Learning in the Absence of Education
Essays on Homeschooling
© Beverley Paine
Index
Homeschool
Australia
Thoughts on Spelling
Many people confuse the learning processes involved in reading and writing, and then later, writing with spelling. Are they separate skills, learned in a continuum, or are they learned congruently, each one relying on progress made in the other?
April was writing well before reading 'stories' - but the very act of writing needs some ability to read what has been written. I first realised she could read when, at three, shortly after she began talking in sentences, she announced, to our amazement "Woolworths" as we drove past the store. Then she asked the what the signs on the public toilets said. After that she often tried to read signs. By three and a half she was writing her name, backwards! We wisely ignored other parent’s warnings about dyslexia...
Spelling came naturally to April, but then, she was a ‘sight’ reader - she learned to read by just looking at the words and comparing them to what she heard. She learned to read mostly from an Alhberg rhyming book - 'Each Peach Pear Plum'.
Whenever she read aloud it was interesting to hear her pronunciation of new words. She did her best with whatever tools she had assimilated in learning to read, which was mostly by herself. She only needed to hear the word once to have it down pat. We often mispronounce words as a joke - more a way of life really - and it doesn't confuse any of the children.
For example, we pronounce 'people' - pee-op-pull - more often than not! Roger used to spell the word three or four different ways, and I did correct him a few times, only to see that the next time he'd have another go, spelling it differently yet again, relying on his own strategies, not mine. I have come to trust this strong sense of independence and experimentation, and now respect the children’s own self correcting methods.
Eventually, after a couple of years of mostly non-writing behaviour, he suddenly could spell the word. I am sure our home grown pronunciation didn't help or hinder at all - he used to spell it peepul, peopull, and a lot of other ways - he used sight, phonics, you name it. Eventually he started writing it the way it looked in the books he had begun reading more. Conformed to convention, you might say.
Spelling is interesting in the way it develops, especially with that wonderful stage of 'invented' spellings. I love the way my then six year old friend Madeleine would write, and the confidence with which she read her words aloud to me. Her sentences often took quite a bit of deciphering by us 'English' writers! Within a year her spelling began to take on more of a traditional appearance, and the speed with which she could read her own writing improved. By this time Madeleine was a competent reader of all manner of texts.
I have seen toddlers as young as two repeatedly, and with amazing accuracy, decode scribble
as elaborate sentences. Are they reading and writing? Or just remembering, using whatever cues
lie on the page, meaningful only to them? I prefer to interpret this activity as reading. As the
scribbles eventually develop into rounded shapes and lines it becomes apparent that these young
people are writing, and wanting to record their thoughts, just like older people. If the motivation
for recording is there, then it is writing. If what is recorded is interpreted by the writer and
others, then it is reading! But spelling is another matter. That is a convention of writing, like
grammar and punctuation. These are the mechanical aspects of writing we can all learn over time, and it does take time to learn them. Why should there be
such a hurry to master them?
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Excerpt from Learning in the Absence of Home Education: Essays on Homeschooling
© Beverley Paine, 1999
