Invntiv Speling II: The Happy Medium

Inventive spelling is a topic that runs through my head again and again as I continue my journey in the world of education. I am constantly pondering, "How much 'inventive-ness' is too much?" In previous blogs I have already admitted my love for inventive spelling and how I wish I could convince the world that it's okay to miss spell words as long as meaning and comprehension is not lost. Yet, as an educator I am torn between allowing my kids to be creative and run freely with their writing, and the daunting fear of letting them continue yet another year with incorrect information on the proper spelling of words.

Finally-- some answers! Regie Routman's Writing Essentials touches on this topic in a refreshing way. In the last section of chapter 7, Routman state, "While inventive spelling is great for freeing kids to use words they might not typically write, sometimes we accept inventive spelling for words kids are capable of writing conventionally" (Routman 163). He states that it is reasonable to expect students to be able to spell a bank of words. For kindergarteners, the bank includes "I", "my" and "can." Since students at this stage are using words such as "I", "my" and "can" quite often in their writing, Routman believes that they might as well practice them correctly. Inventive spelling is still okay for words that students would not normally be expected to know (or be able to sound out phonetically), but if they are common words in their writing the expectations for conventional writing should be raised.

This is a refreshing outlook because it is the happy medium I have been searching for. Inventive spelling is okay, BUT it is also okay to ask a student to check his spelling on "was" written as "wz". And just as I was thinking, "Great, but how do I do this effectively?", the next few pages are full of practical applications for any classroom.

Routman suggests constructing Word Walls (Routman 165) with commonly used words that you should expect your students to spell correctly. Other Word Walls can specialized to include content from the unit in study, seasonal words, family words, students names, etc. Additionally, using Word Walls to highlight smaller words within long words will help students foster their ability to spell complex words by breaking them down.

I think Routman is very thoughtful in his approach to inventive spelling, finding a balance that makes me feel confident in given students freedom without sending them off to the 1st grade with "wrong" spelling skills.

Wordle: using cool gadgets for education

Bush's Speech on Afghanistan
Obama's Afghanistan Speech

I got this idea from another blog, Moving at the Speed of Creativity. The idea was to take Obama's latest speech on Afganistan and imput into the fancy Wordle program to visual annalyize the speech. Wordle takes text and transforms it into a word graphic, with the text size increasing with the amount of times each word is shown (Jane showed us this tool last year).

I never really put too much thought into how to use the tool, aside from making a fun logo for my myspace account or whatnot. But after reading that blog, I realized that it can be a wonderful annalyitical tool for large amounts of text. I took it a step further and entered in Bush's speech about Afganistan from 2001. Comparing the two speeches using the Worldle designs makes a large visual impact.

In Bush's 2001 speech, 'military' is the big stand alone. In Obama's 2009 speech, 'Afganistan' dwarfs the other words. 'America' is far more present in Bush's speech than Obama's. Obama's visual speech has 'people' in large print, whereas Bush's visual depiction shows many synonyms for 'terrorist' and 'outlaw' verses 'friends' and 'children'. Does this mean Bush is a more creative speech writer? Does it mean Obama sees all people more equally? You cannot tell from the visual graphics a lone. But, using these tools in conjuncture to reading the full text will allow students to gather a better understanding and perhaps an insight into 'reading between the lines'.

And just out of pure curiosity, here is a Wordle of my blog :)

Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird is almost like a collection of quotable lines and interesting conversation starters. She has a way of portraying so much of her personality (voice) in her writing in an utmost honest way. Just as her story starts off, good writing begins with telling the truth. Lamott illustrates this within her own writing page after page. She also has a wonderful knack for creating colorful ways of describing her concepts of good writing.

This is particularly true on page 110-111, where Lamott recalls an old Mel Brooks routine where a psychiatrist tells his patients, "Listen to your broccoli, and your broccoli will tell you how to eat it." She continues to explain how she would retell this to her students to help them reclaim the innosence and freedom of the childhood mind. She asks them to listen real closely to hear the faint voice of their character and listen to what they want to do next, what they want their next adventure to be.



I think this is a very important concept for young writers to be aware of. As students attempt to write a fictional story they often ask you as a teacher, "What should come next?" It is important to encourage them to push their minds further-- to continuely think of more detail and creativity. The idea of "listening to your broccoli" is a cute way for students to visualize this concept. By taking the time to stop and really just think about what the character would want to do or how they would do it, our writing takes on a life of its own. It is at this point that writing turns from well writen to wonderfully illustrated prose.


