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00:00:01
When Do I Start Correcting My Child's Spelling?
611 Plays27 days ago
In this solo episode, Miss Beth from Big City Readers answers parent question "what do I say when my child asks if this right and when do I start correcting their spelling?"
We explore how to support children, especially perfectionists, when they ask, "Is this right?" while using inventive spelling in their writing. We’ll dive into how to encourage confidence, focus on the learning process, and promote a growth mindset instead of emphasizing perfection.
- What is Inventive Spelling? A natural part of early writing development where children use the sounds they know to spell words and why it’s important to let kids experiment with language without worrying about correctness at first.
- Challenges for Perfectionist KidsPerfectionists may fear making mistakes or need constant validation and how focusing too much on being "right" can prevent them from growing as writers and thinkers.
- How to Respond When They Ask, "Is This Right?"
Tips for positive responses that encourage learning over perfection:Praise their effort and creativity and how asking guiding questions to help them think through their spelling will help.
Reframing mistakes as part of the learning process. - Encouraging a Growth Mindset in Writing How to use growth mindset language: “You’re getting better every time you try!” or "You haven't learned that YET."
Reinforce that mistakes are part of learning and that every attempt is progress.
Takeaways for Parents and Educators:
- Focus on effort, process, and creativity, rather than perfection.
- Create a supportive environment that builds confidence in writing.
- Celebrate small wins and encourage kids to keep trying without fear of making mistakes.
If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to subscribe and leave a review! Share your own experiences with perfectionist kids or ask questions for future episodes. Stay tuned for more tips on nurturing confident readers and writers!
Courses mentioned in this episode:
Writing and Drawing (heavy mindset focus) for preschool and kindergarten
Spelling Rules for second and third grade
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction & Topic Overview
00:00:04
Speaker
Welcome back to the plan words podcast. It's me miss Beth and I'm so sorry in one of my recent episodes I said it's me Beth and so many of you said please never refer to yourself as Beth instead of miss Beth So I'm so sorry for that jump scare I gave many of you but today I'm just gonna do a solo episode answering some of your questions that have been actually coming up a lot lately and That is how to respond to encourage your child's confidence in writing when they say, is this right? So we're talking about inventive spelling um as the most common, as it's most commonly referred to, inventive spelling. And we're specific specifically going to look at it from the perfectionist kid's lens, but this is going to help everyone. So but a lot of you have said like, my child is so focused on getting it right. That's all they say. Like I'm trying to show them
00:00:58
Speaker
to stretch it out. I listened to the last episode about stretching it out. I read your blog post about inventive spelling. Um, and then what do I do when they say, is it right? I don't want to lie. What do I do? So we're going to talk about that today and a couple other things, whatever comes up, you know? Um, so if you have a child that is learning to write, and this is the stages between like two to eight, like we're continuing this learning to write process for many years.
Stages of Writing & Correcting Spelling
00:01:29
Speaker
One, you might notice if you took my ABC workshop, I kind of go over the trajectory of the writing process from scribbles to inventive spelling, but um we're going to specifically in this one talk about when they ask if it's right. So if your child is four or six or seven,
00:01:49
Speaker
The same phrase I'm going to teach you is the one that I want you to use, but I'm also going to answer when we start correcting and how we do that. So don't worry. I'll give you some help there too. So it seems kind of tricky to support your child when you want them to have the right answer. You want to say, yes, that's right. Um, and especially if you have a perfectionist, they're going to ask this, but it's important here to build on confidence in writing over perfection.
00:02:19
Speaker
And it's not going, especially if you already have a perfectionist, it's not going to happen overnight. It's not going to happen in one time of saying these phrases I'll give you, but it's important to help them feel confident because if they only rely on an adult, they're not really learning to ask themselves um what they need or how to check their work.
Phonemic Awareness & Sound Games
00:02:41
Speaker
So if you have a child that is writing a word, you know,
00:02:47
Speaker
that I like to say, here's what I do, let's stretch it out together. So if you've taken my preschool or kindergarten class, you've seen me model this, but you're going to practice a lot of stretching words really slowly. Say the word is dog.
