Reassure me about invented spelling

[silver]

My son never chose to do much writing outside of school, so I didn't deal much with invented spellings for him--when he was writing for school, I always told him how to spell unfamiliar words.

 

My daughter, who lives and breathes stories, will write stories any time she gets her hands on a pad of paper. And since she's only in LOE Foundations B, she doesn't have the tools to spell most of the words she writes.

 

Here's an example of her writing:

 

wuns a prinsus livd in a casl far awa frum u
she wus vere hape and sh wus vere safe

Translation: "Once a princess lived in a castle far away from you. She was very happy and she was very safe."

 

I'm not going to correct her with her free writing, but a little bit of me panics that she's internalizing the incorrect spelling that she comes up with. (It's multisensory bad spelling! She says the word to herself, writes it, sees it! And it's wrong! Panic! Panic!) That part of me wants to throw LOE on a high shelf and use Spalding or RLTL with her so that she will get the tools she needs to spell quicker than LOE provides them.

 

So, with a child that does more writing out of school than in school, will invented spelling hurt her in the long run? Or will she learn the rules and spellings as we get to them and easily change the incorrect spelling to the correct spelling, with no issue?

[Momling]

How old is she?

[silver]

She's still learning to read, so her invented spelling is what I would expect. I understand that it's normal for where she's at. My concern is that since she likes to write so much, I should be using a program that will be quicker at giving her the tools she needs to be able to move away from invented spelling.

[Erin]

If she's still just learning to read, this is PERFECTLY normal.  Unless you start noticing underlying language issues, she'll outgrow it within a few years.   Encourage the content and don't get too hung up in the mechanics.  

(In fact, this is a great opportunity to teach the fact that mechanics and writing are two separate things.) 

[silver]

So she's not going to get the invented spelling stuck in her head by doing so much of it now? I won't have to work hard to "undo" what she's "teaching" to herself now?

[creekmom]

I have mixed feelings about invented spelling. I understand your concern! If children waited to write until they knew how to spell all the words, they would start writing around middle school! On the other hand, you don't want her to constantly see misspelled words and not know they're wrong. One thing you could try is to take a sentence to two out of her journal and make it copywork for the week (even disguise it as handwriting practice). Reassure her that you didn't expect her to know how to spell these words when she wrote them in her journal - you picked these sentences because you loved how creative they were! My personal opinion is that the ideas are way more important than the mechanics - at any age!

[73349]

Remember just a short time ago when she spoke with poor grammar? "I goed here" and "He wented there"? It was temporary and developmental. So is this.

[Erin]

Precisely.  

Obviously, you need to continue to teach proper grammar and spelling.  You might even start to pick some papers that qualify for revision so she can begin getting the concept that sometimes we actually fix all of these mistakes and sometimes we just don't care.  

But rough drafts, journals, responses, etc. are places where inventive spelling is to be allowed, even encouraged, because at this stage, you're really teaching the act of getting ideas down on paper.   Don't get her hung up in mechanics.

Not at this point anyway!   :)

As language begins to flow more easily, she'll just naturally start to apply correct rules and usage.  

[KrissiK]

Remember just a short time ago when she spoke with poor grammar? "I goed here" and "He wented there"? It was temporary and developmental. So is this.

I totally agree with this. As you continue her education, she'll do more reading and correct writing, it'll be fine. I think it's great she's writing these stories now. Keep encouraging her creativity and don't worry about mechanics at this point. That will come.

[ElizabethB]

I would quickly work through spelling of the Dolch Words phonetically.

 

Here they are arranged by pattern, I have rules for some of them. If you want a full spelling program with the most common 1,000 words arranged by rule and pattern, Spelling Plus by Susan C. Anthony.

