Five stages of spelliing acquisition - Gentry 1987

• Stages in order:

  Precommunitive

  Semi phonetic stage

  Phonetic stage

  Transitonal

  Conventional stage
• Pre communitive stage

  Begin to understand that symbols on page mean something

  May include inverted symbols that child thinks are words
• Pre communitive stage

  Random letters and symbols appear on page with no letter to sound connection
• Pre communitive

  Mixture of upper and lower case letters

  Often use letters from their own name - especially 1st letter

  Rarely any word separation
• Semi phonetic stage

  Begin to understand that letters have sounds
• Semi phonetic stage

  Begin to learn letter formation and correspondence between grapheme and phoneme
• Semi phonetic stage

  Begin to understand directionality though they may still reverse letters or words
• Semi phonetic

  Letters might be used to represent whole words. writing will generally be formed from left to right and there is some letter-to-sound connection
• Phonetic

  Spelling will be based on the sound of words, for example 'preshus' instead of 'precious'
• Transitonal

  Follows basic accepted patterns of English spelling allows basic accepted patterns of English spelling
• Transitonal.

  Vowels are used in every syllable

  Writer can make good attempt to recall words and to spell new words
• Transitional

  Strategies tend to depend on sounding out words
• Transitonal stage

  Spelling will combine phonetic approaches as well as visual approaches. Silent letters might start to be acknowledge within words
• Phonetic

  Spelling tends to mirror sound. Often try and sound out words everything they spell
• Phonetic

  Writing is easier to interpret (word spacing is observed, understanding of directionality) Fairly good link between letter and sound.
• Conventional

  Basic knowledge of the English spelling system and word structure (prefixes, suffixes)
• Conventional

  Can distinguish homonyms. Increasingly accurate in the use of single and double consonants
• Conventional

  Increasingly accurate in the use of single and double consonants Has a large spelling vocabulary Continues to learn uncommon patterns and irregular spelling
• Conventional

  Difficult spellings have been learnt and words alternative spellings are known (e.g., their and there)