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Research has indicated that adding mind‐set and self‐regulation strategy instruction to the writers’ workshop framework may improve motivation, independence, and academic success in young writers. Invented spelling can strengthen the relation between phonological and orthographic representations. The authors examined the impact of growth mind‐set instruction on writing using a strategy of “brave spelling” to encourage students to use invented spelling skills to increase the sophistication of their writing. The authors combined research on invented spelling and growth mind‐set to create unique lesson plans focused on the development of word‐reading skills, alphabetic knowledge, and phonological awareness. In 10 weeks, 12 kindergartners bravely spelled 240 different words that conventionally contain five or more letters. This research was incorporated into the “brave spelling” lesson plan. The authors explore how creating a culture of brave spellers is one strategy for helping students write any words they can imagine.

The importance of phonological awareness (PA) for the acquisition of literacy skills has been widely recognized. Across languages, PA is commonly examined using the Oddity test, however, for Chinese-speaking children, Pinyin invented spelling is recommended as being a more powerful tool to assess PA. However, it is still unclear whether this holds true for learners of Chinese as a second language (CSL). To address this issue, we administered an oddity test and a Pinyin invented spelling task to explore Chinese PA in 43 Arabic and 40 English CSL learners at pre-intermediate and intermediate levels. The results generated two major findings. First, Pinyin invented spelling revealed more significant cross-group differences in Chinese PA between the Arabic and English CSL learners than the oddity test. Second, the participants’ performance in Pinyin invented spelling was a stronger predictor of character-reading and character-writing skills than their performance in the oddity test. The overall findings suggest that Pinyin invented spelling may be a more powerful measurement of Chinese PA for CSL learners in comparison to the conventional test, in line with the findings reported for Chinese-speaking children. The theoretical implications for understanding the role of phonological skills in the growth of Chinese literacy skills and practical suggestions for measuring Chinese PA are proposed.

This study examined pinyin (the official phonetic system that transcribes the lexical tones and pronunciation of Chinese characters) invented spelling and English invented spelling in 72 Mandarin-speaking 6th graders who learned English as their second language. The pinyin invented spelling task measured segmental-level awareness including syllable and phoneme awareness, and suprasegmental-level awareness including lexical tones and tone sandhi in Chinese Mandarin. The English invented spelling task manipulated segmental-level awareness including syllable awareness and phoneme awareness, and suprasegmental-level awareness including word stress. This pinyin task outperformed a traditional phonological awareness task that only measured segmental-level awareness and may have optimal utility to measure unique phonological and linguistic features in Chinese reading. The pinyin invented spelling uniquely explained variance in Chinese conventional spelling and word reading in both languages. The English invented spelling uniquely explained variance in conventional spelling and word reading in both languages. Our findings appear to support the role of phonological activation in Chinese reading. Our experimental linguistic manipulations altered the phonological awareness item difficulties.

Researchers have argued that writing skills have significant implications for developing reading skills. A growing body of research has provided evidence that writing skills, in particular invented spelling, provide unique predictive information regarding future reading skills. This study examined which preschool early writing skills (i.e., name writing, letter writing, and invented spelling) had unique predictive relations with kindergarten and first-grade reading outcomes beyond the predictive contributions of preschool early literacy skills. A total of 252 preschool-age children (mean age = 58.62 months, SD = 3.60) were assessed on early literacy skills and early writing skills. Children completed measures of conventional reading skills in kindergarten and the first grade. Multi-level regression analyses were used to examine the degree to which early writing skills uniquely contributed to later reading outcomes. Results indicated that preschool children’s invented spelling contributed unique variance to later reading outcomes beyond the contributions of early literacy skills. The results of this study suggest that, in addition to measures of early literacy skills, measures of invented spelling may be useful in the early identification of children at risk of reading difficulties.

A central goal of science education reform is for students to participate in scientific sense making rather than to merely acquire science facts. However, even in classrooms utilizing reform-based pedagogies, students are typically allowed to construct knowledge only insofar as they construct expected knowledge. In this report and reflection, we use activity theory to demonstrate how this pervasive tension between learning correct ideas and constructing one’s own ideas often results in unacknowledged slippage between competing activity systems within reform efforts. We use an analogy to the domain of spelling to introduce invented science—a framework for describing the activity of science learning that reduces this slippage by giving knowledge construction true priority over the canon. We describe the origins and purposes of invented spelling to theorize the nature of learning in invented science. We conclude by articulating the theoretical and practical implications of this analogy for science teaching and learning.

