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Report
on
Kidspell versus Traditional Spelling Education

Submitted to
Dr. Janice R. Walker
Department of Writing and Linguistics
Georgia Southern University
Statesboro, GA 30460

by

Margaret Eighmie-Gavin
meighmie@georgiasouthern.edu

2 December 2009

Table of Contents
	Abstract
I.	Introduction
II.	Research
III.	Interviews
IV.	Recommendations
V.	References

Abstract

The previous four decades have stood witness to a writing revolution within the American Education System. The focus on the teaching of orthography has evolved from the traditional rote memorization process to one that encourages students to focus on making meaning. As a result, educators and parents are beginning to express concerns about what appears to be students' lack of orthographic knowledge, specifically their inability to spell words conventionally. From these concerns have come conversations about the practice of invented or temporary spelling in American classrooms. What long term effect does the use of invented spelling in elementary school classrooms have on students' abilities to learn conventional spelling in higher grades?

I. Introduction

The report "Kidspell vs. Traditional Speling Education" presents the differences between traditional spelling pedagogy and the current trend toward the invented spelling, where writing and making meaning becomes the primary focus.

This report will:

Provide an overview into the evolution of invented spelling into American classrooms.
Briefly shed light on some of the relevant literature.
Provide professional insight from several Bulloch County Elementary School teachers.
Explore the controversy that surrounds invented spelling .
Address the question, what, if anything should be done?

The debate surrounding invented spelling is closely linked to the ongoing debate over whole-language instruction versus phonics instruction. As a parent of two school age children the issue hits close to home. My daughter, a fifth grade student, is a poor speller. A pattern surfaced in her writing. The majority of her incorrect spellings are conventioanlly spelled wrong, however they are an accurate phonetic representation of the word. For example, in one of her recent writings she spelled the word [attacked] as [attact]. My knee jerk reaction was to blame her struggle to spell conventionally on phonics instruction. I, after all, had not learned to read using the phonics method and I have never struggled with conventional spelling. My daughter's struggle has served as my inspiration to search for the truth; not to point blame, but to find the best path toward making my daugther a better speller.

II. The Research

Decades of researchinto reading and literacy have evolved into a focus on the relationship between early writing and reading. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Linguist, Dr. Charles Read and other researchers noticed that young children's writings revealed important information about how they learn to write and pronounce words. Read's research as well as similar research by Carol Chomsky, a renowned linguist and educator, created a tidal wave of interest in a new concept called invented spelling. Before the interest and implementation of invented spelling, "the traditonal attitudes toward writing were - no writing until a child can spell" (Phinney, 1987).

"Invented spellings have been described as a window on a child's developmental knowledge of words" (Henderson, 1990). One of Charles Read's most significant findings was that young children tend to produce roughly the same system for spelling. Both Read and Chomsky determined that the mistakes that young children made in their writing were not random.

Influenced by Charles Read's work and in an attempt to shed new light on invented spelling, J. Richard Gentry, a prominent researcher in the field of orthography and spelling presented the Gentry Model of Developmental Stages of Spelling Classification System (Gentry, 1981). Gentry modeled his five developmental stages of spelling after Piaget's Theory for Cognitive Development.

Gentry Model of Developmental Stages of Spelling Classification System
Precommunicative	Child uses symbols from the alphabet but shows no knowledge of letter-sound correspondences.
Semiphonetic	Child begins to understand letter-sound correspondence - that sounds are assigned to letters.
Phonetic	Child uses a letter or group of letters to represent every speech sound that they hear in a word.
Transitional	Speller begins to assimilate the conventional alternative for representing sounds, moving from dependence on phonology (sound) for representing words to a reliance on visual representation and an understanding of the structure of words.
Correct	Speller knows the English orthographic system and its basic rules.

Gentry notes that the change from one spelling stage to the next is a gradual one and that examples from more than one stage may coexist in a particular sample of writing. However, children do not fluctuate radically between stages, passing from phonetic back into semiphonetic spelling or from transitional back to phonetic.

Semiohonetic Stage

Phonetic Stage

III. The Interviews

In addition to reviewing the research, I interviewed elementary school teachers from grades one through five at Sallie Zetterower Elementary School, in Bulloch County Georgia.

Starr Anderson has been a first grade teacher at Sallie Zetterower Elementary School for 30 years. Mrs. Anderson encourages her first grade students to use invented spelling, or as she refers to it, kidspell.

"I have some kids come in at the beginning of the year that have never put a pencil to paper. When they leave first grade these same kids are able to write short narratives, " (Anderson).

Mrs. Anderson attributes her students' success to her non-threatening approach when correcting her students' papers.

"When I grade their papers I am careful not to use a red pen because they are very sensitive to the red pen and I write the correct spelling above the misspelled word", (Anderson).

Anita Hill, a second grade teacher at Sallie Zetterower Elementary School stated that one downside to invented spelling is that

"if a child is a visual learner and who continually sees a word misspelled, it is likely that they will never be able to recognize that the word is spelled incorrectly."

