Invented Spelling

Spelling as we know in school is a formal memorising of words and applying them during a written test. I do this weekly every Thursday. But the actual definition of spelling is very different.

There are 9 stages of writing, namely drawing, scribbling, wavy scribbles or mock handwriting, letter-like forms or mock letters, letter strings, transitional writing, invented or phonetic spelling, beginning word and phrase writing, and lastly conventional spelling and sentence writing (Byington & Kim, 2017). Each child progresses individually through these stages, and at first, their writing may not make much sense, I did have children at K2 who are still drawing. But that is a writing development stage, albeit the first one. I will focus mainly on invented spelling for this article.

What is invented spelling? It is defined as children using the skills and knowledge they have to show the sounds in words, so they may omit certain letters but focus on the first or last letters (Byington & Kim, 2017). They may write “juice” as “joose” because phonetically the letters do form that word, but as they reach the last stage, “Conventional spelling and sentence writing”, they will understand the difference. What we can do as educators or parents is to be nurturing and guide them along their writing development.

Environmental print is a useful tool to have to teach children writing, as it is the first writing they encounter in their environment, to learn about the use of written language in various contexts, they can even be food items especially unfamiliar ones so they can learn as this focuses on children’s interests and teach them about sight words (Xu & Rutledge, 2003). This is not that complicated, you already have these things in your house, so you can just be intentional and expose your child to these words. I like to have labels of artworks they have done pasted on the walls, to encourage them to read. It is also amusing to me that whatever I write on the whiteboard interests them.

We must never forget they are visual learners, no amount of shushing can match a reward chart, or no amount of “Can you please eat your food faster?” can match a timer counting down 5 minutes.

References

Byington, T. A., & Kim, Y. (2017). Promoting Preschoolers’ Emergent Writing. Young Children, 72(5). Retrieved from https://www.naeyc.org/resources/pubs/yc/nov2017/emergent-writing

Xu, S. H., & Rutledge, A. L. (2003, March). Kindergartners Learn through Environmental Print. Young Children, 58(2), 44-51. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/42729931