Teaching writing to kids phonetically

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

My son just started kindergarten last week in the Jacksonville Public School system. This week the school had an open house to tell parents about the curriculum and various ins & outs of the classroom setting. Several things the teacher said seemed bass-ackward to me.

One of the things that set off an alarm was when the teacher said that initially the children would be taught to write phonetically, and that as the years went by they would gradually begin to write properly as they learned to read better; that way their reading and writing skills would develop at the same pace.

I’ve been working with him since he was a baby, so my son can already read on about a 2nd or 3rd grade level, and can write/spell pretty well. He’s already able to wrap his head around the idea that not all words look the way that they sound, and that some letters are silent, and other goofy writing esoterica. I’m afraid that teaching him to write/spell phonetically will undo a lot of the good work I’ve already done.

I voiced my concerns to his teacher, and she politely explained that all of the children are taught exactly the same and no alternatives are available to students who already have a well-developed reading and writing background. After this explanation, I started toying (again) with the idea of homeschooling, private school, or Montessori.

Am I just being one of those late-in-life parents who overthink every tiny aspect of their child’s life? Is this really a big deal? Are there any other parents who’ve had to deal with this?

2

My brother was taught this way and he became a terrible speller. I had no idea that they were still teaching this-he was a kindergartener in the mid-80’s. To overcome what he was being taught in school, my mom broke out flashcards and quizzed him every night on his spelling. Today his spelling is actually pretty decent, but it is no thanks to phonetic spelling, in my opinion.

My spelling is a lot better than his and I learned the old fashioned way-spelling rules, exceptions and plain memorization.

3

I feel like an old fogey when I say this but I learned how to spell properly from the get-go, forty years ago and I really don’t understand what is so difficult (for the average child) about it now. It seems to me that if they learn how to spell phonetically first, then they have to unlearn it when they’re taught to spell correctly, so why not teach them correctly to start with?

My children go to an IB school and spelling has always taken a back seat and it drives me nuts. They don’t want to stifle the creative process, fine, but my two are in grade 6 and are rubbish at spelling where I was an excellent speller at the same age.

I’m with you in thinking it’s a big deal.

4

My sister home schools, and one of the reasons is because she doesn’t like the public schools, especially how they teach (or don’t) math.

If you’ve got through that much work to teach her to read, I’d be concerned about her being confused.

My sister belongs to a homeschooling message board, which seems pretty good.

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/

5

What would worry me more than the methods the school are using (I assume that there must be some kind of reasoning or research behind it?) is the comment about all children being taught in exactly the same way, no exceptions. Forcing a kid to re-learn to write in a completely different way, only to go back and re-learn again when they get old enough for the proper spellings seems like it will be confusing. Maybe a teacher will come in and explain this logic. Surely a teacher would recognize that children who already have some literacy skills will need this program adapting for them.

As an aside, my parents told me this story. When I was about four years old I began school (in England, where we start at 4), when my parents were called in. The staff were concerned because I couldn’t seem to hold a pencil at all, I was way behind the other kids and they were worried something might be wrong with me. My parents were confused because at this point I could already write a little bit, so they asked for a demonstration. I sat and struggled with a pencil with a big chunky triangular grip around it. ‘Oh,’ my father said ‘We’ve never used the grips at home, if you just take it off, she can hold it fine.’ My parents were informed that all children were treated the same. They would not take a grip off a pencil for me. If I couldn’t use it, that was my problem. I ended up at a different school. For what its worth, I learned spelling the old fashioned way.

I guess what I’m saying is no matter what method of teaching is in vogue at the moment, one size fits all is never a good approach with kids.

6

Did she say they would require incorrect phonetic spelling of words, or that they’d allow incorrect phonetic spelling? If your son writes “taught” instead of “tawt”, will they mark it wrong? My daughters’ kindergarten had various writing exercises where they were supposed to figure out on their own how words were spelled (apparently my kids hate vowels), since the idea of that particular exercise was to write a story, structure their thoughts, etc, but there certainly weren’t marked down for using the correct spelling of a word. Hasn’t particularly harmed them - the two older ones are in 2nd & 4th grade, and their spelling is fine.

7

I’m with you. I was horrified to learn about my sister’s kids being taught to read with this Whole Language nonsense, which basically means they don’t really know how to read until one day… they just do. I can’t make sense of the teaching philosophy at all.

