Spelling is Telling

YOUNG READERS ( 4 & 5 year olds who haven't had structured lessons yet) inventive spelling helps to spell. Write what they know from their phonemic awareness.
Important to use the 'teachable moments' in their own writing rather than worksheets.

Spelling knowledge is closely associated with reading comprehension, word knowledge and better writing.

Kids if taught from kindergarten on will benefit from explicit teaching of spelling and be better writers. Best also studies have found that the kids who have been taught to spell the high frequency words accuracy instead of inventing them are better writers.

Teach children straight away the most common spelling patterns in the language. Inventive spelling is a diagnostic tool. So being able to use knowledge of phonemic awareness by half way through structured teaching (NZ 5 half?) kids shouldn't have. a problem.

• Kids who can form letters because they've been taught
• can identify speech sounds because they've been taught will be the best writers because they have automatic mastery of basic foundations.

HOW?

Not left to chance and not as they are doing their own writing. It is from a series of structured lessons. A balanced approach such as:

Phoneme grapheme

Word origin

Word meaning

Master high frequency words (important in early years as very hard to undo invented spelling patterns if this was allowed to happen)

Key take away:
We don't use our visual memory to became a speller/

Practice makes permanent so important not to ignore inventive spelling and teach the correct spelling