 

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Reading/sightwords.html

 

http://www.susancanthony.com/bk/sp.html

[Kuovonne]

I firmly believe that my DD has horrible spelling and handwriting because she started writing a lot at a young age. She is so intent on getting her thoughts on paper that she doesn't care about the mechanics. I chose to start teaching her spelling right away, but I could tell that she needed a slower spelling program than Spaulding. I went with All About Spelling. I did add in some high frequency words before AAS brought them up. It has been a slow slog, but her spelling has improved. If she had been capable of a faster spelling program, I would have used one.

[ElizaG]

The OP didn't give her child's age, but from other threads, I think she's just finished pre-K.   My eldest was writing quite a bit at that age, mostly with the Montessori moveable alphabet, and she had some very interesting spelling!   She sorted it out in a few years, without any formal instruction to speak of, and now, at age 10, would be considered a "natural speller."   I just tried giving her a placement test, and she only made mistakes on the highest level, specifically with words of foreign origin that she wasn't familiar with.  

 

DS9 also loves to write.  He still makes mistakes fairly often, and I think he could do with some more focused lessons (we'll be trying out Sequential Spelling next year), but his spelling is 100x better than it used to be.   

 

So I wouldn't see it as any sort of bad sign at all.  

 

Remember just a short time ago when she spoke with poor grammar? "I goed here" and "He wented there"? It was temporary and developmental. So is this.

Not all children go through that stage with grammar, so some parents might not have experienced it.  My fourth child does this, but my first three didn't.   They've all had kreeatuv spelling, though.   ;)

[MinivanMom]

Remember just a short time ago when she spoke with poor grammar? "I goed here" and "He wented there"? It was temporary and developmental. So is this.

 

This.

 

I'll expand it to say that in my experience as a public school teacher, invented spelling is temporary and developmental for children who are simultaneously receiving instruction in phonics and/or spelling. For children who did not receive this instruction, only a portion develop into good spellers; the remainder continue to struggle with spelling. Your daughter is receiving good instruction; she will be fine. Here are some samples from my oldest dd who was a prolific writer with terrible invented spelling:

 

Age 4: "thes mneng I lct Oat miy ow 3 timz. I sa sow foeng." (This morning I looked out my window 3 times. I saw snow falling.)

 

Age 6: "Once upon a time in a Far away land there lived a king and Queen. one day they had a baby girl. She was beautiful. She had hair the coler of caret's and eye's the coler of the sea."

 

Age 8: "Amelia Earhart was a very important person. Not only was she a famous woman pilot, she proved something. She proved that not only men can do great things. She inspired women all over the world and everyone remembers her for that. Who knows? Maybe you could be like her someday!"

 

[Starr]

My dd read early and wrote stories early. Sometimes I think she still uses inventive spelling. (Her college professors should be thankful for spellcheck!) Her K and 1st grade teachers were not at all concerned. She never once asked me how to spell a word. She went through a good spelling and phonics program for years in our home school and has never spelled as well as her brother. It was helpful to get a little electronic spelling machine when she was young. I really think her spelling improved by seeing words corrected over the years.

[Farrar]

I wouldn't worry too much...

 

But, I do have a kid who struggled with spelling and his invented spellings did stick in his head simply because it took us a long time to figure out how to remediate and help him.  I don't think we could have done much differently - we tried a number of things and it just took awhile for one of the things we tried (AAS) to be the thing that worked.  Also, his twin had similar invented spellings and very few of them stuck because, just like the grammar example given above, he just slowly got better.  Not so with my poor speller.  He just struggled.  And doing programs designed to stop him from misspelling the common words only made it worse.

 

My takeaway from this was that I should have pushed less on the invented spellings in his own writing.  In fact, I should have left them alone 100%.  As it was, I usually did, but not always because I was worried about those bad habits.  However, I should have been on top of doing a more intensive spelling right from the get go to really be learning those spelling rules.  But, hey, hindsight is 20/20.  And, like I said, his twin was fine.  I think most kids are...

[Crimson Wife]

I always praise the attempt and then rewrite in my own hand underneath so the child does see the proper spellings. My two older kids are fine spellers, and my little one is not yet reading so all she does is write strings of totally random letters.