Recently, I had a conversation with a colleague from a different department. I mentioned I was working on a paper about how teachers perceive parents.
She nodded, and made some comment about how teachers talk about parents.
"I know a kindergarten teacher," she said, "who had a child yanked out of her class the third week of school because the parents were upset that she had not corrected the child's spelling on something."
She went on to say the teacher had tried to explain to the parents that inventive spelling is developmentally appropriate at this age and that correcting the child's spelling this early in her schooling could be detrimental.
"Can you imagine the parents pulling her out of the class the third week of kindergarten over something like this?" she concluded.
When I suggested that maybe the parents were right to be concerned, my colleague clearly thought I was one French fry short of a Happy Meal, as the colloquialism goes.
Really?
Let's first note that such reputable, parent-friendly online sources as Education.com back up this view of invented spelling, noting that it may be frustrating for parents to ignore misspellings but that the important thing is that "Children should feel like successful, independent writers" (para. 5).
But what does developmentally appropriate mean, and why do I call them constricting chains?
Stay tuned.
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