Best Guess Spelling

My first real foray into public schools was last year when my daughter started Kindergarten.  I spent a great deal of time there and as a result had numerous opportunities to look at student work posted in the hallway.   Admittedly, I found myself appalled by the poor spelling of the intermediate elementary grade students.  I began to hear words phrases like "invented spelling" and my first reaction was WHAT?!  What has happened to conventions?  I was deeply skeptical (and fairly uninformed).  As I looked more into this inventive spelling, I discovered the following:



1. A much better phrase (and one that I think would help dispel many parental anxieties and misconceptions) is BEST GUESS spelling.  I mean, really, inventive?  It sounds like you could come up with anything under the sun and it would be acceptable when really in fact, kids are guessing at spelling using their knowledge of phonics.  As such, it can be a pretty useful tool for assessing that knowledge.  Especially in the earlier grades.

2. Part of the de-emphasis on spelling in the early grades is to allow for more emphasis on writing.  Kids who are worked up about spelling everything correctly will spend more time on that than on learning writing and learning to love writing.

So, for a while now I've been thinking to myself that I can hop aboard this Best Guess Spelling train until about the (end of first grade?) second grade.  Then, I can imagine jumping off and boarding the train known as Conventional Spelling.  I think, like the debate about whole language versus phonics in which some had the mistaken impression that whole language meant NOT teaching phonics...the same is true with Best Guess Spelling.  Have some people been left with the impression that we should no longer teach spelling?

So, serendipitously, I went to curriculum night at my daughter's school tonight and her first grade teacher DISCUSSED SPELLING (hooray!).  She uses a program called "Words Their Way" to teach spelling.  Instead of the old fashioned memorize the spelling of individual words method, this method teaches kids to learn common rules and common families.  For example..the long "o".  The long "o" sound can be made using "o: with a silent "e" or a combination of "o" and "a" -- so kids are taught these different ways and they discuss which long "o" combinations most commonly appear in English.  In this way, when they hear a long "o" and need to use best guess spelling, they at least have a place to start from.  GREAT. I was intrigued.  She then said that she does teach them sight words and she expects them to learn how to spell those words correctly as for the most part, these words do not follow conventions (like the word "because" we discussed in class today).  I am curious to talk to teachers in some of the upper grades to see what they are doing about spelling.

I guess in summary, I believe spelling is an important skill.  When and how it is acquired? That is another question.  I am hoping that I can do a bit of research on this and come back to this question another time soon.  Perhaps some of our readings will help?