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Invented spelling activities


Invented Spelling and Its Role in the Learning Process

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    Children Drawing Invented Spelling

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When you live in a world filled with LOLs and BRBs, it’s not surprising to see many words with invented spellings. The trouble is, no award-winning author actually thought “tho” was the correct way to spell “though.” So, does invented spelling fit anywhere into the learning process? The honest answer is yes. Invented spelling isn't something that can be totally avoided. In fact, it's a natural part of developing spelling skills. Take a look at how to incorporate this simple fact of life into your next spelling lesson.

About Invented Spelling

Invented spelling, sometimes referred to as inventive spelling, is the practice of spelling unfamiliar words with an educated guess based on phonetic knowledge. Examples of invented spelling include:

  • "iz" for "is"
  • "flawrs" for "flowers"
  • "is cream" for "ice cream"
  • "lov" for "love"
  • "prpul" for "purple"
  • "culrs" for "colors"
  • "difrint" for "different"

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Invented Spelling Research

In 1975, linguist Charles Read conducted a study of preschoolers who were beginning to relate letter names to the sounds of the alphabet. He discovered that students commonly "invented" spellings for words in their daily vocabulary by rearranging letters to fit their perception of the rules of the English language.

Read concluded, "One sees clearly that different children chose the same phonetically motivated spellings to a degree that can hardly be explained as resulting from random choice or the influence of adults." A key takeaway from this study is that learning how to spell is much more than just memorizing words. It's a developmental process that goes far beyond just exploring the relationships between the symbols used to illustrate speech sounds. Thus, the process of invented spelling can play an important role in leading young learners to develop a deep, phonetically-based understanding of how to spell many words.

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Key Considerations for Invented Spelling

Many teachers consider invented spelling to be a developmentally appropriate step in the early stages of a child’s reading and writing. Proponents argue that invented spelling does not interfere with a child's ability to spell correctly in later years.

Invented spelling can be compared with the efforts a child makes when first learning to speak. A parent wouldn’t criticize a child's first attempts to reproduce the sounds of the verbal language. Accordingly, a child's efforts to master written communication skills should also be encouraged. After all, young learners have to start somewhere.

The Advantages of Invented Spelling

It's important to note that, from a technical standpoint, invented spelling is not an instructional technique. It’s merely a natural process that all children use as they’re beginning to write. There are advantages to incorporating invented spelling into the classroom. When monitored closely, it can offer a number of benefits for blossoming spellers.

  • Invented spelling can help build a sense of confidence, pride and control over the learning process.
  • It allows students to express themselves creatively through writing without worrying about the spelling of unfamiliar words.
  • Writing using invented spelling techniques allows for extensive practice of phonics because students are using letters to represent the sounds they hear.
  • Teachers can discover important information about a student's growing knowledge of phonemes by reading a composition that the student created using invented spelling techniques.

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The Disadvantages of Invented Spelling

In a classroom where invented spelling is allowed, a teacher wouldn’t deduct points from the student's grade for misspelled words in a composition. The potential disadvantages of allowing invented spelling are probably what you’d expect.

  • It may reduce the incentive for children to learn to spell words correctly.
  • It could possibly lead to problems in communication since others may not always be able to decipher what the student has written.
  • Highly logical children may become frustrated when the teacher doesn’t insist there’s only one correct way to spell a particular word.

Using Invented Spelling to Encourage Reading and Writing

Learning to spell, just like learning to speak, is an ongoing process. There are a few important tips to keep in mind if you are a parent or teacher of a child in a school where invented spelling is encouraged.

  • Provide writing opportunities on a regular basis. At home, parents can encourage children to help prepare shopping lists, write letters to grandparents or make up a story for a younger sibling.
  • Resist the urge to criticize or point out mistakes with what the child writes. The goal of invented spelling is to promote creative expression.
  • Refer to the child's creative spellings by the title of "invented spelling" to help distinguish them from the correct conventional spelling.
  • Ask children to read their writing aloud. This will help you decipher how they have spelled words while also giving them reading practice.
  • Be sensitive to the struggles children face as they seek to master the written component of the English language.

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Beyond Invented Spelling

As young learners start to move beyond invented spelling to mastering correct spelling, your approach to helping them build skills will need to change. Get ready to help your little learners build on their earliest spelling and writing skills. Start by learning how to teach sight words by grade level. Then, get ready to share fundamental spelling rules for everyone to know. Use fun spelling activities to help young learners build strong skills they'll be able to expand upon over time.