00:03:03
Speaker
Dog. So before they even get to the stage of writing it, you've played say it slow, say it fast, where you're going to say, I'm going to say it slow, they're going to say it fast. So you might do this with words like dog. And your child says dog. This is an important step in learning how to write because we're doing this just with our ears. And then your child is going to learn how to stretch out the word and listen for all of the individual sounds. Now, I've heard a couple of people say they're confused on sounds versus syllables. So sounds are or phonemes are the small phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a word. So
00:03:45
Speaker
A syllable is the part of a word. So every syllable needs to have a vowel, but not every sound needs to have a vowel because s is a sound. So the letter is s, the sound is s or the phoneme is s, but for sh, it's sh and the phoneme is sh or the grapheme is sh is sh and the phoneme is sh, grapheme is the written representation, phoneme is the sound. So We want to practice hearing the sounds in words. So I would say don't just jump to invent to inventive spelling with your child if you haven't really practiced this strategy because it's not going to make sense. It's kind of like um if you keep saying sound it out, but you haven't really played these sound games where you're sounding it out or stretching it out, then it's not going to make sense to your child.
00:04:40
Speaker
So if we practice these games and practice counting sounds, so sounds not letters. So the word shoe has two sounds. The word mom has three sounds. And we also practice counting syllables. So the word dog has one syllable. The word mom has one syllable. The word said has one syllable. The word said has three sounds. The word said has four letters.
00:05:07
Speaker
so Getting a good grasp on the difference between letter, the difference between sound, and the difference between sound and syllable is going to help you be able to help your child. Then making sure that you're playing all of these phonological awareness games. um No matter the stage that your child is in, it's always going to help them. And I will link my phonological awareness checklist in the show notes to help you with this. um But you know that looks like, OK, what's the last sound you hear in the word milk?
00:05:38
Speaker
You want them to say, ck. Again, this is going to get into how we help with inventive spelling. So we want them to be able to name the sound, and then we want to teach them how to spell that sound. So even though they might know cat is C-A-T, start by building their confidence in asking them, OK, what's the first sound in cat? And have them, they might say C, and then you say, oh, you got the letter, but what's the sound? We want them to start being able to name the sound. This is going to help a lot in inventive spelling.
00:06:08
Speaker
So then let's say we're at the stage where your four-year-old is asking, how do I write this word? And you've played a lot of these sound games. So you are ready. You're going to say, oh, let's stretch it out together. They might ask you how you spell the word said. Maybe you've got a ah fancy writer and you're going to say, oh, let's stretch it out really slowly. Said. And then you're going to ask them to name the sounds they hear.
00:06:38
Speaker
or just count them. So see if they can count those sounds. This is going to give you some really good insight into what your child is able to write and understand versus what they're not ready for.
Modeling Inventive Spelling & Building Confidence
00:06:51
Speaker
So if they count the sounds said with some help and modeling from you, and they're able to count that there's three sounds instead, then they're ready to start to write the word. If they can't tell you how many sounds there are, then of course them spelling that word correctly is actually not really going to do anything. um We need them to be able to count the sounds and then um and then start to practice writing the letter that matches. So let's say they're doing said and let's say they do say it's three sounds. What I would do is I would model that with your child. I would put three dots on a piece of paper. S-E-D.
