Inventive spelling kindergarten

Why Invented Spelling Matters - We Are Teachers

Topic: English Language Arts Grades: Kindergarten:

Invented spelling is a valuable stepping-stone on the literacy journey.

I’m a literacy specialist and the mother of a kindergartner. Therefore, I pay close attention to my daughter’s writing development. In less than a year’s time, I’ve noticed my daughter has evolved from telling a story in pictures to telling a story with pictures and words. As a result, she uses invented spelling with many words when she writes.

The mom in me wants my child to spell words correctly. However, the educator in me realizes she’s taking what she hears in speech and representing it in print. My daughter demonstrates what she knows about letter sounds and phonemic awareness when she invents the spelling of words. While she uses a word wall to help spell the “everywhere words” her class has learned, she makes her best attempt to represent the sounds she hears when she’s spelling everything else on paper.

Invented spelling is an analytical process.

In the early 1970s, a researcher named Charles Read asserted that young children’s attempts at spelling words were not displays of ignorance. Rather, they were windows into each child’s word knowledge. Read coined the term “invented spelling,” which refers to the way a child spells words that aren’t stored in his/her memory phonetically. Earlier this year, Gene Oulette and Monique Sénéchal published a study on invented spelling. In it they state that “Allowing children to engage in the analytical process of invented spelling, followed by appropriate feedback, has been found to facilitate learning to read and spell, not hamper the process.” That’s right, we help students’ future success as readers by giving them the freedom to invent their own spellings when they write.

We need to encourage risk-taking in our young writers.

Encouraging invented spelling allows children to take risks. We must praise emerging writers for their spelling attempts rather than punish them for not getting it right. Remember, invented spelling isn’t an “anything goes” approach. Conversely, it’s a necessary stage to develop the proficiency as a competent and confident writer.

As kids move on through the primary grades, it’s important to teach them the difference between sloppy spelling (i.e., misspelling words they already know) and taking risks to try to spell new or less frequently used words. One way we can do this is by emphasizing using the most accurate spelling possible at all stages of the writing process rather than saving the fixing of spelling errors until they are polishing a piece for publication.

For a short while, invented spelling can be an appropriate strategy.

There is a point at which an invented spelling becomes a permanent misspelling. As children advance in school, we need to be observant about frequently misspelled words in children’s writing. Diane Snowball and Faye Bolton state: “If a child is beyond the phonetic stage of spelling and consistently spells went as whent or they as thay, you probably need to step in, particularly if it is high-frequency words that are being misspelled. ” It will take practice and time to master the correct spelling of the word. But eventually, the correct spelling will become automatic.

In The Art of Teaching Writing, second edition, Lucy Calkins posits that “Our students need to realize that it’s okay to make editorial errors as they write; all of us do, and then we correct them as we edit. Although it’s important to teach our students to edit, probably the single most important thing we can do for their syntax, spelling, penmanship, and use of mechanics is to help them write often and with confidence.”

Let’s give our youngest writers the space they need to write with confidence.

Instead of worrying about conventional spelling, let’s praise children for their spelling attempts. There will be plenty of time for them to master conventional spelling in the years to come. For now, let’s put students on a path to success. Allow them to show us what they know about alphabetic knowledge and phonological awareness. Give them the freedom to invent their own spellings.

Invented Spelling and Its Role in the Learning Process

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.

Children Drawing Invented Spelling

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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"

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.

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.

Staff Writer

• elementary school
• kindergarten
• preschool

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Is the program important in kindergarten? What standards are taught to preschoolers and are they observed in practice

The main criterion when choosing a kindergarten for children is to be close. Then we evaluate its equipment, educators, but the program by which the garden works remains behind the scenes. We decided to find out: is it really so important and is it worth chasing after some particular system of preschool education?

How the kindergarten works

The state kindergarten is now not a separate structure, but only a pre-school stage of school education. Kindergartens have long been branches of one or another GBOU, and each of them has a specific educational program approved.

In total, in Russia, according to the navigator on the website of the Federal Institute for the Development of Education, there are 21 comprehensive programs for preschool education. In addition to them, there are a number of partial programs - these are a kind of fragments of an educational puzzle with which they complement the main picture or from which they assemble a combination at their own discretion. Some partial programs are designed to develop different skills in children (counting, reading, writing), others are aimed at aesthetic, artistic, musical development.

Despite such apparent diversity, today there are only 3-5 types of educational programs in kindergartens, depending on the region.