Use Invented Spelling: A Simple Writing Strategy

 

Welcome back to Simple Writing Lessons for the Primary Grades, a 12-week collaborative writing series, hosted by The Measured Mom and This Reading Mama (that’s me)! If you have missed any of the lessons we’ve covered so far, click here to see the introduction and links to the lessons (scroll down).

Simple Writing Lesson #6: Use Invented Spelling {a writing strategy}

My favorite thing about teaching writing as a craft is that kids are treated as authors who can make their own choices. They don’t have to write about my topic or prompt. I may pick a certain genre to study {like writing a letter or narrative stories}, but I give them free reign to run with their own ideas. This is a wonderful and scary feeling all at the same time because it means young writers get to explore their creative side, but I also lose “control”. It’s not neatly packaged.

Part of losing that control comes with spelling as well, especially in the rough draft stage. I want my child to have the freedom to explore language and play with words as an “author”. This means {hold your breath if you’re Type A} that my child may actually spell some words in a non-conventional way. To some, it’s known as “wrong”. And guess what? I encourage it {even though I’m Type A, too} because invented spelling is a wonderful tool we can use to see what the child understands/does not understand about how words work! I hope you’re ready to explore invented spelling when you’re child says:

“I don’t know how to spell a word!”

(Note: I am sharing examples from my son’s writing in grade 1.  This same lesson can easily be adapted for students in any grade, if they are developmentally ready for it.)

How to teach it: 

1) Prepare your materials.

  • Your child should have a pencil and a piece of paper or a notebook to write in.
  • Rubber band
  • A dry erase board or paper for demonstration purposes

2) Demonstrate how to stretch out sounds in a word.


When I first introduced the concept, I said something like:

“Sometimes when we’re writing, we want to use words we’ve heard before, but we’re not sure how to spell. Big words. Important words. Words like beautiful or outrageous. It may even be smaller words like crawl or thought. These kinds of words are not words on our word wall {sight words} or patterns we’ve studied with our word sorts*. I want to show you what you can do while you’re writing to help you use and spell those words by yourself.

“Let’s use the word beautiful for example. If I want to spell that word, but I’m not sure how, I can do something cool. See this rubber band?  I’m going to s-t-r-e-t-c-h it out.  Just like I’m going to stretch out the word beautiful. I stretch out a word by saying the sounds in that word very slowly. ” I say beautiful very slowly. I don’t add any extra sounds, just the ones I hear.

“Do it with me.” We both say beautiful very slowly while he stretches out the rubber band.

*Please note that I require my child to spell all sight words and word patterns we’ve studied together conventionally {correctly}. Using invented spelling is not a substitute for holding kids accountable for what they know.

3) Demonstrate how to write down the sounds in a word.

“Now, that I’ve stretched out that word, I can write down the sounds I hear in that word, starting at the beginning.  Let’s stretch it again, this time saying in a little slower and I’ll write down all the sounds we hear.

“B–U–T–I–F–U–L” {Remember that we’re emphasizing each sound, not each necessarily each letter.} As we say the sounds, I write down all the sounds we can feel with our mouths and hear with our ears. {By the way, this is GREAT for phonemic awareness, an essential skill in reading!}

We try it with a few more words together.   Words like favorite, because, and furious. We stretch out the word, listen for the sounds, then write them down.

4) Ask the child to give invented spelling a go with your support.

Give your child another word, this time asking your child to write down the sounds.  It might sound like this:

“Now it’s your turn to try it out. Let’s say you were writing and you wanted to spell the word bicycle, but you weren’t sure how. Let’s use the rubber band idea and stretch out bicycle.

“B–I–S–I–K–L”  Ask the child to write down all the sounds he hears. Please note that students in different learning stages of development will spell words differently.  Younger students may leave out the vowels, while older students will get more of the sounds.

Here are some of my son’s {from 1st grade} invented spellings** during this independent writing time.

**These are examples from my child’s “rough drafts”.  If and when he decides to take a piece further by “publishing” it, we do correct the invented spellings. {Stay tuned in the weeks ahead as The Measured Mom and I move into editing to publish during our 12-part series.}

5) Wrap up the lesson.

“Remember when you’re writing and you get to one of those bigger words, try stretching out the word like we did with all those words today. Say them slowly. Listen to the sounds you hear and write them down.”

Feel free to also try “I Spell, You Spell” to encourage invented spelling, a FREE download.

This is the sixth lesson in a 12-part series for Primary Grades.  Click HERE or the image below to view more simple writing lessons.

