This is an interesting article that I found on what I call "kid-spell". It's starts with a letter from a parent and is then followed up with the reasons we use kid-spell in our classrooms.
Last week, my son brought home a stack of papers from his first-grade class. Some of them had obvious spelling errors, but no one had marked them wrong. Later that same day, I was helping my 10-year-old daughter with a research paper. I noticed a few misspellings on her draft, but when I pointed them out, she said, “My teacher told us not to worry about spelling when we’re drafting.”
What’s the deal? Why don’t teachers seem to care about spelling anymore?
When kids first learn how to write, they grapple with many different skills at once. After they master letters and build them into words, their next step is stringing those words together into complete ideas. That takes a lot of mental work, and trying to spell every word perfectly can slow the whole process way down. For this reason, many teachers in the early grades encourage inventive spelling, also known as temporary spelling — where the child makes his best guess on the spelling of the word, rather than stopping to find out the correct version.
This practice is grounded in research. A number of studies demonstrate that kids who are allowed to use inventive spelling learn to write more quickly, more fluently, and with a richer vocabulary than those who work under more rigid spelling expectations (Kolodziej & Columba, 2005).
Researchers suggest that parents think about inventive spelling the way they once viewed their child’s early attempts at speech:
When the child said “ba-ba,” did the parent say, “No, honey, it is pronounced “bottle”? Parents treasure this developmental step their child took towards conventional speaking by lavishly praising the child and offering the bottle…The child will not call the item a “ba-ba” for the rest of his/her life; rather, when the child is developmentally ready, he/she will be able to say “bottle” (Kolodziej & Columba, 2005, p. 217).
In the later years, spelling does “count,” but it has a time and a place. Most writing teachers use some version of the Writing Process, where students are taught to (1) gather and group their ideas (pre-writing), (2) flesh out those ideas in sentences and paragraphs (drafting), and (3) reorganize the piece so that it accomplishes the writer’s goals (revising). Only then, after the piece has been revised into a shape that’s close to finished, do most teachers tell their students to start the next step: editing. In this stage, final corrections are made to spelling, punctuation, and usage.
The reason spelling and mechanics are de-emphasized in the first few steps is the same as in the younger grades: Too much focus on correctness interrupts the flow of ideas. Furthermore, teachers want students to understand that good writers revise their pieces many times for structure, development, clarity and voice. Although the mechanics are important for polish, correct spelling can’t make up for a poorly structured, underdeveloped piece of writing. And if a piece is going to be revised several times, it makes no sense to keep correcting the mechanics, only to have those words dumped entirely in a later revision.
Last week, my son brought home a stack of papers from his first-grade
class. Some of them had obvious spelling errors, but no one had marked them
wrong. Later that same day, I was helping my 10-year-old daughter with a
research paper. I noticed a few misspellings on her draft, but when I pointed
them out, she said, “My teacher told us not to worrabouspelling when we’rdrafting.” What’s the deal? Why don’t teachers seem to care about spelling anymore?
When kids first learn how to write, they
grapple with many different skills at once. After they master letters and build
them into words, their next step is stringing those words together into complete
ideas. That takes a lot of mental work, and trying to spell every word perfectly
can slow the whole process way down. For this reason, many teachers in the early
grades encourage inventive spelling, also known as temporary
spelling — where the child makes his best guess on the spelling of the
word, rather than stopping to find out the correct version.
This practice is grounded in research. A number of studies demonstrate that
kids who are allowed to use inventive spelling learn to write more quickly, more
fluently, and with a richer vocabulary than those who work under more rigid
spelling expectations (Kolodziej & Columba, 2005).
Researchers suggest that parents think about inventive spelling the way they
once viewed their child’s early attempts at speech:
When
the child said “ba-ba,” did the parent say, “No, honey, it is pronounced
“bottle”? Parents treasure this developmental step their child took towards
conventional speaking by lavishly praising the child and offering the bottle…The
child will not call the item a “ba-ba” for the rest of his/her life; rather,
when the child is developmentally ready, he/she will be able to say “bottle”
(Kolodziej & Columba, 2005, p. 217).
In the later years, spelling does “count,” but it has a time and a place.
Most writing teachers use some version of the Writing Process, where
students are taught to (1) gather and group their ideas (pre-writing), (2) flesh
out those ideas in sentences and paragraphs (drafting), and (3) reorganize the
piece so that it accomplishes the writer’s goals (revising). Only then,
after the piece has been revised into a shape that’s close to finished,
do most teachers tell their students to start the next step: editing. In this
stage, final corrections are made to spelling, punctuation, and usage.
The reason spelling and mechanics are de-emphasized in the first few steps is
the same as in the younger grades: Too much focus on correctness interrupts the
flow of ideas. Furthermore, teachers want students to understand that good
writers revise their pieces many times for structure, development, clarity and
voice. Although the mechanics are important for polish, correct spelling
can’t make up for a poorly structured, underdeveloped piece of writing. And
if a piece is going to be revised several times, it makes no sense to keep
correcting the mechanics, only to have those words dumped entirely in a later
revision.
