I am assuming "inventive spelling" is common in Kindergarten in most school districts?

I didn't start learning English until I was in middle school, at which point I was already proficient in writing in another language so learning English spelling was a totally different game for me than it is for my kids.

Seeing DS5 will be using inventive spelling really worries me though. He's the type of kid who once he learns doing something one way, he's really hard to switch. I just can't imagine him learning to write something the "wrong' way just to relearn it correctly later on. I just don't see that happening!

Am I worried about nothing? To me it just feels really strange to not encourage kids to spell words correctly right from the start? Is this really common? If you have kids who like to follow their rules and are hard to retrain, how did you handle it???

he's too much of a perfectionist (and so am I) to just do things poorly knowing there are better ways

Inventive spelling is a developmental thing. Once he becomes a strong reader and sees that he is misspelling words, he'd start caring and would learn to spell correctly. He's ask you over and over "How do you spell..." and you'd wish that he stayed on the inventive spelling stage a bit longer. If the transition never happens naturally in then next year or so, then you might want to put him on a structured spelling program but I personally won't worry about it right now.

He's a bit on the autism spectrum, which is why he's such a stickler to the ways he learned to do things. With him it's always about learning it the right way the first time because anything that comes after that is a no go ... or a huge struggle (one of the very few reasons why we still keep him IEP active).

I am so thankful that DS3.5 is already a great speller and will never go for wrong spelling! At least with him I won't have to worry about any of this.

I just corrected mine when he got a word wrong. No biggie. But he was a natural speller at that age.

DeeDee

I think you should insist that the teacher always correct his spelling. For some children, having prolonged uncertainty about spelling (uncertainty that is intentionally imposed by adults), makes their view of the world less secure.

Plus we have been worried about dyslexia / dysgraphia in his case so all that together just scares me. Everything else comes so easy to him, he's extremely verbal but other than knowing some sight words, reading and writing is a very strange world to him. He knows phonetic rules but can't use them, a lot of letter reversals, writing mirror images of letters, etc. The whole reading / writing thing is why we even put him to Kindergarten. Otherwise he'd be homeschooled for now but I want to make sure professionals can pick up on any LDs if there are any to worry about.

MK personally I think it's possibly fine for some kids but mostly a terrible idea. Especially so in your own child's case. I'd also gently suggest that you'll probably have way better chance of figuring out if he's just a bit ansynchronous and those very normal for age issues will settle down or if he has a problem. Schools can be VERY slow to agree an LD is possibly at play.

that's what I'm a little worried about. It's quite possible that by the time they even get to writing / spelling, he might had already been pulled out of school by then. He keeps complaining about not learning much and at the same time not having any chance to play and to top it off has already started his old "trick" of answering all of my more challenging questions with "I don't know. We haven't learned that yet!". So it's all turning out to be way more disappointing than we expected.

Mostly a lurker, but wanted to chime in. Inventive spelling allowed my perfectionist newly 5 year old feel comfortable writing her first book in kindergarten. It allowed her the confidence that her ideas/story/writing didn't need to be perfect. Funny thing is that in 2nd grade she was in her own spelling group and easily spelled words I had to look up for definition to be certain (auspicious, auspiciousness). She is inherently a great speller and the inventive spelling that was allowed and encouraged in kinder allowed to to continue developing her writing ability without hindering her eventual spelling. She is not on the spectrum. She has some other vision issues, an odd pencil grasp and a few other things. Just our experience with a DD with perfectionist tendencies.

ETA: Inventive spelling wasn't necessarily encouraged, but accepted as a normal part of writing development. Meaning the main thing was to get the kids to write down their ideas and thoughts. The corrected spelling was added underneath if the word wasn't easily able to be figured out. And correct spelling wasn't discouraged.

Some children come with a natural ability to blend, segment, and manipulate phonemes but others need instructions and they are not ready until they are a little older. I wouldn't panic yet about LD even with all the reversals but it's definitely something to keep an eye on. I've recommended this book before but Reading Reflex is a good place to start for parents:

http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Refle...378521510&sr=8-1&keywords=reading+reflex

Most libraries should have a copy.

This is another program that looks pretty interesting to me; I might put DD on this later to solidify her code knowledge :

http://www.logicofenglish.com/

If you are really uncomfortable with inventive spelling right now, you could gently point out the difference between conventional spelling and inventive spelling and the importance of knowing how to spell the agreed-upon way and how that is part of being an educated person. I find this little speech works best around the middle of 1st grade but your DS might listen to logic better than most K students.

Thank you, Mana! I really like the app that's available at logicofenglish.com ... just wish they'd have it for ANDROID! ugh! lol

You're welcome. I didn't realize that app was only for iPads.

It's pretty reasonable at $3 so I'll buy it and see if they got it right.

too many good apps are for I-somethings! :((

My person feeling has always been if my kids directly ask me how to spell something (from the moment they picked up their first crayon) I have always spelled it for them or looked it up for them...or if they were on the computer in a word processing program I would spell it as best as I could and then ask "did you get a red line under it?" and if they did would help them use the spell check.