I can tell you that their spelling, grammar, and writing skillz suck ass and I’d be surprised if either one of them could construct a grammatically correct sentence.

I was a product of learning to read through phonics and I find that invaluable as an editor. These kids today (* shakes fist toward front lawn *) will never have any idea what a schwa or a dipthong is or how knowing that can make you a better speller, reader, and writer.

So yeah, I’d be looking into private or Montessori or some alternative myself. And look at the silver lining: If you put your kids into private schools, they won’t have to take the FCAT!

8

Personally, I’d start interviewing with private schools in my area and see if anything sounds better. That sounds like an absolutely atrocious way of teaching and there is no way I’d let my kid get screwed over my that backwards system.

Get your kid out of there as quickly as you can.

9

My daughter entered kindergarten last year able to read and write. She has an uncanny ability to know how to pronounce difficult words that she has never seen before (we discovered that she could read when she asked us if the sign in front of the bank said “sovereign”, and she pronounced it perfectly). She was also a pretty good speller and would ask us how to spell words if she couldn’t figure them out on her own.

After a few months of kindergarten I noticed that her spelling had gotten worse. My wife explained that they are encouraged to spell words by the sounds in them. So my daughter who used to care about spelling now doesn’t give a crap because the teachers praise anything she writes down, no matter how poorly it is spelled. Awsum.

10

All they need to teach is that F7 launches spellcheck in Word.

11

This may be a dissenting opinion—4th grade teacher here. My understanding of phonetic writing is that,at first, students are encouraged to try and spell words the way they sound.
If they already know how to spell a word, they are not told to spell it differently. Phonetic writing/spelling is used so a child spends time writing and creating and not getting hung up on spelling.
I’m sure the teachers are using some sort of spelling program at that school. And, after my many years of teaching, I’m convinced that strong visual learners are good spellers and the rest are not.

12

This is my take on it. My children were writing in journals almost from the first day of kindergarten. They were encouraged to write a sentence or two, of their own creation (not copying), and they spelled words according to the sounds they heard in the word. Most of the words would be only two or three letters long (the word “and” might be rendered as “nd” for instance) and the sentences only a few words long. Of course, they stringently teach them correct spelling and by the end of the year, you wouldn’t believe the improvement. There was never any detrimental effect on my kids’ spelling or reading–they are all reading above grade level.

13

I have a nightmare where the extraneous apostrophe in a non-possessive case becomes the accepted standard because there’s no one left who knows the difference.

<shudder!>

14

There’s your first problem. At my tutoring job I see (each day) the damage that the JPSS inflicts on our young citizens. I won’t discount the big advantage that free education has over the (expensive) alternatives, esp. in this economy, but your child, esp. if he is gifted (as you seem to intimate) won’t get the education he needs at the public school level here…

…just as long as the JPSS insists on tossing everyone into one big pot and hoping that the best will rise to the top. This “children are taught exactly the same” thing really makes my blood boil. The main reason I tutor, vs. teaching in the classroom, is precisely because I can alter my approach depending on the needs of the individual. Some need tons of structure, some need constant bits of humor and silliness to keep them engaged, etc. etc. I feel your pain; if you wish to discuss this more at length feel free to PM me.

15

I actually have read the premier book on this method. Studies tend to show that students that go through this are more likely to read/write above grade level. I wish I could remember the name of this method.

But, anyways, does the daughter mentioned up above spell the words she already knows incorrectly? Because the whole concept of the method is that you learn to spell correctly later, when it matters more. They are trying to teach kids that writing can be fun, and that it need not be perfect, as you can always fix it later. They want to bridge the gap between a child’s written and spoken vocabulary. And it works. Don’t be so conservative as to assume that what worked for you was the best method.

16

A couple notes from a primary teacher.

First, teaching writing teaches all sorts of important skills. It teaches kids to reflect on their own experiences, to organize events chronologically, to notice detail, to establish setting and character. And, naturally, it teaches students to observe writing conventions.

Your kid may or may not be reading on a second-grade level (more on that later), and may or may not be spelling pretty well. Many children come to kindergarten without having seen many books in their lives. Teachers who teach writing need to teach students all the conventions at the same time as they teach everything else about writing.

Some students will come to school knowing how to spell many words. Some students will come to school unable to sing the alphabet, much less recognize a correspondence between any letter and the sounds it signifies. A teacher needs to have a writing curriculum that can accommodate students where they are. This means that students need to be able to write at a variety of spelling levels.

