The earliest stages of writing look very little like what you would normally consider writing. In fact, the earliest stage consists of nothing but scribbles! Hand a toddler a crayon and you will be given a page that more closely resembles a Jackson Pollock painting than it does the works of William Shakespeare. However, don’t be fooled into thinking that those scribbles are meaningless. Even at this scribble stage, children are learning that marks on paper have meaning.
After pages of total scribbles, random letters start to appear along with the scribbles in the next stage. Usually beginning with the letters in the child’s name, these capital letters appear at random across the page. Again, even in this stage, the child is experimenting and discovering that letters convey messages. In later stages children will often write only the beginning letter sound to represent each word in the sentence they are writing. Again, this progression shows another step in the understanding that sounds can be written down.
Later still comes the inventive spelling. Inventive spelling is another step in learning how to write. When children use the phonemic sounds that they already know to write new words, they are problem solving. At this stage, it is tempting to want to correct every mistake that is made but it is also important to not discourage your child. At this inventive spelling stage, select one or two words from your child’s writing to focus your child’s attention on. For those one or two words, discuss and practice the correct spelling, then post the correct spelling of the word(s) on the wall where your child can refer to the word often. You may also choose to practice building that word with letter tiles and continue to practice writing the word correctly throughout the week. Again, do not feel that you need to correct every misspelling in your child’s work at this stage! When too many words are tackled at once, the child can be left feeling discouraged and reluctant to attempt free writing in the future.
Encourage every stage of writing and celebrate the written word!