Correct Spelling or Inventive Spelling – That is the Question

As I work my way through my new, used Four Blocks book, I was excited to read the writing section. I love to teach writing, but feel that is by far the hardest area for me to teach. I still struggle with topics for mini-lessons and how to balance model, shared, and interactive writing as part of my mini-lesson. In the Four Blocks writing vignette, the authors describe a teacher using modeled writing for the mini-lesson with a focus on think-alouds, using writing resources, and simple editing.

A part of the vignette jumped out at me though as contrary to everything I had been taught. As the teacher was modeling inventive spelling she spelled frightening as “fritning.” I went back and read this part again as I had always been taught and had read that you never intentionally spell a word wrong in front of students. If you are teaching students strong early phonemic awareness and phonics skills, then inventive spelling is the byproduct of students applying the knowledge you have taught them. As teachers we model how to spell/sound out/write words, but never model misspellings.

This point was driven home for me two years ago when I visited a colleague’s classroom. We were spending time observing fellow teachers and I was able to see her lesson during the writing block. She started off with interactive writing as part of her mini-lesson. The word ‘when’ was part of the sentence. When she got to 'when,' the class modeled stretching it out. One boy said, “I think it is w-e-n.” For a kindergartner, this is completely appropriate for that time of year (fall) and I was impressed that he heard the medial sound as well. What I would have done is said something like, “Wow, you are exactly right – all of those sounds are in when! There is actually another letter too, sometimes ‘wh’ makes the /w/ sound and when we spell ‘when’ there is an ‘h’ in the word as well.” This validates the students thinking, but also models the correct spelling for the students who are at that level and ready to internalize that information. Instead the teacher said, “You are exactly right – great job hearing all those sounds!” and wrote ‘wen’ on the paper for 'when.'

The mini-lesson ended and the students went back to their seats for writing workshop. As I circulated talking to students, I stopped to conference with another little boy on his writing. As I saw with him, he was working on the word ‘when’ as well. He started writing and said “when, wwwwwweeeeeeeeennnnnnnnn.” and actually wrote ‘when’ correctly on his paper. Then suddenly he stopped and looked back at the interactive writing paper from the mini-lesson and said, “Oh wait, it’s just w-e-n.”

I didn’t exactly know what to do as he started erasing his work. I mean, what can you say – your teacher wrote it wrong, but you have it right? I tell this story a lot in trainings and professional development because it just hit home how important it is that everything we do as teachers, from actions to writing to reading to speaking, is a model for our students. Everything that is posted in the room or written should be spelled correctly and have correct grammar. It seems like such a simple thing, but I’ve often wondered about that little guy and what other words he learned to ‘misspell’ that year.