Can a child's creative spelling tell you something?

[Pamela H in Texas]

Okay, so he's four. I get that.

His phonics instruction has been a couple word families.

And he came from a very deprived background....

He's a very sensitive child so we are going *very* *very* *very* slowly

though he is capable of SOOOOOO much more.

 

As he was making these lists (on blog if you want to see),

I gave NO input. If he asked me, I told him to sound it out.

He asked two or three times. I just didn't want to influence him at all.

I *wanted* this baseline.

 

But I sat wondering while he wrote it, "what can I learn from this other than that he needs phonics?" He grew out of school based AND private speech therapy; but that was one of the first things I thought he might need looking at it. Of course, then I go back to the deprived background. We have extra Ls everywhere...part of Hickville, Texas we will overcome in time, I'm sure.

 

Anyway, I thought it cute, kinda like how we record toddler's speech. But just as we expect that toddlers will start using the word "fork" instead of "foop," I do need to be mindful of where he is so I can help him. Or do I?

 

Just wondering what y'all think?

:bigear:

[Paige]

I have 2 kids who were a lot worse than that at 5yrs and probably just as bad for most of 6yrs old. They are not deprived and we don't speak like hillbillies. They were in speech therapy until they were 2.5, but I don't know if it is related. They are 7 now and their spelling has improved tremendously but I do think they, or at least 1 of them, may have some kind of learning disability or issue. It would be interesting if their phonetic early spelling was a missed sign. They were in school and while I expressed concern, the teacher said they were fine and progressing well. They'll still have times when they misspell a word and when I give them a chance to try again, they may throw in totally random letters that defy my logic in an attempt to fix the word.

[EKS]

Very interesting! Has he had his hearing checked? Does he say the words the way they're written? I don't mean the words like yuke that have the correct sounds, but the ones like kagurul or tigl. If his hearing is fine, maybe it's an auditory processing thing.

 

(Or maybe it's just a symptom of being four.)

[Pamela H in Texas]

He doesn't seem to say them wrong until he is slowing down the sounding out. He didn't seem to "get" that Kangaroo rhymed with zoo. He spelled zoo correctly though probably from memory.

 

I'm pretty sure that I should just be thrilled he did so well considering he is four. My daughters didn't go through this particular stage (and my older son wasn't ready for anything at four...or seven even). Where he didn't seem to slow down enough on some words, he probably just slowed down too much on others. It'll be so interesting to see the difference in a year when we've really focused on phonics past "cat" and "mad" and "ran."

 

We Texans do have a bit of an accent. And then they were from a very rural area (Facebook posts from that area are a bit challenging to decipher!). With the big sister, we've been telling her how things are spelled to help her say them a bit better. We'll see how it goes for him :)

[Kuovonne]

I'd say he's doing amazingly well at spelling and writing for a 4 year old boy from a deprived background.

 

I'm guessing that he is personally motivated to write, or you wouldn't have been able to get such long lists. All of his misspellings make sense to me. I'm also guessing that his early writing is the cause of his misspellings, since he is trying to spell before getting much instruction.

 

Yes he eventually needs phonics instructions, and if he continues to write a lot on his own, I'd go ahead and start teaching him spelling (informally, gently, and at his pace) just so that he understands that there is such a thing as correct and incorrect spelling.

[Murmer]

From a former ps 1st grade teacher I would be impressed with what he did. He is hearing multiple sounds in words, which is not common in 4 yrs usually expected mid kinder. He knows long and short vowels and for the most part is using them. He also hears constant blends and vowel diagram

PBS. That said I would be concerned about ending sounds in multi syballic words. He has some odd ending sounds that he is hearing. But that could be language or the act of saying a word slowly that is tricky without lots of practice. Personally I feel his writing indicated a high level of phonemic and phonic awareness that in public school would be middle kinder to early 1st grade. You also have a great platform built to really teach the spelling rules because he is already trying them out.

[Pamela H in Texas]

Thank you for all your opinions. He actually wrote these during therapy so there was no coercion or correction. It was just something he was interested in doing after drawing a turkey and talking about putting it in the freezer then talking about zoo animals at head start this week. Then he went on to cars and animal figures :)

 

Anyway, I asked him if I could put it on my blog since it showed his spelling so well. He agreed and actually helped me do so :)

 

Anyway, I do think it is probably a cross between some odd ending sounds as well as slowing down so much. We've been very happy with his segmenting; but like mentioned, it is something that takes practice. Phonics will probably help considerably. We've just gone so slowly because he gets so upset when he has trouble and then is upset that he can't do it easily. We are working on it and he's making progress "just like learning to snap."

[Momling]

I think those spellings look great for any early or pre-reader. No need for worry!

 

I agree though that 4 and 5 year olds make a great (and often hilarious) source for phonetic transcriptions.