... lots of spelling mistakes... children learn from fixing their mistakes. I suppose this makes me a critic of "invented spelling"... My daughter's teacher is unlikely to start correcting the work of her "authors", as she referred to them at open house.
I'm with you on this. However with the current trend toward keyboarding and word processing, and less emphasis on handwritten work it seems more teachers are counting on their students to use spell check programs... just as more students are crunching numbers with calculators and no longer doing much math in their heads or on paper.
Notable exception, when looking at spelling throughout the educational career: Standardized test essays such as AP and ACT are still handwritten (at the moment)... this is different than calculators being allowed on (some) standardized tests.
... Any suggestions on how to correct the work our daughter brings home without demoralizing her?
To help a child with spelling while not demoralizing him/her, I've heard of first complimenting the work... then asking for help reading it, then asking if they want to learn the dictionary spelling of any words you found difficult to read (because they were written phonetically). If they want to know... great. If they don't want to know, at least you've raised their awareness that
1) there is a correct spelling
2) they can easily see what the correct spelling is
3) others may find phonetic spelling difficult to read
By piquing their curiosity, eventually the child's curiosity may win out and they may want to know the correct spelling.
Here is a humorous poem about spell checkers... (and my pet peeve, auto-correct which is more like auto-sabotage!)...
http://www.latech.edu/tech/liberal-arts/geography/courses/spellchecker.htm
