Kindergartners' Development Toward “Invented” Spelling and a Glottographic Theory

✍ Scribed by Constance Kamii; Roberta Long; Maryann Manning

• Book ID: 104353886
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2001
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 205 KB
• Volume: 12
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0898-5898
• DOI: 10.1016/s0898-5898(00)00047-4

✦ Synopsis

Twenty-six kindergartners were individually interviewed once a month from October to May with two tasks. The children were first asked to write seven wordsÐcement, ocean, punishment, motion, tomato, karate, and vacation. Two sentences (Daddy kicks the ball'' and The man is eating a cookie'') were then written in the children's presence and read to them before they were asked where ball,'' daddy,'' etc., might be written. This longitudinal study verified the four levels in both tasks previously found in cross-sectional research. Level 2 in the writing task was often found to last a surprisingly long time, revealing children's belief about our writing system that words are written with three, four, or five letters or a minimum and maximum number of letters. Before ``invented'' spelling, young children hold beliefs that are different from the principle underlying our writing systemÐthe alphabetic principle of basing writing partly on the sounds of speech.