The spelling in a student's creative writing sample most closely reflects which stage of spelling development?

The Transitional stage of spelling development is characterized by a young writer's growing understanding of the relationship between sounds and letters, as well as an increasing awareness of the rules of spelling and the structure of words. In this stage, students begin to use more conventional spelling patterns and incorporate knowledge of word families, prefixes, and suffixes. They may spell most words correctly and tend to use appropriate spelling for high-frequency words, while still demonstrating some inconsistencies in their spelling choices.

If a student's creative writing sample shows a mixture of invented spellings and correct spellings, it suggests that they are transitioning from a more phonetic approach— where they spell words based primarily on how they sound— to a more sophisticated understanding that incorporates spelling conventions and rules. This reflects an awareness of multiple sound-spelling correspondences and the complexity of English spelling conventions that will continue to develop as students move toward the Morphophonemic stage, where they master even more nuanced spelling patterns and exceptions.