Kindergarten Spelling

Kindergarten Spelling

Have you wondered why your Kindergartener comes home with writing that looks, well, unusual?  You might see writing that looks something like this, "I wt to vu str to sop". (I went to the store to shop). Or like this, "Toda I pd n tu segs"--(Today I played on the swings). 

Kindergartners typically cannot spell conventionally. At this stage of learning, we are teaching students that they are writers---whether or not they can spell conventionally.  They have stories to tell, information to share and books to write.

As adults, we've been writing for a long time! We've had lots and lots of writing practice and can spell most everything conventionally.  For many Kindergartners, real writing, the kind of writing we do in workshop, is brand new. We cannot expect grown-up spelling from novice writers. However, with that being said, students are taught that there is a difference between "kid spelling" and "grown-up spelling". There is no confusion about the kind of spellers that we expect all students will eventually develop into, as they learn and grow as readers and writers.  

Kindergartners are being empowered to write, and to write independently.  Creating independent readers and writers is our ultimate goal.  We help students build confidence in themselves as literacy learners by teaching them from our earliest writers workshop lessons that they can write and they can spell!  

Our first spelling lesson (and one we revisit frequently at this time of the year) was that writers say a word slowly and write the sounds they hear. This is called approximation of spelling, or invented spelling.  Students practice this skill repeatedly and over time, they hear more sounds and write words that look more and more conventional.   With this and other lessons, students are taught that the stories they are writing as a whole are very important, and they cannot get hung up on the conventional spelling of each and every word, or their stories won't get written.  In this way, students typically produce quite a bit of writing at workshop time each day, giving them lots of practice with independent and teacher-supported writing. If conventional spellings were expected, very few students, if any, would get any writing done at all. 


As students are exposed to more and more texts, learn phonics skills, participate in more writers (and readers!) workshop lessons, and have more independent writing time with teacher support, you will see gradual changes in the writing that comes home. Students will begin to write in sentences instead of writing labels or individual words, they will write stories that span several pages and the words they write will begin to be spelled conventionally, or very close to conventionally.  You may already be seeing that your child spells sight words correctly in their writing, some of the time. Words such as "can" "go" "at" and "like". This is a good sign!  Your child is realizing that words have conventional spellings, and they are working to make sure that the words they can spell conventionally, are written conventionally. These writers are on their way!

Give your child time to learn and grow as a writer (and a speller!), and you will see amazing things happen over the course of the year!