00:07:32
Speaker
I would just touch each dot as I am saying each sound. ed I would do this after they already were able to count it with just their fingers. and ah Then I would touch the first dot and say, what is this sound? And they would say, let them write the sounds that they do know. If they touch the middle dot, and this is just a child that you're teaching inventive spelling to, and they say, yeah and you Again, remember, this is your four-year-old. um And you say, what sound do you think it is? Or what what what letter spells that sound? And they say, ah e, e. Then I would say, I hear that too. You'll know from this exercise if your child is ready to learn the irregular pattern and to introduce that, or if they're ready to learn a longer pattern. So if you took my recent um workshop
00:08:27
Speaker
It was all about the progression to follow, but you don't have to follow the exact progression. You can teach a rule to your child when it comes up. I would just not recommend teaching every rule um every time it comes up because that can be pretty overwhelming to a child. So when your child writes S-E-D, that's exactly what you're going to say. I hear those sounds too. But only if you hear those sounds. If your child writes S-P-D, they are not ready to have to to write out all those sounds. You can encourage your four or five year old to just write the beginning and the ending sound. Those are usually the ones that happen first. So usually kids can start to name beginning sounds before anything else. And then it's usually ending sounds and then we get the middle sounds. So again, you're going to make sure that you're playing all of these games with just what sound do you hear at the end of this word? What sound do you hear at the beginning?
00:09:23
Speaker
And then they'll start to be able to use this strategy when they're writing words. So if you're, so if you think about it, sound versus letter, think about like the word apple. um You might say to your child, like, apple, apple, ah, ah, ah, what's the first sound in apple? So many kids say, A, apple, because we do practice that. It's it's a thing that happens in preschool. It's, it's not,
00:09:53
Speaker
Not great, not bad. You know, it's just something that happens. Be ball. But they're not fully understanding the connection between the letter and the sound. It's just kind of like something that happens in a preschool classroom. So if you can really help your child understand the connection between the letter and the sound, that is going to help their inventive spelling so much and their writing confidence so much. um So if you think about the word Apple,
00:10:21
Speaker
Like just to take it a step further, say what's the last sound you hear in Apple? We want them to say, oh, we don't need them to know that an E is the last letter when they're learning about sounds in words. So it might seem like counterintuitive to a lot of people who don't spend every waking moment studying how kids learn how to read, um but it's going to be so much more beneficial to your child. If you can have them focus on the sounds,
00:10:50
Speaker
and not the letters. And then when they go to do some inventive spelling, they know exactly what to do. So inventive spelling is using sounds that children know to write their words, even if it's not perfect yet. I love when we're talking about perfectionist mindset, I love adding that word yet. And I don't know how to tie my shoes yet.
00:11:18
Speaker
This is a great way that we encourage kids to have a growth mindset and to get out of doing everything perfectly and just knowing that they're still learning how to do new things. So if they're giving you some pushback around inventive spelling, like just tell me, or if you've gotten into a place where you have already been telling them how to spell words and now you're trying to backtrack, it's going to be a little bit trickier. But I would say you're still learning how to spell that. You don't know how to do that yet.
00:11:46
Speaker
Um, and you can just say, my friend, Ms. Beth said, this is actually how you grow really strong writing muscles is you let your brain think about what it could be. There is a right way to do it. If you have your perfectionist, you can say there is a right way to do it, but Ms. Beth said it's even better for writers. This is what expert writers do. They think about what sounds they hear and they think about what it could be. That's one way to do it.
00:12:13
Speaker
You could also say, stretch it out, and then we'll look at it together. But if your child is super off on the spelling of a word, then that is your sign to go back to just helping them notice the beginning sounds.
Practical Activities for Confidence in Writing
00:12:26
Speaker
So the first sound. So one of the ways I would do that is the games to play in the car. Another way is in a picture they draw, have them label the first part um or the first sound of each of the parts. So maybe it's a pumpkin. Maybe they drew a pumpkin. It's fall.
00:12:42
Speaker
And they put a S next to the stem, a P next to the pumpkin. Maybe they're in the picture and they put an M for me. We want to give them that confidence that they can do part of it. They don't have to know how to do all of it. So if we just, we just got to get kids out of that mindset of thinking that they can only write if they can write the whole thing, but helping them by knowing you can say, good writers start by labeling the first sound.
00:13:13
Speaker
and start there. So if they're just doing a whole mess of sounds, that is your sign to go back to just do beginning sounds. um Inventive spelling is a natural part of the writing process for early learners. And it's a great way for kids to experiment and show us um what they know about language or phonics. It's a huge insight to me. um I often will say, send me a picture of your child's writing and I can almost tell you exactly what they need to work on.
