Preschool skill development: The importance of invented spelling activities

Abstract

This study aims to understand the importance of invented spelling activities in preschool, through the analysis of the effects of two invented spelling programmes, and to understand the correlations between phonological awareness and knowledge of letters and the phonetization procedures.  Fifty-six five-year-old were divided into two experimental groups and one control group. Children’s spellings were accessed in the pre and post-tests. In between, G1 worked the grapho-phonetic correspondences of fricatives and G2 of stop consonants. Results show that both experimental groups achieved greater progress in spelling than the control group with no statistically significant differences between the experimental groups. In these groups the participants were able to spell the worked phonemes and also non worked phonemes. The results also indicated that the number of letters known in the pre-test has a significant correlation with the number of phonetizations in the post-test, whereas phonological awareness does not.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17575/rpsicol.v28i1.626