Now. You say your child is a good speller, but are you usually sitting nearby when he writes? If he’s not sure how to spell a word, what does he do? If he asks you, and you answer him, then you’re providing a resource at home that the teacher cannot provide at school: the teacher probably has around 20 kids to help, and if she’s helping them all spell every word they don’t know, then she’ll have a roomful of kids with frozen pencils, waiting for her to circulate to spell words for them. She’ll be completely unable to confer with children on any other aspect of their writing. She’s much better off accepting invented spelling for the nonce, teaching spelling slowly and methodically, and holding kids accountable only for those words or patterns she’s been able to teach.

Similarly, when you say your kid can read on a second or third grade level, are you certain your child is comprehending on a second or third grade level? Decoding words–being a “word caller,” in kindergarten-teacher-jargon–is much easier than reading and comprehending a story. Many parents believe their child enters kindergarten able to read Moby Dick, but the kid is simply decoding words, and is unable to retell a story worth beans. And if you can’t retell a story, it’s pretty likely you don’t know what you’ve just read.

17

I’ll second TokyoPlayer’s homeschooling forum recommendation; I live there too. :slight_smile: You would be welcome to ask questions and there’s a very wide range of people there; you don’t have to be a homeschooler to join. Feel free also to PM me if you like.

18

Read what LHoD wrote. Comprehend it. Decide if you can live with it. Schools teach to a group - they have to. Class sizes will only get larger. Resources are scarce. They can’t tailor every lesson to every child. This will not be the first time that the school teaches in a way where you go “huh?” If you can’t live with that, homeschool. Or find a private school (or public charter or magnet) who is going to cater to your kid - and you’ll probably discover that in any group setting the best you can expect is 80%.

The good news - my forth and fifth grader were both taught this way. My kids are both somewhere on the gifted scale. They both can spell (my rules bound son better than my daughter, for whom it was permission to not try and spell so hard - but also permission to use words in writing she’d never use if proper spelling were expected). As the classroom gets old enough to be able to use a dictionary, the expectations will change (about third grade). But the class has got to be old enough for the expectations to change for the class.

19

This is definitely true, and one of the great frustrations of teaching is trying to figure out how to accommodate both (to use my second-grade examples) the kid who’s writing lovely eight-page stories complete with chapters and dialog and foreshadowing, and also the kid whose idea of writing a story is to scribble an angry swarmish scribble on the front page and fill the pages with random letters.

However, I do think that a writing workshop with latitude on spelling expectations provides an imperfect solution to this conundrum. When I set kids up in this structure, I can tailor expectations. I sit down with the girl with the chapter story, and I teach her how to use paragraphs in her writing (which, if you think about it, is a pretty abstract notion). I sit down with the boy with the scribble, and I ask him what his story is about, and I teach him to think about it in chronological order, transcribing his story to the page.

Most of the time these students will be writing independently: there’s one of me, 18 of them, and at best each of them will get around 1/18th of my attention (in reality less, since I’ll also be dealing with the chucklehead who decides to throw his crayon at the back of someone else’s head, or the goofball who’s been at the water fountain for two minutes already and shows no sign of settling down to work, or the sudden note from the office that I need to send my assistant to a fifth grade classroom for the rest of the day, or whatever). If I have more rigid expectations on conventions, that independent writing may end up being useless to the first student (since her second-grade-level conventions are already beautiful) and unattainable to the second (since he’s a long way from mastering his kindergarten-level conventions).

In brief, a more flexible approach to writing allows more opportunity for students to work at their own level of challenge.

20

My daughter went thru the Whole Language nonsense in Clay County, FL in the 90s. She’s now a 5th grade teacher who can’t spell for anything. She still asks me to check things she writes. Interesting how the Phonics I learned in the 60s has stayed with me. And 20 to a class - I laugh at 20 to a class. In the midst of Baby Boomery, I had up to 60 classmates in a single room. I guess the difference back then was we knew if we acted up, the teacher would punish us, then tell our folks who would punish us again. [/geezer mode]

Anyway, my daughter is smart. She loves to read. She’s very creative. She just can’t spell. So when she writes, she doesn’t come across as educated. At least she’s aware and does what she can to compensate.

I *hate *Whole Language. Bring back Phonics, dammit!!!