Imagine you are a first grade teacher and you receive a phone ...

[RRMR]

Imagine you are a first grade teacher and you receive a phone call from a mother who is concerned about all of the spelling errors in a story that her son recently wrote at school. Describe how you would explain the use of invented spelling and why you encourage it in your classroom.
 
  What will be an ideal response?

Question 2

At what stage of literacy development do parents play a role, and at what stage do teachers influence a child's literacy development?
 
  What will be an ideal response?

[Bison]

Answer to Question 1

Answers should include an explanation of invented spelling, the developmental appropriateness of its usage, and its signal to parents and teachers of the beginning of analyzing speech sounds in print. Invented spellings help children place ideas before notions of correctness. Therefore, it should be celebrated as a display of intelligence and emerging competence with written language.

Answer to Question 2

Parents, as the child's first teacher, influence their child from birth. They first play a role in the awareness and exploration phase, but their influence extends throughout the five stages. As soon as children are in a setting with a teacher or daycare provider they are subject to a teacher's influence. This could happen in the awareness and exploration phase, if they attend as a young child, or in the experimental reading and writing phase.