Collaborative and Creative Spelling

Dear Reading Teacher, 

My daughter is in a split grade classroom with 1st and 2nd graders. My daughter is in 1st grade. At the beginning of the school year, her teacher asked all the students to write about their summers. During writing time, while my daughter was trying to spell the word, "world", a 2nd grade classmate tried to help her. The only problem is, the 2nd grader told my daughter to spell the word and it was incorrect. I am certain my daughter would have done better on her own. How do I help my daughter sound out words so she can spell on her own? 

Please help me understand.

Signed, 
A spelling-loving parent

A Reading Teacher responds:

Dear ASLP,  

I understand your concern as a parent! I, too, love spelling. There was something about it as a kid that could make me feel accomplished. It seemed concrete, almost mathematical, and I could grasp it.  Not all kids think like this - or get a sense of confidence from spelling the word right. And that's okay for now. I know many adults who are not great spellers - they acknowledge this, use tools to help or ask those around them for help. Those are all great strategies for double-checking your own word work. 

Reading and writing, especially with our youngest, is all about confidence. If they are confident in being creative spellers, they will write more, they will read more and they will get better. Any author will tell you, in order to be a better writer, you have to read, read, read and then write, write, write. Some of the spelling will come from all of the reading that your daughter has yet to do. 

Here are some brass tacks to help you understand what's going on here:

• The word, "world" is actually a tough word for a little kid to understand how to spell. It has an R after the vowel, causing the vowel to not make its normal sound. The "o" in world, doesn't have a short or long o sound. It's what we call an r-controlled vowel word. Other examples of r-control include, girl, car, turn, fern, and bird. 

• Phonics should be taught systematically in schools - meaning there is a research based developmental chronology to teaching how kids learn to spell and interact with words. Most school districts have a research backed phonics program or are using a whole language approach. Developmental spelling means that when I teach a word pattern, it's within the student's grasp to learn it - they see the word in their reading, they hear the word, "the study of word features must match the level of word knowledge of the learner"

• R-control vowel words are considered more difficult and so they are later in the chronology. Usually, I tell parents, when they are concerned about a specific word-learning behavior, to not worry about mastering r-control vowels until about 3rd grade (within word pattern spelling grades 1-4). 

The upshot is that it's okay that your daughter misspelled "world" in first grade. She's not expected to know how to spell that word just yet. And now, you have a window into where she is with her spelling. If you want to make sure that the teacher is aware of the help your daughter is getting from other students during writing time, you can just write a little note on a stick-it and put it on your daughter's writing and send it back to school with her. 
If you want to  

Collaborative spelling, classwork together, scaffolding
R-control (check)
Phonics is systematic (check)
Creativity/confidence
It's okay
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