00:13:41
Speaker
Um, I think it is the most telling part of what they're understanding and what they're learning and how they're being taught. So I love looking at kids writing. It tells me everything. Um, and you're probably gonna become obsessed with it too. The more you get into inventive spelling, it's going to give you such an insight up into what they are understanding. So, so, so much better than a spelling test. Do not get me started on spelling tests. I hate spelling tests. I like a spelling pattern test.
00:14:08
Speaker
not these are the words they're gonna be tested on because memorizing is not really beneficial in this. So anyway, when do we start correcting? Well, that depends on what they've been taught. So if you're teaching your child at home, you might look at, okay, have I taught them this yet? No, then why would they know how to do it? Let's say the word is green and they can write G-R-E-N. If they don't write E-E, ask yourself, have I taught them this?
00:14:39
Speaker
or ask your, like, look at their spelling tests, look at things that have come home. Has this been taught? Now there is a typical time that rules are usually taught, but it's kind of crazy v that the American education system is so dysregulated because you would think it's just like, oh, everyone in first grade, the third week of first grade learns long E. Wouldn't that be so nice to just like universally know this is what's been taught?
00:15:06
Speaker
I'm working on it. We're working on getting structured, systematic, explicit phonics instruction in the classrooms all over the world. But for now, it's not regulated and parents are often like, how do I know what they've been taught? So one, okay, so if you are teaching your child at home, you know if you've taught that or not. That's one way to look at it. So if you are like, I didn't teach them that, so now I'm going to explicitly teach this, great. If your child's in school and they're in like first grade,
00:15:35
Speaker
They've probably learned a lot of rules and hopefully learned a lot of rules by this point. So you might ask your child's teacher say, Hey, we do a lot of writing and reading at home. I would love to like see just like the rules of when they're going to be introduced. So I know what to hold them accountable to. That should be an easy copy and paste from the teacher. I'm not trying to make teachers' lives harder, but that would really go a long way and show the teacher, Hey, I'm on your team. I'm trying to like keep up with what's happening in the classroom.
00:16:06
Speaker
So asking that is going to be really helpful. But if you can't get that information, then I would definitely just kind of go with what you've taught them. So maybe you're in a big city readers class. You'll know what what rules they've learned in the kindergarten course. you' You'll know what rules they've learned in the first grade course. And you want to make sure that you have repetition of that and then assess if they know it. So I'm not going to hold them accountable to knowing how to correctly spell that pattern unless I have explicitly taught it to them.
00:16:35
Speaker
and I've seen them have real time practice with it. So say you're doing the first grade course with big city readers and you know that this week you practice the C versus K. When do you see and when do you use K? Because they both say, you then have practiced it with your child. You've talked about it. You've written some words about it. You've done work beyond that lesson. Then in your child's writing, if you see that they are mixing up that C and K pattern, well, then you say,
00:17:04
Speaker
Wait a minute. We talked about this. Do you remember what you're supposed to do here? And have them self-correct. Another way to help this perfectionist in your life um with writing is to take the rules that you know that they've learned and write a message to them on a
Supporting Perfectionist Children
00:17:22
Speaker
dry erase board. Like maybe it's just something silly. Maybe it's just an activity you're playing and purposely do the wrong pattern there and have them correct you. Say there's three errors here. Can you find my three errors?
00:17:34
Speaker
So a lot of times it's harder for a child to let admit that they have errors, but to practice um correcting and self-correcting, you could have them look for your errors. That's a great strategy to do. But it's very common for kids um to have a fear of making a mistake, need that validation um or reluctance to try if they're unsure. And especially perfectionists struggle more with inventive spelling because they need constant reassurance.
