015 Most teachers do not involve their pupils in motor activities before the spelling lessons; motor activities involves information on letter shapes, stroke order and direction. Teachers in primary schools neglect the  implications of linguistic information, such as phonemic awareness phoneme-grapheme correspondences (ability to connect phonemes to graphemes within the spellings of specific words), insisting on word spelling. Not much emphasis is laid on pupils’ word spelling and as a result pupils encounter extreme difficulties in reading at the end of primary education (Adeleke, 2016).

However, instructional strategies play a crucial role in pupils’ spelling ability, for pupils’ to be able to spell word will depend on the games strategies which are Boggles game, Spelling Bee and Word search  employed by the teachers in the classroom.

Strategies for learning spelling words involved the use of a Constructed Response approach by Lee-Vieira, Mayer, and Cameron (2006). This study examined traditional spelling lessons alongside creating spelling words by using tiles and visualizing where appropriate letters should be placed. This approach allow pupils to visualize letters while their teacher called out the appropriate letter for each spelling word being studied. Results of the study revealed that pupils performed more for consistently on weekly spelling tests when traditional instructional procedures were supplemented by the constructed Response procedure. Hilte and Reitsma (2016) studied spelling pronunciation and visual preview to facilitate learning to spell irregular words and proposed that one possible way to assist spellers with learning phoneme-grapheme complexity is to use and artificial pronunciation based on the letter sequence of the words spelling (word pronunciation)

Three spelling exercise were conducted: (a) Visual preview, (b) spelling pronunciation, and (c) normal pronunciation. Results from this study revealed that the percentage of words that were spelled correctly substantially increased as a result of training, and tended to diminish a small amount form posttest to retention tests. Therefore, for irregular words, practice with spelling pronunciations is beneficial as well as visual preview and is significantly more effective than practice with normal pronunciation. In recognition of the importance of literacy skills in pupils’, the National Policy on Education (2014) emphasized the inclusion of permanent literacy and numeracy, word spelling is a process through which children’s cognitive development can be enhanced and thus, making pupils better spellers and good readers.

However, instructional enhanced gamed play a crucial role in pupil’s spelling ability. For pupils to be able to spell words will depend on the games strategies employed by the teachers in the classroom which are the boggle, spelling bee and word games. Therefore the study seeks to investigate the effects of games enhanced strategy on pupils academic performance on spellings in Essien Udim L.G.A.

1.2       Statement of the Problem

Poor spelling leads to poor performance. Any child who cannot spell correctly definitely will perform poorly in school. Most children have persistently fail external examination not because of lack of knowledge but poor spelling skills.

Spelling has been seen by many as a dreaded subject among pupils, this illusion of spelling has persisted over time and has led to poor performance in spelling in primary school and beyond. Poor performance in spelling in primary school and secondary school is becoming increasingly worrisome to teachers, parents and the general public. Pupils may not be able to proceed to higher institution if they cannot learn to spell words properly. Infact pupils who cannot spell correctly see themselves as disable speller and may likely drop out of school if nothing is done about it. To do well in spelling  pupils need to be equip with different methods of skills. Pupils have persistently show poor level of performance in spelling it is infortunate that the conventional teaching method use in general education classroom to teach spelling have not been able to meet the pupils needs in spelling.

Teaching and learning spelling skills have persistently pose serious challenges among teacher and pupils in the classroom, as teacher themselves seems to lack requisite pedagogical competent and persisting instruction to the pupils in the classroom.

The obvious effect of this has been the continuous poor performance of pupils in this area of literacy. Spelling difficulty has it were, does not only retard people progress from one level of education to the other but also affect their future career and life ambition. Primary school pupils with spelling difficulty have long suffered set back within a regular education classroom as conventional instructional strategy seems not to meet their challenges and learning spelling. Pupils in the spelling class have continually been sideline and are made to believe that spelling is a difficult task.

In the absence of intensive appropriate instruction and intervention pupils with spelling difficulty lack significantly behind their peers, pupils with this spelling problem continues to struggle on how to spell well.

Researchers in the past have shown so much commitment to resolving and renovating the problem of poor performance in spelling some researchers have used various method and strategies to remediate the problems such as multisensory instructional strategy, visual memory of words,and letter sound.

Inspite of the effort made by various researchers the problem still persist and seems to be on the increasing side among school pupils. These observations and experiences were what piqued the interest in this research on games enhanced strategies and pupils performance on spelling, Teachers are unsatisfied with the current method of teaching Spellings in public primary schools, Today you see a child unable to read a simple sentences even after basic education therefore the researcher wonder how can boggle games strategy, spelling bee strategy, and word search strategies of the teachers affect pupils performance in spellings. Hence the study Games-enhanced strategies and pupils  performance on spelling in Essien Udim Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom State.

1.3       Purpose of the study

The purpose of the study is to investigate the effects of games enhanced strategies on pupil’s academic performance in spellings in Essien Udim Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom State. Specifically, the study aimed to:

1. compare the difference in the mean score in spelling performance of pupils taught spelling using boggle strategy and those taught with conventional method
2. compare the difference in the mean score in spelling performance of pupils taught spelling using spelling bee strategy and those taught with the conventional method.
3. compare the difference in the mean score in spelling performance of pupils taught spelling using word search strategy and those taught with the conventional method.