85% of kindergartens in Russia have adopted one universal program "From Birth to School"

In addition to the ubiquitous "From Birth ...", the Golden Key, Worlds of Childhood: Designing Possibilities, Origins, Inspiration are also widespread . Prochildren stands apart, developed, among other things, for children with disabilities and aimed at self-realization and development of independence, as well as a fundamentally new program, the Transformation, which is about to be approved. The professional community is really looking forward to it, since it is based on the empirical method of knowing the world - experiences and experiments as the basis of learning.

You can find out which program guides a particular garden on the official website of the institution. However, there is a nuance here too.

Whatever program is announced, it is not a fact that the kindergarten follows it from beginning to end

The fact is that each kindergarten must take an approved program and make its own based on it in the proportion of 60 to 40. That is, 60 % is taken from the "base", and the garden is free to supplement everything else. What does this mean for parents? Suppose the basic program assumes the presence of activity centers in groups - this is when the playing space (as in the Montessori development environment) is divided into separate zones: mathematics, water games, sand games, etc. But if the kindergarten does not have the appropriate equipment, then he can simply throw out some item from the program.

Generally speaking, in two gardens with the same program, life can be arranged in completely different ways, since each garden took different provisions from the “base” and supplemented them with completely different details. And as a result, we got two little similar combos.

Just as important: even if you are satisfied with the program that you were introduced to in kindergarten, this does not mean that it will be fully implemented. Why? Because it all depends on the teacher. And there is no way to check what the children are doing in the kindergarten until they can tell you in colors themselves.

How the programs differ from each other

All two dozen preschool education programs are developed on the basis of the Federal State Educational Standard adopted in Russia and are quite strictly regulated. Their goal is to ensure that the preschooler grows up motivated and comprehensively developed. The difference between the programs seems insignificant: some are designed for ages from infancy to school (“Rainbow” or “Teremok”), others involve working with children from the age of three (“First Steps”), otherwise they, at first glance, are similar . But this is only at first glance.

"From Birth to School"

One of the oldest preschool pedagogy programs - and it is precisely this that is regularly updated and supplemented. Why? First of all, because it is the most common in Russia.

The program "From Birth to School" is successive in relation to the program "Education and Education in Kindergarten" edited by M. A. Vasilyeva, which has been used by almost all kindergartens in our country for many years. The team of authors led by Doctor of Psychology N. E. Veraksa has developed a universal comprehensive program that is ideal for mass preschool groups. It perfectly combines the ideas of classical preschool education and modern educational technologies.

By implementing the approaches laid down in the "From Birth to School" program, teachers ensure continuity with the program of primary general education, which is very important. In the process of purposeful educational activity of the child, carried out in partnership with an adult, the prerequisites for universal educational activities are formed in the older preschooler. Moreover, the main thing in the interaction between children and adults is the ability to "hear" the child, support and develop his initiative.

Tatyana Dotsenko, Deputy Principal, Moscow School No. 1347

The program also talks about the transition to a new, progressive type of interaction "adult-child", in which it is important for the educator to be able to hear the child, respond and develop the children's initiative. Educators no longer manage the game process, but build educational moments into spontaneous games, the old model of frontal and group activities is replaced by projects, educational events, morning and evening circles.

But again, it’s not a fact that the kindergarten, which took the “From Birth…” program as a basis, will leave morning circles and a non-frontal model in it, because not every educator is ready to grow and change something in the methodology of their work.

The Golden Key

The program is based on the pedagogical concept of Lev Vygotsky, and its main feature is that children who are just three years old and five or six years old play nearby. Parents are often embarrassed by such groups: it seems to them that the elders will offend the younger ones, and the younger ones, in turn, will draw all the attention of educators to themselves.

However, the program is focused on what preschoolers like the most - the game, it does not involve classes at the tables and traditional calendar-thematic tasks. It contains the idea of ​​spontaneity of learning, and the children have two educators at once, and one of them always plays the role of not the usual leader, but a direct participant in children's games.

“Golden Key” involves building relationships similar to ideal family ones. Kindergarten teachers are constantly brainstorming to come up with activities that will really engage the children. And here they usually know everything about Star Wars, and about Findus and Petson, and about trolls with little ponies.”

Anna Yakshina, Junior Researcher, Child Development Laboratory, Research Institute of Urban Studies and Global Education, Moscow State Pedagogical University

doesn't cook. The program does not aim to teach the child to read, write and count. The task is for him to spend his childhood in a kindergarten in an atmosphere as close as possible to that of a family.

