Hi Sheila,
You asked me about invented spelling:
SK>-> You give a child a spelling test of specific words when
  >-> they are learning to write/spell and you give them the same spelling
  >-> test over a period of time. You can give this same test to children
  >-> anywhere in any country that speaks English. What you will find is
  >-> the same spelling constructions being made and the same development
  >-> occurring.
SK>I don't know about Chuck, but I'd sure be willing to hear more specifics
  >on this, because...largely I don't believe it. I've not seen that much
  >inventive spelling work done by kids, but I've seen some. Some, kids
  >used letters that made no sense whatsoever and bore no similarity to the
  >word they were attempting to spell. Other kids seem to have little
  >difficulty from day 1 with spelling.
I can't find all the papers I had on it. I know at one point I was going
to analyze a child's spelling development according to the research,
etc. but who knows what I did with the notes. They are either at the
bottom of a box or long gone.... :( Here's what I do have and I hope I
can put it all together in a coherent manner at this time of night. I
hope it will help shed some light.
The following is from Spel...Is A Four-Letter Word by J. Richard Gentry.
Parents who have listened to their children babble, speak their first
words, and eventually advance to mature speech have seen language
develop as a constructive process over time. Pointing out to them the
importance of babbling, for eventual speech competency will help them
understand the importance of hypothesizing and testing ideas about
spelling for eventual spelling competency.
Learning to spell is like learning to speak: babbling, first words,
two-word utterances, and later mature speech represent developmental
stages in the constructive process of  learning to speak. Spelling
follows a similar pattern. It too begins with low-level strategies,
followed by more complex productions as children self-correct and refine
their language. Look for these characteristics as we examine the
chronology of a child's spelling at five developmental levels:
        * development from simple to complex
        * development from concrete to abstract representation
        * self-correction
        * refinement
        * successive approximation of correct spelling
(Switching here to The Beginnings Of Writing by Charles Temple Ruth
Nathan, Nancy Burris, Frances Temple and mixing Gentry with it)
Prephonemic Spelling:
No obviously relationship between the letters or letter-like shapes used
and the conventional spelling. The child has not discovered the phonetic
principle, which is the notion that letters represent the speech sounds
or phonemes in words. hence letter strings that look like writing, but
do not work as writing works.
When children string letters together without attempting to represent
speech sounds in any systematic way, they are spelling prephonemically.
Prephonemic spellers usually have not learned to read, but they appear
to know a lot about written language. They know how letters are formed
and that they are supposed to represent language, some way..
Early Phonemic Spelling:
So called because the children have attempted to represent phonemes
in words with letters. These children have discovered the phonetic
principle - they know basically how spelling works. But there is a
curious limitation to early phonemic spelling. the children write
down letters for only one or two sounds in a word, then stop. Thus,
spelling in which letters are used to represent sounds, but only very
sparsely, is called early phonemic spelling. One phoneme represented,
e.g. s for six or u for view. Sometimes children in the early phonemic
spelling stage will identify and spell one or two phonemes in a word and
then finish the word out with a random string of letters.
the limitation seems to be related to the stability of the speller's
concept of what a word is. The early phonemic speller cannot make words
"hold still in his mind," while he examines them for phonemes and
matches the phonemes with letters.
Phonemic (Temple calls this Letter-Name) Spelling:
 The practice of breaking a word into its phonemes and representing the
phonemes with letters of the alphabet. The letters are chosen to
represent phonemes on the basis of the similarity between the sound of
the letter names and the respective phonemes.
Letter name spellers often are not yet readers. That is, they may begin
producing letter-name spelling before they are able to read. But the
concept of word, and the ability to identify phonemes in words are
important prerequisites for reading. Thus, when a child begins producing
letter-name spellings he usually begins to read soon after. For a time
he will read words written in standard spelling and write words in
letter-name spelling! This leads, not surprisingly, to confusion when a
child reads his own writing.
Before many months have passed the experience of reading will present
the letter-name spellers with differences between their way of spelling
things and standard spelling. When their spelling begins to change as a
(Continued to next message)
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