Gentry's stages of spelling development

Question 1

Stage one

Pre-communicative

Answer 1

Random letters/symbols appear on the page with no letter to sound connection. Children imitate writing; mainly scribbling and pretending to write, some letters and shapes are decipherable

Question 2

Stage two

Semi-phonetic

Answer 2

Letters might be used to represent whole words. Writing will generally be left to right/some letter to sound connection. Link letter shapes and sounds, using this to write words

Question 3

Stage three

Phonetic

Answer 3

Spelling will be based on sound of words, for example ‘prashus’ instead of ‘precious’, children will understand that all phonemes can be represented by graphemes, words will become more complete

Question 4

Stage four

Transitional

Answer 4

Spelling will combine phonetic approaches with visual approaches. Silent letters might start to be acknowledged within words. Children have an awareness of combinations of letters and letter patterns using the ‘magic e’ rule

Question 5

Stage five

conventional

Answer 5

Difficult spellings have been learnt/words with alternative spellings are known such as homophones (their and there)