Worlds of Childhood: Designing Possibilities

This program will definitely not appeal to parents who find the words "craft" and "kindergarten drawing" a nervous tic. Perhaps for the same reason, "Worlds of Childhood" is generally not very common in large metropolitan areas, where the rhythm of life does not allow parents to get involved in the child's life as much as possible.

The highlight of "Worlds" is a didactic calendar that offers a variety of home activities with a child (no need to google and invent anything, everything has already been done for you). According to the authors of the program, developing and educational materials "launch the mechanism of cultural transmission" and allow parents to understand the value of children's activities and the significance of its results.

“Of course, not all parents are determined to take care of their children at home. At first, the child comes to the kindergarten unprepared, does not participate in general activities, gets upset, and parents have to get involved. But some time passes, and they begin to enjoy the joint process and understand their child better.

Elena Didukh, p teacher of the Moscow School No. 2120

PRODETEI

The program, which was developed for children with disabilities including, is based on the international preschool system Tools Of the Mind. It was created in Russia for export - to work in Europe and America. Its essence is a playful approach and the development of planning skills.

The space in the gardens operating under this program is organized according to the principle of activity centers, which are separated from each other by low lockers. Thus, children do not interfere with each other, and educators can safely observe everyone at once. There are both noisy and quiet areas where children can retire with a book and their favorite toy and relax. And then move to the center of construction or the center of writing and literacy.

Every day for the guys starts with a morning circle, a kind of mini-team building. With the help of the "Wheel of Choice" children draw up their own schedule of classes for the day, which they fix on a personal piece of paper. It is not necessary to be able to read and write: drawings, symbols - everyone copes as best they can. This ritual teaches the child to direct their day.

"PROchildren" implies maximum scope for creativity and self-realization: children are to some extent left to their own devices, that is, they organize their day themselves, look for companions for games, and the educator only guides and helps them.

“PROchildren” have no succession in school. This program, like the "Golden Key", is about play and about childhood, and the kindergartens that took it as a basis do not aim to prepare for school, but to live through the sensitive periods of childhood. So for parents, for whom the garden is the key to successful admission to school, such a program is hardly suitable.

"Transformation"

The most recent and innovative program to be adopted in the near future, early childhood educators are looking forward to it.

Its author is a leading researcher at the Child Development Laboratory of the Moscow State Pedagogical University and at the same time a co-author of another well-known program "From Birth to School" Olga Shiyan. She took the tools of TRIZ pedagogy (TRIZ is the theory of inventive problem solving) as the basis of "Transformation", and, according to her idea, children should learn the world by solving a variety of issues on their way.

“The program is based on an empirical method: children learn to solve real problems and gain new knowledge in the process of solving them. And then they are fixed through creative activity. This is a method of creative search and debate with the educator, when every subject around is studied. For example, when talking about furniture, children and teachers discuss which furniture can solve which problems. It was during such debates that the children came up with bunk beds in the kindergarten and created their mock-up from matchboxes. Another invention is a chair for a teacher, sitting on which it is convenient to help children lace up their shoelaces.

Olga Shiyan, Leading Researcher, Child Development Laboratory, Moscow State Pedagogical University

Such a program is indeed an interesting innovation, but it will be extremely difficult to implement it in a mass group of 25–30 children. Discussions with preschoolers are effective only when there are a maximum of 5-10 people. But even in a simplified version, as an addition to another program, the principles of "Transformation" can be useful.

And what to choose

Despite the presence of two dozen comprehensive pre-school education programs, only one is widely represented in Russia - "From Birth to School".

And if you want to choose a kindergarten, which presents a different approach to working with preschoolers, then you will have to look for it, and the child will most likely need to be taken there. At the same time, even a “different program” does not guarantee that you will not eventually receive a standard set of activities without the use of new technologies and modern pedagogy tools: a lot depends on who works in the field and how interested educators are in their work and in it was useful for children and parents.

Ideally, every spring, kindergartens should launch a survey of educational effectiveness, where there are closed and open questions, and based on the results, supplement or rewrite the educational program, adjusting to the interests and requests of parents. At the same time, for most parents, kindergarten remains just an opportunity (most often the only one) to go to work - and the question of what program it works under is not in principle.

Cover image: Lordn / shutterstock / fotodom

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