Understand The Stages Of Early Writing Skills

It’s very important for you to understand the stages of early writing skills. You want to know what you should expect of your child and how their skills should develop. First, your child will be able to hear, and subsequently write, initial letter sounds. This is the first letter in the word. Your child will start off by writing usually just the first letter in the word. Next, your child will start to hear medial consonant sounds. These are consonants within the word, usually those beginning a syllable. For example, if your child is trying to write a difficult word like caterpillar, they will probably write something like ctrpl. They will hear letter sounds within the word and try to record as many of those sounds as they can. They will also then start to retain final letter sounds, which are the last letter in the word.

They typically stick with consonants at first, and then start to add in medial vowel sounds as they go. Medial vowel sounds are the vowel in the middle of the word. They usually manage a and o first, and have difficulty distinguishing i and e from each other. They usually don’t know what to do with u for a while. U doesn’t tend to make its own sound, but rather merges with the consonants around it. For awhile, they will mix and match their vowel sounds. They will also have difficulty with letters that have multiple sounds, such as interchanging c and k, or not knowing if they should use a c or an s for that ess sound.

As you support your child through this writing process, remember that children need a lot of praise as they go, so don’t get frustrated if there are setbacks. Children also sometimes start reversing letters long after they seemed to have mastered their correct formation, and this is normal. Children also usually start writing with only uppercase letters but may mix and match with some lowercase letters. They may also know how to write whole words that they memorized, such as mom, dad, and their first name. As I mentioned previously, this is not the time to correct your child’s spelling, so you should be encouraging them to sound out their words and spell as they see fit.

To give you an example of burgeoning writing skills, I’d like to share some samples from the students in my kindergarten class. We were doing a unit on squid, and I had them write recipes including squid as one of the ingredients. As an early example of writing skills, watch how this student spells the following words:

Why do you think the student is starting the first three words with a c? The child is using the c sound for the s sound, because she knows the c sound can make the s sound and overuses that rule. How is a child supposed to know when to use the c and when to use the s? Only time and practice will solidify the specific instances in which she should use either rule, so for now, it’s great to let her spell and enjoy the process of writing without trying to correct her before she’s ready.

Notice how the student, for the word sprinkles, recognized several other consonant sounds in the middle of the word, such as the r and the k. Because there are so many consonants within that word, she tried to retain as many as she could, and the r sound clearly stuck out, because she used it twice. Notice how for slime, she heard the initial and final consonants, and for syrup, she heard the initial, medial, and final consonants. For goo, she did her best to make that double o sound, trying on y to see if that might work. Vowel pairs are very difficult for students to learn to write and take a long time to acquire. For eggs, she got both the initial sound (initial vowels are harder to decipher than initial consonants, so she switches out e for a), and the final sound.

Let’s look at a student who is a little more advanced:

Here you can see the child understands some consonant pairs, such as fl and sh. Because this child is still in kindergarten, we want to encourage this type of inventive spelling as he works out certain writing patterns on his own. It will give him more ownership over the writing experience, rather than having a parent just tell him how to spell the word. However, it’s great to give your child extra praise when they do identify a correct sound that’s difficult to spell, like that fl and sh.

Notice how the student is still working on medial vowel sounds, such as using the aw for flour and the o in water. Aw is a very difficult sound and takes some time to learn, and if you think about the word water, the vowel you actually hear between the w and t is a short o sound (o as in octopus). The student correctly identified all of the initial sounds in the words, as well as all of the final sounds in the words. This is a great achievement and shows that the student can hear the words that he is trying to sound out. At this stage, praise continues to be important, and it is still too early to correct child’s spelling unless they directly ask you how to spell something. They need to be encouraged to hear the sounds on their own so that they can continue to build this skill.