Mrs. Anderson feels that it is important to encourage the students' creativity, but emphasizes that it is equally important that they see the misspelled word spelled correctly. Educators and researchers believe that is young children are encouraged to write without the restrictions of conventional spelling, they could focus their energies on making meaning. I wonder though, what is the purpose of making meaning if it can only be understood by the author?

"Denying a child the opportunity to write is like forbidding a child from talking until he or she is able to pronounce every word correctly," (Phinney, 1987)

IV. Recommendations

Carol Chomsky pointed out that "a child's early attempts at spelling are not likely to be spelled correctly, but that there is time for that later" (1971). This declaration by Chomsky leads to the question, at which point should a child be required to make the transition from invented spelling to more conventional spelling?

Anita Hill, a second grade teacher at Sallie Zetterower Elementary School begins transitioning her students during the second half of the second year. Third grade teachers Lisa Davis and Janet Eakin both agree that invented spelling is less accepted in their third grade classrooms. Mrs. Eakins stresses the importance of implementing the editing process to their third grade students.

"A typical writing assignment would allow students to use kidspell in their initial draft, as a means of getting their thoughts down. The next step would be for them to read it, circling any mistakes they see. After that, I read it aloud to help locate mistakes that they might have missed" (Eakin).

Why is invented spelling so controversial? "In a literate society, conventional spelling is expected and anything beyond a few small errors is equated with ignorance and incompetence" (Moats, 2005). If a child continues through school with poor spelling abilities he or she might be perceived as incompetent and may face struggles being successful in other academic areas. Louisa Moats, an advisor on literacy research, makes the argument that students may restrict what they read and write to words they know how to spell or they may lose concentration by getting stuck trying to spell a word.

Additonally, there are concerns about when invented spelling should no longer be accepted. Who should be responsible for transitioning students to more conventional spelling? The research indicates that elementary school teachers are encouraging students to make meaning. Meanwhile students moving to middle school and middle school teachers feel that students should already posssess a certain level of orthographic knowledge. The question becomes who dropped the ball and who's ball was it to begin with?

Marianna A. Voiselle, a fifth grade Language Arts teacher at Sallie Zetterower Elementary stresses the editing process, but says that "making them aware is half the battle."

Mrs. Voiselle stated that even at the fifth grade level, "the emphasis should be on making meaning and getting thoughts on paper".

Unfortunately, it is difficult to gauge a student's orthographic knowledge in terms of spelling. "State accountabililty assessments seldom include a direct measure of spelling competence" (Moats, 2005). All of the educators interviewed for this report expressed their concern over the ability of students to recognize their mistakes.It is possible that not too far into the future many students, as a result of invented spelling and an overreliance on spellchecker will enter the work force unable to reasonably spell.

In 2000, "the National Reading Panel omitted spelling (and writing) from its list of five essential components of a comprehensive reading lesson" (Moats, 2005).

There is a strong research base for claiming that spelling plays an important role in the education of young children. More research needs to be done in determining whether or not there would be significant benefits to continuing some form of spelling instruction beyond the elementary grades. Moats' recommendations include continuing formal spelling instruction through the seventh grade. "In addition to continuing to learn the rules of spelling, students can develop a deep understanding of English by studying the roots, pre-fixes, and suffixes; families of related words; the historical development of the English language; and words' language of origin" (Moats, 2005).

In addition to expanding of spelling instruction to older grades and broadening to the scope of instruction to include word origins, better assessment practices are needed to measure students' spelling and vocabulary competency.

The benefits go well beyond being a good speller. Spelling supports younger children in their reading development. Older children would most likely benefit in areas such as reading comprehension and vocabulary development.

"We tend to throw the baby out with the bath water when something new comes along" (Hill)

As in most areas of life, a happy medium is usually the best solution to any dispute. Invented spelling has by all accounts been successful in encouraging students to write and express their thoughts much earlier in their education than ever before. It is important thought that educators and reseachers do not make spelling education an all or nothing proposition. The relationship between reading, writing, and spelling is cyclical.

V. References

Anderson, S. Personal Interview. October 2009.

Chomsky, C. (1971) Write First, Read Later. Childhood Education, 47, 296-299.

Davis, L. Personal Interview. October 2009.

Eakin, J. Personal Interview. October 2009.

Gentry, R. (1981). Learning to Spell Developmenally. The Reading Teacher, 34, 378-381.

Gentry, R. (1987). Spel...Is a Four-Letter Word. Portsmouth: Heinemann.

Henderson, H.E. (1990). Teaching Spelling (2d.ed). Boston: Houghton-Mifflin.

Martin, P. (2006). A Literature Review on Invented Spelling and Its Instructional Implications. Master's Degree Research Project. College of William and Mary, 2006. July 2006.

Moats, L.C. (2005). How Spelling Supports Reading. American Educator, Winter 2005/2006, 12-43.