Teach spellings by allowing your child to make mistakes!

Yes! you read that heading correctly. Being a walking dictionary for your children, correcting their spellings consistently and asking them to memorize the spellings is a redundant practice. Language researchers shunned this practice decades ago as they discovered that learning “how to spell” is a complex developmental process.

So what do we do? How do we teach spellings to our little ones?

Enter, INVENTED SPELLINGS!

When words like cake are spelled as cak and butterfly as btrfli, your child is using invented spellings. They are used by children who are learning to put sounds together to make words. The words written with this approach will contain the letters of the sounds a child hears when he/ she says a word.

Why do we need to let children use invented spellings?

Invented spellings are important because :

1. It helps children to express their thoughts in writing. If they are constantly told to write correct spellings they may lose their thoughts or the words they were about to use while expressing themselves, making the whole process of writing cumbersome and overwhelming.

2. It encourages children to use the knowledge of sounds and patterns they know, making them confident and independent writers.

3. It helps teachers and parents to see what the child knows about sounds in words and it can help to direct and guide their instruction.

4. It is an encouraging way to practice phonemic awareness skills. See the video below to understand more about phonemic awareness.

When do we start correcting a child's invented spellings?

Now you may think that children who use invented spelling will get into a habit of using them all their life. But that is far from the truth. A good literacy instruction must include the use of phonetic spellings but should also be complemented by standard spellings of irregular words like the, what, other etc.

Allowing children to make spelling mistakes with words whose patterns they are aware of is not recommended. Eg, if you have taught your child the concept of silent e, then he/she should be encouraged to use silent e correctly in words like time, cake etc. See the below examples.

In the first writing, the child has no knowledge of the silent e rule so she wrote the spelling of give as giv. But when it was introduced and practiced , the child was able to correctly use it in her writing.

Invented spelling leads children on the path of conventional spelling but without the unnecessary stress and worry. They encourage children to look at their writing with pride. So next time your child writes, praise him/her for his/her imagination and interesting story rather than criticizing them for their spellings. Helping children to see word patterns and using them in reading and writing will eventually help them to move away from invented spellings onto the path of conventional spellings.