00:18:03
Speaker
So we want to make sure that we're not focusing so much on getting it right, but helping kids know, actually, it's really good to get it wrong. Again, it's not going to happen overnight, and it's not going to happen from you saying it one time. Get yourself in the habit of saying, it's actually good to mess up. That means I'm growing. um If you're taking any of my classes, you know I say that all the time. But we don't, too much focus on getting it right really stifles creativity and learning. So if we are,
00:18:30
Speaker
worried about getting it right, getting it right. We're losing our creativity. We're losing we're losing so much. And we're teaching kids that they only can trust an outsider. not They don't have what it takes to check their own work. So i when people say, when do you start correcting? I only correct on if I have taught it to them.
Inconsistencies in Phonics Instruction
00:18:50
Speaker
It gets trickier when you're in second and third grade because that's usually when inventive spelling, we like to see it end because that hopefully, if you have science-backed reading curriculum, they have been taught all of the patterns, all the spelling patterns. um Again, it's so unfortunate that we don't know what school, what even classrooms are doing, like different, you know, I have a friend who has two kids in kindergarten, twins, and they're getting completely different curriculum in just across the hall. It's sort of insane, but here we are.
00:19:25
Speaker
I'm just going to, you know, we don't need to fix every school. We, you can teach your child in just a couple minutes a day at home and I need to keep reminding myself of that.
Parental Support for Inventive Spelling
00:19:34
Speaker
I'm just going to keep sharing the strategies for parents to follow. So when they say, is it right? Say, I hear those sounds too. If you hear those sounds, if you don't, then remind yourself it's time to take a step back and build a stronger foundation with your child. If they get mad when you say, I hear those sounds too, say,
00:19:55
Speaker
I actually am learning that it is smarter to practice the sounds you hear rather than just memorize. It's better for your brain. It helps us grow as writers. And three, let your child see you stretch out and use inventive spelling. So I like to spell at the child's approximate level. And if you've taken my ready to write course, you know this, but I do not spell things perfectly. I spell things how they might hear it.
00:20:24
Speaker
but a little bit ahead. So I, if your child is able to say in the word chocolate, they hear C H the digraph C H cause they've been taught that and they hear T at the end. I might show them how to stretch out chalk and add all OC. So I might spell chocolate C H O C T chocolate. That might be the sounds that your preschool or kindergarten are here.
00:20:51
Speaker
that That's probably like more than you're, if you're very new to this, that's probably more than a lot of them are hearing. But showing them a couple of times a day how to get to the next level is really um helpful. So a couple of things for the kids who are going to push back on, is this right? i You can add in remember like kind of tried to get out of the habit of saying right and wrong or yes and no or not yes and no or good and bad. um Actually yes and no too. but But and get into the habit of celebrating effort and creativity in the process of learning. So um praise the effort and the creativity. I love how you're using the sounds that you hear and the sounds that you know. Ask questions to your child like what sound do you think would go here? Again, practicing with
00:21:42
Speaker
drawing the lines or the dots or sound boxes is really going to help your child isolate each sound to know how to build the word. It's also asking the questions of what sound do you think goes here, encourages looking inward, encourages thinking, encourages problem solving, trusting themselves. It's just like a subtle shift that's going to make a big difference. And then reframing their mistakes. So say like, oh, that's an interesting way to spell it. Can you tell me how you figured that out?
00:22:10
Speaker
and have them kind of show you their work. um We don't have to just wait for math to be able to show our work, but have your child show you how they got there. And avoid fixing it immediately. Help kids stay engaged with their own writing um without jumping in to correct their spelling right away is going to help over time too.