Last week, my son brought home a stack of papers from his first-grade class. Some of them had obvious spelling errors, but no one had marked them wrong. Later that same day, I was helping my 10-year-old daughter with a research paper. I noticed a few misspellings on her draft, but when I pointed them out, she said, “My teacher told us not to worry about spelling when we’re drafting.”
What’s the deal? Why don’t teachers seem to care about spelling anymore?
When kids first learn how to write, they grapple with many different skills at once. After they master letters and build them into words, their next step is stringing those words together into complete ideas. That takes a lot of mental work, and trying to spell every word perfectly can slow the whole process way down. For this reason, many teachers in the early grades encourage inventive spelling, also known as temporary spelling — where the child makes his best guess on the spelling of the word, rather than stopping to find out the correct version.
This practice is grounded in research. A number of studies demonstrate that kids who are allowed to use inventive spelling learn to write more quickly, more fluently, and with a richer vocabulary than those who work under more rigid spelling expectations (Kolodziej & Columba, 2005).
Researchers suggest that parents think about inventive spelling the way they once viewed their child’s early attempts at speech:
When the child said “ba-ba,” did the parent say, “No, honey, it is pronounced “bottle”? Parents treasure this developmental step their child took towards conventional speaking by lavishly praising the child and offering the bottle…The child will not call the item a “ba-ba” for the rest of his/her life; rather, when the child is developmentally ready, he/she will be able to say “bottle” (Kolodziej & Columba, 2005, p. 217).
In the later years, spelling does “count,” but it has a time and a place. Most writing teachers use some version of the Writing Process, where students are taught to (1) gather and group their ideas (pre-writing), (2) flesh out those ideas in sentences and paragraphs (drafting), and (3) reorganize the piece so that it accomplishes the writer’s goals (revising). Only then, after the piece has been revised into a shape that’s close to finished, do most teachers tell their students to start the next step: editing. In this stage, final corrections are made to spelling, punctuation, and usage.
The reason spelling and mechanics are de-emphasized in the first few steps is the same as in the younger grades: Too much focus on correctness interrupts the flow of ideas. Furthermore, teachers want students to understand that good writers revise their pieces many times for structure, development, clarity and voice. Although the mechanics are important for polish, correct spelling can’t make up for a poorly structured, underdeveloped piece of writing. And if a piece is going to be revised several times, it makes no sense to keep correcting the mechanics, only to have those words dumped entirely in a later revision.
Last week, my son brought home a stack of papers from his first-grade
class. Some of them had obvious spelling errors, but no one had marked them
wrong. Later that same day, I was helping my 10-year-old daughter with a
research paper. I noticed a few misspellings on her draft, but when I pointed
them out, she said, “My teacher told us not to worrabouspelling when we’rdrafting.” What’s the deal? Why don’t teachers seem to care about spelling anymore?
When kids first learn how to write, they
grapple with many different skills at once. After they master letters and build
them into words, their next step is stringing those words together into complete
ideas. That takes a lot of mental work, and trying to spell every word perfectly
can slow the whole process way down. For this reason, many teachers in the early
grades encourage inventive spelling, also known as temporary
spelling — where the child makes his best guess on the spelling of the
word, rather than stopping to find out the correct version.
This practice is grounded in research. A number of studies demonstrate that
kids who are allowed to use inventive spelling learn to write more quickly, more
fluently, and with a richer vocabulary than those who work under more rigid
spelling expectations (Kolodziej & Columba, 2005).
Researchers suggest that parents think about inventive spelling the way they
once viewed their child’s early attempts at speech:
When
the child said “ba-ba,” did the parent say, “No, honey, it is pronounced
“bottle”? Parents treasure this developmental step their child took towards
conventional speaking by lavishly praising the child and offering the bottle…The
child will not call the item a “ba-ba” for the rest of his/her life; rather,
when the child is developmentally ready, he/she will be able to say “bottle”
(Kolodziej & Columba, 2005, p. 217).
In the later years, spelling does “count,” but it has a time and a place.
Most writing teachers use some version of the Writing Process, where
students are taught to (1) gather and group their ideas (pre-writing), (2) flesh
out those ideas in sentences and paragraphs (drafting), and (3) reorganize the
piece so that it accomplishes the writer’s goals (revising). Only then,
after the piece has been revised into a shape that’s close to finished,
do most teachers tell their students to start the next step: editing. In this
stage, final corrections are made to spelling, punctuation, and usage.
The reason spelling and mechanics are de-emphasized in the first few steps is
the same as in the younger grades: Too much focus on correctness interrupts the
flow of ideas. Furthermore, teachers want students to understand that good
writers revise their pieces many times for structure, development, clarity and
voice. Although the mechanics are important for polish, correct spelling
can’t make up for a poorly structured, underdeveloped piece of writing. And
if a piece is going to be revised several times, it makes no sense to keep
correcting the mechanics, only to have those words dumped entirely in a later
revision.