INVENTIVE WRITING: Cristina O’Farrill

SAY IT, HEAR IT, SPELL IT! ENGL 5040

LINGUIST CHARLES READ (1975)
"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. Learning to spell is not a matter of memorizing words, but a
developmental process that culminates in a much greater understanding of English
spelling than simple relationships between speech sounds and their graphic
representations."
WHY IS MY KID ALLOWED TO MAKE
SPELLING MISTAKES?
When the child said “ba-ba,” did the parent say, “No, honey, it is pronounced “bottle”? Parents
treasure this developmental step their child took towards conventional speaking by lavishly
praising the child and offering the bottle…The child will not call the item a “ba-ba” for the rest
of his/her life; rather, when the child is developmentally ready, he/she will be able to say “bottle”
(Kolodziej & Columba, 2005, p. 217).
INVENTIVE SPELLING

= Known as phonetic spelling, invented spelling is when children listen to the sounds they hear
in words and write down the letters that make those sounds.
FIRST STEP:
DEVELOP PHONEMIC AWARENESS
Phonics: is a method for teaching reading and writing of the English language by
developing learners' phonemic awareness—the ability to hear, identify, and
manipulate phonemes—in order to teach the correspondence between these sounds
and the spelling patterns (graphemes) that represent them.
SECOND STEP:
ACQUIRE KNOWLEDGE OF SPELLING
PATTERNS AND LEARN HELPFUL GUIDELINES:
Start with a short vowel “a”. Add two consonants to create a CVC pattern.

mat

***then continue reading and writing CVC words with /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/.
***the student does need to learn the correct spelling for common words
and begin memorizing the specific spelling pattern used for particular
words.
Creating CVC words
THIRD STEP:
SPELL CORRECTLY ALL HIGH FREQUENCY WORDS
High frequency words are those that appear most commonly in everyday usage and
can be automatically recognized at a glance.

High frequency words usually do not follow commonly taught phonics rules and cannot
be sounded out. The only way a child can read these words is to recognize them by
sight.

Examples: the, I, like, little, is, are

FOURTH STEP:
SOUND IT OUT!!!!
Help your child sound out all other words that do not have a CVC pattern and are
not frequency words.

SAY IT, HEAR IT, SPELL IT !!!!

Examples:
irregular words- special, beautiful, princess, pretty, awesome
“I like imajnin”
ADVANTAGES
The advantages of allowing invented spelling in the classroom include:
1. It builds a sense of confidence, pride, and control over the learning process

2. It allows students to express themselves creatively in writing without worrying about the spelling of unfamiliar
words.

3. It allows for the extensive practice of phonics because students are using letters to represent the sounds that they
hear.

4. Teachers can discover important information about a student's growing knowledge of phonemes and the letters of
the alphabet by reading a composition written using invented spelling techniques.

VIDEO
LET WRITING BE FUN!
REFERENCES
http://www.readingrockets.org/article/invented-spelling-and-spelling-development
http://www.education.com/magazine/article/The_Dos_and_Donts_Invented/
http://www.cultofpedagogy.com/spelling-mistakes/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qh0Sb2SC_38