The Natchitoches Parish School Board would like to address a misunderstanding that occurred when it attempted to reinforce policies on how spelling is taught within the district’s curriculum. The misunderstanding caused an upset among parents who fell under the impression that spelling would no longer be taught to students.

This is not the case. NPSB believes that Spelling is one of the fundamental subskills of effective written communication. NPSB also believes the goal of spelling instruction should not be temporary memorization of words but rather the development of skills to be able to correctly represent our written language. Teaching spelling in isolation leads to a temporary memorization of words that are not connected to current learning. For example, a weekly assignment that highlights a list of words that is not connected to students’ current writing and reading goals will not transfer into long-term memory. Research has shown that children retain information, such as how to spell words, better when it’s presented to them in meaningful context. This means that students are taught new words that are connected to their everyday experiences and exposure to quality texts, allowing students to be actively engaged in the learning process.

NPSB is committed to ensuring that all students are exposed to research-based instructional strategies in order to preserve life-long learning. In addition, all curriculum programs adopted in Natchitoches Parish are aligned to the Louisiana State Standards, which state explicit goals for spelling within each grade. In addition, spelling is assessed through students’ weekly writing and on state standardized test through students’ writing.

Below are all the standards addressing spelling:  CLICK HERE – to visit Website

Grade K:

Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.

Grade 1:

Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.

1. Capitalize dates and names of people.
2. Use end punctuation for sentences.
3. Use commas in dates and to separate single words in a series.
4. Use conventional spelling for words with common spelling patterns and for frequently occurring irregular words.
5. Spell untaught words phonetically, drawing on phonemic awareness and spelling conventions.

Grade 2:

Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.

1. Capitalize holidays, product names, and geographic names.
2. Use commas in greetings and closings of letters.
3. Use an apostrophe to form contractions and frequently occurring possessives.
4. Generalize learned spelling patterns when writing words (e.g., cage → badge; boy → boil).
5. Consult reference materials, including beginning dictionaries, as needed to check and correct spellings.

Grade 3:

Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.

1. Capitalize appropriate words in titles.
2. Use commas in addresses.
3. Use commas and quotation marks in dialogue.
4. Form and use possessives.
5. Use conventional spelling for high-frequency and other studied words and for adding suffixes to base words (e.g., sitting, smiled, cries, happiness).
6. Use spelling patterns and generalizations (e.g., word families, position-based spellings, syllable patterns, ending rules, meaningful word parts) in writing words.
7. Consult reference materials, including beginning dictionaries, as needed to check and correct spellings.

Grade 4:

Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.

1. Use correct capitalization.
2. Use commas and quotation marks to mark direct speech and quotations from a text.
3. Use a comma before a coordinating conjunction in a compound sentence.
4. Spell grade-appropriate words correctly, consulting references as needed.

Grade 5:

Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.

1. Use punctuation to separate items in a series.
2. Use a comma to separate an introductory element from the rest of the sentence.
3. Use a comma to set off the words yes and no (e.g., Yes, thank you), to set off a tag question from the rest of the sentence (e.g., It’s true, isn’t it?), and to indicate direct address (e.g., Is that you, Steve?).
4. Use underlining, quotation marks, or italics to indicate titles of works.
5. Spell grade-appropriate words correctly, consulting references as needed.