Lamott's ability to take extremely vague concepts and approach them with very concrete images is the ultimate key to being a good teacher. In this way she is able to effectively show her students how good writing is achieved.

Is Writer's Workshop Appropriate for All-Ages?

I am one of the biggest fanatics when it comes to writing. I believe that students should be allowed to write about whatever they are excited to write about. Does it matter if their story is about last week's awesome soccer game or that one time that they got a high score on their favorite video game? In my opinion, if the writing is well done then the student should have the freedom to choose a topic that interests them. So many young boys dread writing-- or should I say, they dread writing 3 pages about Thanksgiving Dinner, using descriptive writing about smells and textures to put the reader right at the dinning room table. But allow them to write about that amazing hiking trip they went on with their dad over the summer and watch the descriptive text form naturally as their excitement leads them to describe just how awesome the hike was.

Writer's Workshop facilitates this freedom. And for that reason, I am a fan of the general concepts involved in Writer's Workshop. However, I feel that maybe too much freedom is being delt out in the wrong places. The program requests an hour of writing, generally speaking 'free-writing' every day. Then each day, the student is introduce to one new concept to incorporate into their story. One day it is "how to make a list" another day it is a new prewrite style. And this is all good... almost.

My biggest problem with Writer's Workshop is it's massive attempt to unify how writing is taught across the board-- across schools, districts and grades. And here inlies my issue. How should a fifth grader and a kindergartener be learning the same thing? Some writing skills are transferable, like pre-writing styles. Others are simply not. Teaching a kindergarten how to edit their story when they cannot even form complete words just is not helpful. I understand the idea is that they will be intoduced to these concepts early on in their education and become more comfortable using them as their skill progesses, but it seems overdone at times. Kindergarteners who have a very pre-emergent writing level (as in "I went to the park" reads "Wt to t pk") usually cannot recall what their story says a week later (as opposed to when you ask them about it when they are in the middle of writing it). Having them return to a piece they wrote a month ago and asking them to edit it, is really in a sense having them make a carbon copy of a carbon copy. They basically retell a story with less memory and detail as the original, and we as teachers are supposed to tell them that that makes them a better writer?

I like Writer's Workshop, I just wish that it was used as a guideline (like in some schools) rather than a god-sent cirriculum like the schools I have been in. It has very good concepts that can be (and should be) easily adapted the proper age group. All in all, I wish districts would trust their teachers enough to offer them the tools and allow them to use them to their discretion.

What to do with the next Dr. Seuss in your classroom?

There are two ways to teach writing: teach the skills and allow it to lead to good writing, or teach how to be a good writer and add in the specific skills along the way. In my opinion, the second option is much more valuable. It is easy to teach a student how to create a proper sentance and correctly place a coma. It is much more of a challenge to analyize how a good writer writes and how a student can grow into such a writer.

The 12 Writing Essentials allow teachers to embrace this idea, and allow students to develope their style and skill simualtaneously. The 12 Essentials are important becuase they can be used across the grades. The ideals and practices are transfered from year to year, only the skills taught are more advanced as the students move from grade to grade.

Some of the Essentials are basic and easily teachable. Writing for a specific reader and meaningful purpose (1) is basic enough to teach at the primary ages and quite necessary for any piece of writing. Determining an appropriate topic (2) is impossible to avoid when starting a piece, but it is important to specifically walk students through this essential part. Presenting ideas in a clear and logical way (3) is the meat and guts of teaching writing. It is so, so important for a teacher to give students a variety of tools to help them organize their writing. Other Essentials are just as vital and more or less easily taught, like elaborating on ideas (4), embracing language (5), engaging leads (7), satisfying endings (8), and correct conventions and form (10).

Other Essentials are less simple to teach. Crafting an authentic voice (6) is probably the most important aspect of good writing-- and the hardest to teach. How do you even begin to teach such a huge topic of individuality and style? You cannot teach someone to be creative and true to themselves. You can give them the tools to find their own creativity and provide an enviornment that is safe for them to explore their voice and stye, but it is still a very abstract idea to teach. On top of that, it is even more difficult to teach voice to a student who is just emerging as a writer. Where do you draw the line between voice and inproper grammer and/or poor writing. Is Hunter S. Thompson a good writer with an excellently authentic voice, or is he a poor writer who throws all regards to grammer out the window? How about Dr. Suess and his dictionary of made up words? In these cases, I think it is in the eye of the beholder. Do you stop the next Hunter or Seuss by emphasizing proper sentance structure and correct spelling, or do you let style and voice develope and blossom?