History...I have always been a poor speller and I HATED being told to "look it up" and always vowed I would never do that to my kids. But I do tell them that I am the last person they should be asking for spelling help. I will give it a go and look it up on the computer to see if I am close but chances are they can spell it better than I can.

Just happen to be advocating for my son and have his Woodcock Johnson Ach-III scores right here and he has a 133 standard score in spelling which is 99%tile...if I were given that test (and on every spelling standardized test I have ever had) I would have MAYBE a 50-60%tile. Spelling is hard for me. I would get 90%tile and above in most stuff...but then Spelling. Thank God for technology and working around problem words.

If spelling is genetic he didn't get it from me. If being nice to your kids and answering their spelling questions works better than "go look it up" then yay for my parenting skills. Oh and I never insisted that they write with perfect spelling, I accepted inventive spelling (seeing that they wrote very early) but I never turned down a request and I always admitted when I wasn't sure but I would find out for them.

Mk13, as the parent of a dysgraphic student, I would think the challenge of relying on a K-1 teacher to pick up that dysgraphia is an issue is going to be complicated whether or not they are correcting spelling. The challenge in recognizing dysgraphia at that grade level and age is that there are going to be completely neurotypical students who also are reversing letters and not developmentally ready to spell correctly.

I am not sure if there is a link for it anywhere online, but when my ds was in early
elementary his teachers had a handout they gave parents that showed in pictures, with a description in words, how writing typically develops in young children. The stages included lines of scribbling to writing letters one at a time, to the disappearance of reversals up through correct spelling. If you could find a resource that describes and illustrates the Pre-writing through early writing stages and compare them to your ds' writing development that might be more revealing than waiting for a teacher to recognize signs of dysgraphia. I remember not thinking much of it when I first saw it because my ds had done nothing like it in his development, and then realizing as my younger kids went through learning to write that their development totally matched those stages - and they are not dysgraphic


Can you ask your school to do any testing? I am not sure if the TOWL would help but it might - what I'm not sure about is the age range and if a child needs to be 6 before taking it. If your school can administer something like the Woodcock Johnson Achievement Tests that include timed and untimed and oral vs handwritten or drawn responses that can also be used as a flag for potential dysgraphia

It's possible your ds teachers will be proactive or recognize signs early, but our experience was that every time we asked about letter reversals and spelling etc from K-2nd grade we were always told by ds' teachers that it was completely age-appropriate and not something to worry about until 3rd grade. I wish I'd known enough back then to know that it could mean something more because we lost a lot of time and ds became increasingly stressed out and frustrated with school to the point of having panic attacks, all because his teachers and parents didn't realize how difficult it was for him to write.

Best Wishes,

polarbear

thank you, everyone!

polarbear, I'm not sure about testing. He has an IEP so I am hoping eventually something will come up that will push for testing but for now the Special Ed Director's view is that he's very smart and we won't need any testing (speaking of the future). I kept pointing out to his preschool teacher last year (public school special ed) that I noticed how often he writes the first letter of his name as a mirror image ... letter N, and her response (after having him in class for 6 months) was oh, I didn't really notice that! Must not be happening that often! ... and I saw it on every other piece of art work he brought home! And anytime he's writing letters, he insists on starting in the bottom. When he starts at the top, he gets lost. It's just that gut feeling that something's not right.

That said, he will get 30 minutes / week OT for writing because he has a lot of issues just holding the pen / pencil / marker so hopefully the OT will pick up on any possible problems? If the OT will keep requesting him having writing OT in his IEP plan, at that point I think I'll keep pushing for testing!

He just turned 5 so I know I'm expecting a lot from him and maybe there are no issues? But I just find it really strange that after knowing the alphabet for 3 years, he still makes mistakes on p/q, m/w, b/d. It's gotten a little better but it still is a big problem for him at times. Given how super sharp he is with everything else, he should be reading by now and he won't even attempt to decode one word because they don't make sense to him. I know he remembers couple sight words but he sees them as pictures, not as series of letters. And lately he started taking words apart doing really good job at telling me beginning letters of words but again can't do anything with written text.

Having a younger brother who started reading at 2.5 doesn't help much either

DD6 used to be a kreativ speller a year ago but her spelling has improved massively. The school's approach was to just let them 'have a go' when they're doing creative writing, so they can concentrate on letting the ideas flow, and the teachers will only correct a couple of words per story, or when the kids request it. They do actual spelling at a separate time.
We've been happy with that approach and have been reluctant ourselves to correct her spelling because some of her attempts have been adorable! A fave was 'ch' instead of 'tr', as in chrik (trick) and chrayn (train). But we are a family of excellent spellers so I knew she'd outgrow the cute spelling phase all on her own far too soon, and she is