Journal Entry - Week 3

Prompt from Ch. 3, Fox book:

I do not believe "invented spelling" is harmful to early readers. It should be celebrated! This form of reading or writing expression is explained in Fox's book when he discusses "prealphabetic word learning" and "precommunicative spellers." As I read through the description of how children's skills emerge, beginning very primatively as they relay their own meanings, I thought about parents who are alarmed at what they might consider a failed attempt at spelling/writing. To the contrary, this rather typical staged development in the emergent reader is exciting and affirms that the child is interested in words, meaning, and expression.

As Ann and I got to know our kindergartener, Betsy, from Juanita El last Thursday, we both commented how confident Betsy was as she insisted on writing her responses to the fun interview activity. We are certain, even before administering an ELP, that Betsy most likely does not know many letters or letter sounds. However, she made a valiant effort to construct some of her own words.

Just as we are trying to instill in children a love of learning and a love of books, we should also be striving to encourage children towards a love of their own written words. With Betsy, we felt nervous anticipation as she risked tackling a task with which she was not fully competent. We were pleasantly surprised to witness Betsy's willingness to charge ahead; she did not even express any frustration in the process. I would guess that she has had positive experiences with books and early writing activities.

According to Fox, this early age (pre-K, kindergarten and even early first grade) is the age of experimentation and "eases children" into more challenging strategies in word identification and writing. Their use of partial cues (as Fox describes) is just what they need to test things out as they get closer to decoding the alphabet system. I believe that any small steps forward will help to maintain children's enthusiastic attitude towards reading and writing. I also believe that teachers will need to constantly observe and assess their students' progress as they acquire more information about words.