Before formal instruction, preschoolers represent words in print in various degrees of conventionality. Unlicensed letters are letters that have no connection to the word that the child is aiming to write; they are neither licensed by phoneme-grapheme rules nor by orthographical representations in the mental lexicon. In the current paper, we explore the characteristics of unlicensed letters in the written products of Hebrew-speaking children. Specifically, we examined the role of statistical learning in predicting specific categories of unlicensed letters in preschoolers’ spelling, focusing on letters that are present/absent in the child’s first name, letters that are more/less frequent in the Hebrew scripts, letters that can spell vowels/consonant, letters that are visually similar/dissimilar, and letters that are easy/difficult to produce graphically. We also evaluated the role of the children’s writing level and individual indices (age, gender, socioeconomic status, length of the first name) in predicting the use of these categories. The writing outputs (N = 733 words), written by 152 preschoolers (M = 63.9 months, SD = 6.90), were analyzed and yielded 2109 unlicensed letters. Results indicated that the unlicensed letters in children’s early spellings contained significantly more letters with high frequency in Hebrew texts, consonant letters, letters that are visually similar to other letters, and letters that are easy to produce graphically. The child’s writing level, age, gender, and length of the first name, uniquely explained the use of each of the categories of unlicensed letters. Parents and teachers should learn about children's writing and spelling development to support their writing appropriately.

Researchers and educators use the term emergent literacy to refer to a broad set of skills and attitudes that serve as foundational skills for acquiring success in later reading and writing; however, models of emergent literacy have generally focused on reading and reading-related behaviors. Hence, the primary aim of this study was to articulate and evaluate a theoretical model of the components of emergent writing. Alternative models of the structure of individual and developmental differences of emergent writing and writing-related skills were examined in 372 preschool children who ranged in age from 3 to 5 years, using confirmatory factor analysis. Results from the analyses provide evidence that these emergent writing skills are best described by three correlated but distinct factors: (1) Conceptual Knowledge, (2) Procedural Knowledge, and (3) Generative Knowledge. Evidence that these three emergent writing factors show different patterns of relations to emergent literacy constructs is presented. Implications for understanding the development of writing and assessment of early writing skills are discussed.

This intervention study tested whether invented spelling plays a causal role in learning to read. Three groups of kindergarten children (mean age = 5 years 7 months) participated in a 4-week intervention. Children in the invented-spelling group spelled words as best they could and received developmentally appropriate feedback. Children in the 2 comparison groups were trained in phonological awareness or drew pictures. Invented-spelling training benefited phonological and orthographic awareness and reading of words used in the intervention. Importantly, the invented-spelling group learned to read more words in a learn-to-read task than the other groups. The finding are in accord with the view that invented spelling coupled with feedback encourages an analytical approach and facilitates the integration of phonological and orthographic knowledge, hence facilitating the acquisition of reading.

Writing skills grow along a predictable developmental trajectory, yet what is considered “writing” can look very different in preschool and early elementary classrooms. The way in which writing may look in each setting reflects that teachers are working with different sets of learning standards, with different conceptualizations of writing to inform their pedagogical decisions (Tortorelli et al., Reading Research Quarterly, 57(2), 729–752, 2021). These differences translate into varied expectations for what young children are capable of and how these skills should be supported (Tortorelli et al., Reading Research Quarterly, 57(2), 729–752, 2021). We recommend that across the 3–6 age band teachers provide meaningful writing experiences that link composing with writing concepts and transcription skills. This article provides concrete instructional strategies to support an integrative approach to writing and includes guidance for writing concepts, handwriting, spelling, and composing to support a successful preschool to kindergarten writing transition for children.

The purpose of this qualitative study was to describe the verbal interventions produced by teachers to support pupils’ development of orthographic knowledge through invented spelling in three research-based intervention conditions: conventional (C condition), proximal (P condition), and progressive complexification (PC condition). We recorded six kindergarten teachers from Quebec and their 98 French-speaking kindergartners as they produced invented spellings in small groups. We then carried out an inductive thematic analysis of the teachers’ verbal interventions (N = 1777). Results revealed four categories (with subcategories) of interventions, which mainly involved phonology and graphemes. Interventions concerning strategies for creating or memorizing spellings were observed less frequently. These results are discussed in the light of research on the impact of invented spelling.