(Continued from previous message)
spell thousands of words in one shot...come on Bob let's be realistic.
They do learn to spell some words correctly but one can't possibly teach
or expect them to learn them all in one shot! So what do they do in the
meantime? Seems to me they have two choices - not write at all or
experiment with the sounds or letters that they do know.
BM> DT> Any knowledgeable early childhood teacher understands this.
BM> Why, because they learned about it in a theory/methods class as an
  > undergrad?
No, not because they learned it as an undergrad but because they see it
in practice every single day of their teaching career.
BM> DT> There is plenty of research data to show that transitional spelling
  > DT> is natural.  People who don't understand the process are often quick
  > DT> to criticize.
BM> Okay I'll take your word for that if you will cite one research
  > project that was validated by another independent group of
  > researchers using exactly the same thing as the original (allowing of
  > course that a different group of children would be involved).
My professor at University validated the work done by Gentry and others
- I don't know if she was published or not because I left University
before that. But she showed us examples and invited us to see these
things for ourselves. I also tested children over a period of time and
saw that children do go through these stages of spelling and spell words
the same according to what stage they are in. It was amazing - I was so
surprised. And even to this day I still see children spelling certain
words the same - try asking a young child to spell the word doctor over
a period of time and see what happens...it's very interesting.
  One
  > doesn't have to understand the process to clearly see that it is a
  > waste of the child's and the teacher's time.  What precisely does it
  > accomplish?
I'll leave Dan to answer this one as I can't put my
feelings/understandings of this into words.
BM> Since you didn't provide a citation I will do a library search before
  > I send this and let you know if it's available here.  Case studies
  > are not, BTW, "research" they are merely case studies.
That's interesting - thousands of psychologists would disagree with
you...especially my daughter who has been doing qualitative research
studies and has presented very successfully  at the International
Psychology convention this past summer (and last year).
Maybe you need to clarify what you mean here?
                                                -Ruth
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 þ QMPro 1.53 þ Philosopy: the profound grasp of the obvious.
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