Another distinctive feature of the numeracy teaching was how the teachers frequently focused their teaching on the specific errors being made by the learners. When they made mistakes, the teacher would analyse the cause of the error (such as not maintaining clear columns in long multiplication) and then teach specifically to this error. We saw very little teaching focused in a comparable way with other literacy, numeracy and language areas such as reading and writing.
Only five of the teachers observed were doing some teaching of spelling; in most cases it occurred incidentally as part of reading, writing or even maths sessions. The teaching methods used are summarised in the table below
| Syllabification | 4 |
|---|---|
| Recognising patterns | 3 |
| Sounding out | 2 |
| Constructing word families | 2 |
| The use of dictionaries | 1 |
| Word-games | 1 |
Typically, a learner would ask “How do you spell [place name]?” The teacher would spell it out, and might supplement this by explaining how it is pronounced.
| T: | Palagi use their finger to …? | |
| L: | To be, signal, use their finger to signal. | |
| T: | Yeah, signal, that’s a good word yeah, to signal, good. How do you spell signal? | |
| L: | S, i, g …n, a … l? | |
| T: | Yeah, that’s it. So what are they signalling? So, the Palagi use fingers to signal you to ...? | |
| L: | Come. |
There were very few instances of the teacher making the learner produce the answer through phonemic prompts (such as identifying onset sounds in a word or identifying known words with similar sound components).
In several sessions, teachers ran specific activities aimed at building up spelling skills (including testing of word lists given the previous week and learnt by the student in his own time), but these activities also had broader benefits such as increasing vocabulary, sharpening listening skills useful for reading and even the physical practice of writing. The lists of words in these spelling sessions were sometimes related to other work, but were usually words chosen by the teacher to match the learners’ current spelling abilities. In two of the sessions, learners were encouraged to make use of dictionaries, but only after attempting the word independently first.