Writing/Spelling/Reading

It was fun to have t-shirt day Friday. Someone asked "What does your shirt say?" Of course, I did not tell them, but encouraged them to read it. And they could read Be an example. (Though the last word was a challenge). Then someone noticed that Be was spelled wrong. "It's supposed to have two E's," he said. So we talked about how bee and be were different. Then we read other people's shirts. It was a fun five minutes of literacy at the start of the day.

The conversation reminded me of a blog post about spelling from another Kindergarten teacher (you can read it here) that I have been meaning to share. I tried to put quotation marks around the parts that are direct quotes, but some is modified.


"Please, please, please don't do too much correcting of spelling at this point. Children are likely to spell according to the system they've been taught, overgeneralizing the information we've taught."

They might spell school "skool" (unless they look at it on their shirt's logo), use "yous" or "yooz", works "werx", etc. These misspellings really show growth and understanding of letters and sounds. "If you correct sensible misspellings you do a great disservice to your child because you fail to appreciate the risk they have taken to communicate with you in writing. The most likely result of your corrections is to discourage your child into not trying anymore with the result that they will be an even poorer speller in years to come."

"Celebrate your child's earliest writing, and do your best to figure it out." It's okay to ask them to read it to you. :)

"By all means, if THEY ASK you to correct their spelling, go ahead."


So if you're ever wondering why I don't correct all their spelling, now you know.
That being said, I love the notes your children write to me. :) Thank you for the birthday cards and thank you for encouraging reading and writing at home!