I went to a private elementary school for a few years called "The Island School." It was a small non-religious school started by some poets and hippies and teachers and other progressives. The curriculum emphasized storytelling above all else, and my classmates and I were writing rambling 10 page epic fantasy stories by the time we were in third grade. Math maybe not so good, but we were all hyper-active writers.
Part of this was because the Island School had a writing policy called "Guess & Go." The teachers' felt that the goal with teaching children to write should be expression and creativity — not meticulous spelling. With a 7-year-old's attention span, by the time they stop and try to figure out how to spell "journey," they've forgotten what the hell the journey was going to be. At the Island School we just scribbled "jurne" and kept writing.
It was an early-'80s education gamble that paid off, thanks to the miracle that is spell check. No one needs to know how to spell, now! But we do need to know how to think on our toes and keep the copy coming. [Side note: I'm reaching a pace with my writing these days where I almost wish I had a finger pedometer. How many words do I write each week? With work, book, blog, freelance ... maybe 6,000? With emails and IMs and texts? God only knows! 10,000? 15,000? I have no idea. Honestly. When am I ever not writing?]
All this is at least in part thanks to the Island School telling me to just Guess & Go at age 7. Legend had it that the teachers used to keep a collection of their favorite misspelled words by students. I have a keen memory of trying to sound out how to spell "drawer." What I ultimately came up with was "jwuarre." Because was how I said it, so that was how I spelled it. It was very wrong, but I got the idea out.
I'm still a Guess & Go writer. My vocabulary is huge, but I can't always spell those big words. My new employer is learning very quickly that they may have hired a copywriter who's also an editor, but they didn't hire a copy editor. I can't chart a sentence. Half the time I can't spell at all. But I can write!
Tonight, as I stumble through another chapter of the book, I present to you the Guess & Go word of the evening: pharmeutucal. Good job, fingers!
Comments on "Guess & Go Award"
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nani
March 4th, 2006 · 10:33 PM · #
Actually, I do this with my own 9th graders when we are writing. When my kids are working on rough drafts, I tell them: don't worry about spelling, punctuation, etc…just get the ideas down on paper. All that other stuff can be fixed later! I'm linking this on my blog.
Erin
March 5th, 2006 · 6:12 AM · #
My husband went to a similar school in Seattle called PSPS for elementary school, and I get the biggest kick out of reading his epic stories – the best invented spelling I've ever seen.
donut
March 5th, 2006 · 7:46 AM · #
Aha! now I understand why I get questions like this:
http://deardonut.com/archives/000221.html
wordsonwater
March 6th, 2006 · 4:20 AM · #
I actually invented creative spelling, back in the bad old day when it was an actual subject in school and a grade on your report card. I never even knew I was a good writer until God gave me spell check. My younger children suffered through a program called Writing to read in the 80's, which was invented by Apple because they were desperate to get schools to continue using their computers. All of us are good writers, but I'm not still sure there is a relationship between teaching and learning.