 

~Becky

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Spelling of the Russian language - Russian language

Spelling of the Russian language - Russian language
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Printable version

Bibliographic entry: . - Text: electronic // Myfilology.ru - informational philological resource: [website]. – URL: https://myfilology.ru//russkiiyazyk/orfografiia/ (date of access: 12/15/2022)

Russian language

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29 inventions of the 19th century that changed the world (continued)

Baku, March 5, AZERTAC

Many common things today, such as a bicycle, matches, a sewing machine and many others, have a 200-year history. AZERTAC with reference to solla.site continues the list of the most significant and outstanding inventions of the 19th century.

12. Photo

In the 19th century, another invention appeared, without which, it seems, existence is now unthinkable. This photo.

The camera obscura, a box with a hole in the front wall, has been known since ancient times. Even Chinese scientists noticed that if a room is tightly draped with curtains, and there is a small hole on the curtain, then on a bright sunny day, an image of the landscape outside the window appears on the opposite wall, albeit upside down. This phenomenon was often used by magicians and negligent artists.

But it wasn't until 1826 that the Frenchman Joseph Niépce found a more practical use for a box that collects light. On the sheet of glass, Joseph applied a thin layer of asphalt varnish. Then the first photographic plate was installed in the apparatus and ... In order to get an image, it was necessary to wait about twenty minutes. And if this was not considered critical for landscapes, then those who wanted to capture themselves in eternity had to try. After all, the slightest movement led to a spoiled, blurry frame. And the process of obtaining an image was not yet like that which had become familiar in the twentieth century, and the cost of such an image was very high.

A few years later, chemicals more sensitive to light appeared, now there was no need to sit, staring at one point and be afraid to sneeze. In the 1870s, photographic paper appeared, and ten years later, photographic film replaced heavy and fragile glass plates.

13. Gramophone and phonograph

But a device that allows you to record and reproduce sound appeared almost at the turn of the century. At the end of November 1877, the inventor Thomas Edison presented his next invention. It was a box with a spring mechanism inside, a long foil-covered cylinder, and a horn outside. When the mechanism was started, it seemed to many that a miracle had happened. From the metal bell came, albeit softly and unintelligibly, the sounds of a children's song about a girl who brought her lamb to school. And the song was sung by the inventor himself.

Edison soon improved his device, calling it a phonograph. Instead of foil, wax cylinders began to be used. Recording and playback quality has improved.

If a disc made of durable material is used instead of a wax cylinder, the volume and duration of the sound will increase. The disc was first used in 1887 by Emil Berliner. The device, called the gramophone, gained great popularity, because stamping records with records turned out to be much faster and cheaper than recording music on soft wax cylinders.

And soon the first record companies appeared. But this is the history of the twentieth century.

14. Firearms

And of course, technological progress has not bypassed the military either. Of the most significant military inventions of the nineteenth century, one can note the massive transition from muzzle-loading smoothbore guns to rifled firearms. There were cartridges in which gunpowder and a bullet were a single whole. There was a bolt on the guns. Now the soldier did not have to separately pour gunpowder into the barrel, then insert the wad, then push the bullet and again the wad, wielding a ramrod during each operation. The rate of fire has increased several times.

The queen of the fields, artillery, has also undergone similar changes. Since the second half of the nineteenth century, gun barrels have become rifled, dramatically increasing the accuracy and range of fire. The loading now took place from the breech, and instead of the cores they began to use cylindrical shells. Gun barrels were no longer cast from cast iron, but from stronger steel.

Smokeless pyroxylin powder appeared, nitroglycerin was invented - an oily liquid that explodes with a small push or impact, and then dynamite - all the same nitroglycerin mixed with binders.

The nineteenth century gave generals and admirals the first machine gun, the first submarine, sea mines, unguided missiles and armored steel ships, torpedoes, soldiers received instead of red and blue uniforms, suitable only for parades, a comfortable and inconspicuous uniform on the battlefield. The electric telegraph began to be used for communication, and the invention of canned food greatly simplified the provision of food to the armies. Many of the wounded were saved by the invention of anesthesia in 1842.

15. Match

In the nineteenth century, a lot of things were invented, sometimes invisible in everyday life. Matches were invented, the most seemingly simple and ordinary thing, but for the appearance of this small wooden stick, the discoveries of chemists and designers were needed. Special machines were created for the mass production of matches.

