Road Safety - Important Reminders:

Dear Principal What Is Happening With My Child’s Spelling?           (Please Note: Not a real letter.)

Last week, my son brought home a stack of papers from  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 children 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, teachers in the early years of school encourage inventive spelling, also known as temporary or have-a-go spelling — where the child makes his best guess on the spelling of the word, rather than stopping to find out the correct version. This allows their ideas to flow, and good ideas are the most important part of the writing process. 

This practice is grounded in research. A number of studies demonstrate that children 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).

A good idea is to think about inventive spelling the way we once viewed our child’s early attempts at speech:

When our child said “ba-ba,” we were proud of their first attempt to say bottle and patiently helped them. We treasured this developmental step our child took towards conventional speaking by praising them and offering the bottle. Obviously our child did not call the item a “ba-ba” for the rest of their life; rather, when they were developmentally ready, they were able to say “bottle” (Kolodziej & Columba, 2005).

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

• gather and group their ideas (pre-writing)

• flesh out those ideas in sentences and paragraphs (drafting)

• reorganise 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-emphasised in the first few steps is the same as in the younger years: 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 writer 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.

Producing a finished piece of writing is a lot like putting on a polished musical performance: It requires the synthesis of many skills, some of which need to be handled separately.

 Imagine if a band conductor brought a brand-new piece of music to her band and expected all sections to play it together, perfectly, the first time. Even someone with no musical training can see that this is an unreasonable approach. Instead, if each instrument section starts by practicing their part separately, the performers will get really solid on their individual parts before pulling it all together to refine the complete performance.

So what should you do if your child comes home with a paper full of spelling or other mechanical errors? Take a cue from the teacher: If the teacher hasn’t mentioned the errors, then spelling was not a priority for this particular assignment or at this particular stage. Instead, praise the content itself. Here are some specific things to look for, and if they are there, to praise:

• Strong, vivid vocabulary: “You chose a really interesting word to describe that monster – ferocious.”

• Idea development: “You described how the lizard’s tongue works, really clearly. At first I couldn’t understand how a tongue can smell, but this sentence helps.”

• Audience awareness: “This introduction really grabbed my attention.”

• Organisation: “Nice transition here: ‘On the other hand.’ ...That’s a good way to show that you’re going to talk about a different side of the issue.”

• Attempts at sophisticated construction: “Is that a semicolon? That’s a pretty advanced punctuation mark. I like to see you trying new things with your writing.”

Rest assured, teachers still care very much about spelling. They just recognise that learning other skills — harder, more complex skills — often works best when those skills get a student’s full attention. Single instruments first, then the whole orchestra.