00:22:30
Speaker
um And then again, helping encourage that growth mindset. um You're getting better at this every time you try. I can see it. Reminding kids that like when we do stretch out the word and and it it does feel tricky, it's kind of like we're stretching before we go on a big run or we're getting stronger before we can lift something really heavy. um I think we don't do enough, ah don't have enough focus on how mistakes are part of learning and making mistakes means we're growing. So just getting in the habit of just saying that mistakes are are proof that you're growing um and also getting in the habit of making mistakes in front of your child. So um like let them see you stretch out a word when you're making a grocery list, when you're writing an email to someone, let them see that you struggle with knowing how to spell certain words too. And if you can, let them see you use some inventive spelling in your writing as well. um I wouldn't really do this beyond um first grade because hopefully they are starting to learn
00:23:30
Speaker
spelling more spelling patterns by second grade. But the most important thing is to validate your child's effort, focus on their process and progress, and encourage them to keep trying while also helping them be less afraid of making mistakes. So celebrate the small wins, um try to create a supportive, pressure-free environment for writing, and keep the correcting or um like the lesson here to brief and frequent. So maybe not every single word you're saying stretch it out, but a couple of times a day, you're helping them stretch it out in certain words. um And you don't have to do a whole 180. You could say, you know, if they want you, if you've always been telling them how to spell words and you're trying to shift, maybe start with one word. Maybe they're writing a birthday card to a friend and one word you practice stretching it out and writing the sounds that you hear together.
00:24:23
Speaker
slowly but surely it's going to happen over time. But the most important thing is I only hold kids accountable to what they've been taught. So see if you can find out what they've been taught and what you can hold them accountable to. And if I were still a classroom teacher and a parent emailed that I would be overjoyed. So don't feel like you're being annoying. I would be so happy that a parent would want to know what's happening in the class. Teachers spend so much time on their lessons and um i i I just love sharing them. So I don't don't feel worried about like stepping on toes about that. You can say, but can you send me the next couple of weeks of lessons or of of rules that you're teaching or the last couple of months? you know just I just want to make sure I know what to hold them accountable for in spelling. um And have fun. Short, frequent fun. I think that's it. So if you have any cute, inventive spelling pictures, please send them to me.
00:25:21
Speaker
And if you liked this episode and have more questions on the topic, feel free to send an email or a DM on Instagram at big city readers or an email hello at big city readers.com. And if you are like, I'm ready for this next level, my preschooler wants more than my ready to write course is the course for you. It is through drawing and writing. I show you exactly what to do in 15 minute lessons. There are, I think 25.
00:25:49
Speaker
15 minute lessons that you can play over and over on demand. And it's all about mindset and um saying like how to have self talk and what um inventive spelling at this pre reading and writing stage looks like. So I recommend this for preschool and kindergarten. But if you have a first grader who is like really anti writing, they are going to get a huge mindset, confidence boost from doing this course as well.
00:26:16
Speaker
Um, but it's, it is like a bit of drawing and writing. So I usually don't recommend this before four or four and a half. Um, but if you have a child that's already interested, they might be able to do it. So that's ready to write at bigcityreaders.com. I'll link it also in the notes. If you want to look at that, um, also in my kindergarten and first and second grade courses, I teach you in a systematic way, the writing strategies and the spelling strategies and the rules of when to use certain letters, and I do also teach you mindset, my teacher kids mindset around inventive spelling and the learning to read and write journey. So those are the courses that um mostly align with what we're talking about here. I'm ready to write for preschoolers, the Kenoran course, the first grade bootcamp, and the spelling rules for second graders. So I'll link all of those in the notes, message me if you have questions about where your child should start.
00:27:12
Speaker
But remember that you do have what it takes. you have You have exactly what it takes to help your child. And just tiny mindset shifts and tiny phrases, like write it down, write these phrases down. What sounds do you hear? Let's stretch it out. And I hear those sounds too. And slowly over time, you're going to shift into naturally saying those and your child is going to shift into naturally wondering if they are the best person for self-correcting.
00:27:40
Speaker
or if it's you. And so it's it it won't happen overnight, but they might start to go, I don't need to ask, actually. I know I'm going to ask what what sounds do you hear to myself because I know that my dad or my mom or my teacher or my grandma, I know that they are going to ask me that if I go to them instead of what they are what they possibly are right now, which is I know if I go to them, they'll tell me how to spell it. um So it'll be a slow shift, but it will shift, I promise. Stay consistent, keep at it,
00:28:09
Speaker
You are so capable of this and so is your child. And I can't wait to hear how it goes. I will see you next time.