16. Bicycle

The first bicycle can be considered a two-wheeled scooter patented in 1817 by the German professor Carl von Dres, which he called “running machine”. Since then, the bicycle has been constantly modernized: 1830 - Thomas McCall from Scotland invents a two-wheeled bicycle; 1860 - Pierre Michaud of France modernizes the bicycle by adding pedals to it; 1870 - James Starley of France creates a modification of a bicycle with a large wheel; 1885 John Kemp of Australia makes the bicycle safer.

17. Stethoscope

Think about going to the general practitioner. A cold touch to the body of a metal round, the command "Breathe - do not breathe." This is a stethoscope. He appeared in 1819 due to the reluctance of the French physician Rene Laennec to put the ear to the body of the patient. At first, the doctor used paper tubes, then from wood, and then the stethoscope was improved, it became even more convenient, and modern devices use the same operating principles as the first paper tubes.

18. Metal feathers

The nineteenth century also brought relief to geese. In the 1830s, metal feathers appeared, now there was no need to run after these proud birds in order to borrow a feather, and there was no need to edit steel feathers. By the way, the penknife was originally used for the constant sharpening of bird feathers.

19. ABC for the Blind

As a child, the inventor of the ABC for the blind, Louis Braille became blind himself. This did not stop him from learning, becoming a teacher, and inventing a special method of volumetric printing, now the letters could be felt with your fingers. The Braille alphabet is still used today, thanks to it, people who have lost their sight or have been blind since birth were able to gain knowledge and get an intellectual job.

20. Combine harvester

In 1836, an interesting structure appeared in one of the endless California wheat fields. Several horses pulled a wagon that made noise, creaked, screeched, frightened crows and respectable farmers. Cogwheels spun randomly on the wagon, chains rumbled, and knife blades gleamed. This mechanical monster was devouring wheat and spitting out straw that no one wanted. And the wheat accumulated in the belly of the monster. It was the first grain harvester. Later, harvesters became even more productive, but they also required more and more traction power: up to forty horses or oxen were pulled through the fields of mechanical monsters. At the end of the nineteenth century, the steam engine came to the aid of horses.

21. Sewing machine

The first sewing machines also appeared in the nineteenth century. Initial designs were far from ideal, for example the fabric had to be fed vertically and the feed rate was manually controlled. Inventor Isaac Singer eliminated many of the shortcomings and soon established his own production. The Singer brand still exists today.

22. Pneumatic tires

Well, and pneumatic tires, invented by the Scotsman John Dunlop, an avid cyclist, although he first equipped his son's tricycle with tires.

And rubber itself, a derivative of rubber, is also an invention of the middle of the century before last. By itself, rubber, with all its virtues, became tanned in the cold and sticky to the hands in the heat. But the addition of sulfur and soot corrected this shortcoming.

23. Steel plow

In 1830, the American blacksmith John Deere forged the first steel plow, farmers began to harvest more, and it became easier for the horses. And under the John Deere brand, tractors and other agricultural equipment are still being produced.

24. Diving suit

In 1840, fish and other aquatic creatures were alarmed. A terrible two-legged creature with several huge round eyes walked along the bottom. The monster had a pair of tentacles and a long, thin intestine extending upwards. From time to time, the monster exhaled many air bubbles with a roar. The inhabitants of the water world did not know that they had witnessed the testing of the first diving suit.

25. Safety pin

Even the simple safety pin was invented in 1849year. Although it was invented by a completely American enterprising engineer, and was the first to receive a patent, but the Englishman Charles Rowley was able to promote this invention and now it is a safety pin.

26. Syringe

Syringe. And it appeared in the nineteenth century. And almost simultaneously, in 1853, two doctors, the Scot Wood and the Frenchman Pravans, created one of the most sought-after medical devices.

27. Reinforced concrete

Monnier, a French gardener, cultivated and sold various exotic plants. He planted small trees in cement tubs. But here's the problem - tubs often burst. One day, a gardener tied a frame out of iron rods and filled it with cement mortar. The tubs stopped cracking. So, according to the official version, reinforced concrete was invented.

28. Jeans

Very far from fashion, the guys wanted comfortable and wearable work clothes, but they got jeans and trousers made of strong cotton fabric. In 1873, a patent was obtained for jeans. They were especially liked by California gold diggers, and eventually appeared in every wardrobe.

29. Margarine

Margarine, which became a substitute for butter, appeared in the seventies of the nineteenth century. In the chemical laboratory, they managed to mix vegetable fat, water, dyes and salt into a single whole. Now the invention of French chemists is used by housewives, cooks and huge multinational companies.

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