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The present research focuses on the role of invented spelling in early literacy. Invented spelling refers to how children make up their own spellings when writing words. Past educational practice has ranged from encouraging such explorations to dissuading it altogether. The latter approach is often based on fear that children may inadvertently teach themselves incorrect spelling. Yet, there are theoretical reasons to see invented spelling as an important stepping stone on the pathway to literacy. This research project thus addresses three questions. First, does encouraging invented spelling actually help children produce more sophisticated spelling attempts? Second, does this practice help children learn how to read better than the current focus in kindergarten classrooms on sound awareness activities (phoneme awareness). Third, do young children’s attempts to spell in kindergarten predict individual differences in the acquisition of reading and spelling in grade 1?
Two longitudinal studies were conducted, each consisting of four phases. The first phase consisted of recruiting, pretesting, and selecting kindergarten children. In the second phase, children were randomly assigned to and participated in one of three intervention conditions, namely, an invented spelling, phoneme awareness, or storybook reading condition. Children were seen in small groups 2-3 times per week for a total of 16 half-hour sessions. The third and fourth phases were post-tests, with an immediate post-test administered near the end of kindergarten and the delayed post-test in the fall of grade 1. In Study 1, 60 typically-developing children participated, and in Study 2, 60 low phoneme-awareness children were selected from an initial sample of 100 children.
In both studies, we found that children receiving invented-spelling training showed superior invented spelling sophistication relative to the other children. As expected, children did not differ across groups in phoneme awareness and letter knowledge.
Importantly, we found that children in the invented-spelling condition outperformed the other children on a learning-to-read task as well as on a composite measure of reading and spelling that was administered near the end of the kindergarten year. Further, in the follow-up testing in grade 1 for Study 1, the invented spelling group showed superior conventional spelling performance.
In grade 1, measures of word reading and decoding were administered. Longitudinal regression analyses were done to evaluate if invented spelling sophistication measured midway through kindergarten predicted reading and spelling scores in grade 1. As well known, letter-sound knowledge and phoneme awareness measured in kindergarten were shown to be important predictors of literacy. Most important, the results also showed a robust association between kindergarten invented spelling and grade 1 measures of reading (Studies 1 and 2) and spelling (Study 1 only), even after controlling for individual differences in kindergarten letter knowledge, phoneme awareness, and early decoding. These findings support the idea that invented spelling is an important early literacy skill in kindergarten that uniquely predicts initial success in learning to read and spell in grade 1.
The present findings support the view that encouraging and guiding kindergarten children to explore letter-sound correspondences through invented spelling eases the entry into reading. Rather than memorizing words as in standard dictation/spelling teaching, these findings highlight the benefits obtained by having children listen to words, think about the sound structure of what they hear, and then try to map the sounds into print. With feedback that shows children how to more accurately capture the sounds within words, benefits are seen in both spelling and learning to read. Thus, this research supports the view of invented spelling as being a valuable step on the pathway to literacy.
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