Why do some children become better writers (and readers) than others?
One thing that appears to make a difference is children’s willingness to try and encode words onto paper by using “informed”, or, what some people call, “invented spellings”. These informed spellings show how children think carefully about the sounds they can hear in words and how those sounds can be transcribed as letters onto paper. You can see what that looks like here.
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Children’s early attempts at encoding words can tell us a lot about how they understand language. For example, a child might write “SDM” for “spiderman” because they hear the “S” “D” and “M” sounds in the word and know what those sounds look like as letters. As children become more experienced with encoding, they start to represent even more of the sounds and letters they know, including the middle vowels and consonant blends like “CH” in “cheek”.
Importantly, this process of informed spellings doesn’t depend on a child knowing how to fully decode for reading. Writing can therefore start very early, even before formal schooling.
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There are correlations between children’s ability to produce informed spellings and other literacy skills. For example, children need some level of phonemic awareness (ability to recognise individual sounds in words) and alphabet knowledge to begin encoding. Informed spelling is essentially a problem-solving task where children try to map the sounds they hear in words to any letters they currently know. Therefore, differences in children’s encoding abilities can be a reflection of their phonemic awareness and alphabet knowledge.
Several studies have looked at the correlation between being able to produce informed spellings and later reading and spelling skills. Meta-analyses of these studies suggest a significant and positive relationship between encoding and both reading and spelling skills later on. Longitudinal studies further support this, showing that children’s encoding abilities at the age of 5-6 can predict their reading and spelling abilities when they are older. Overall, the evidence suggests that children’s encoding abilities facilitate the development of their future reading and spelling skills.
If we teach children that it’s OK to write spellings wrong, aren’t we just encouraging bad habits?
Despite concerns that teaching encoding strategies might negatively impact children’s spelling in the future, studies have shown that learning to write informed spellings actually facilitates children’s future spelling and reading skills. Learning to spell is a developmental process and writing informed spellings is an important part of that development.
Is there a developmental sequence?
The developmental sequence for spelling acquisition involves:
- Accepting children’s emergent writing practices (see more here).
- Teaching children to encode so they can transition from marking making to writing informed spellings (find out how here).
- Alongside this development is children’s early reading development, which will include beginning to understanding orthography (spelling patterns and rules) morphology (prefixes and suffixes).
- Spelling instruction and practice then becomes an additional means of acquiring and refining children’s orthographic and morphological representations, ultimately contributing to faster word reading and more accurate spelling.
Conclusion
Overall, there is robust evidence that teaching children encoding strategies so that they can produce informed spellings can positively impact their literacy development. It suggests explicitly teaching children encoding strategies, before inviting them to use these strategies for themselves, can be beneficial, particularly with the youngest of writers.
To find out more, download our book: Getting Children Up & Running As Writers.