The Elementary School Journal Volume 86, Number 3 O 1986 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 00 13-5984/86/8603-0003$0 1.00 In the 1970s, studies of children's invented spellings gave insight into children's thinking as they reconstruct the orthography of English (C. Chomsky, 1970, 1975a, 1975b; Read, 1971, 1975). These investigations drew inferences from preschool children's spontaneous productions of writing. Reviewing this kind of evidence, Henderson concludes that children's invented spellings "fit general strategic rules" (1980, p. 142). At the elementary school level, too, research indicates the importance of children's thinking and logic as they learn how to spell English words. Zutell's study led to his conclusion that "learning to spell is not simply a matter of enough drill work and/or rote memorization. The development of spelling proficiency seems to involve both cognitive and linguistic processes and, as such, it requires the active exploring participation of the learner" (1980, p. 64). From the point of view of classroom practice, Gentry and Henderson write, "Learning to spell is a matter of acquiring knowledge rather than habits-in this case knowledge of how the alphabet reflects meaningful language" (1980, p. 112). More recently, in this Journal, a report of interviews of elementary school students by Downing, DeStefano, Rich, and Bell concludes that "the data in several respects indicate the important part that logical reasoning plays in learning the skill of spelling" (1984, p. 195). This present article is a report of research about the conceptualizations of spelling that children bring to their reasoning task. Baker (1980) showed that adults' awareness of systematic rules of English spelling can be detected from their pro-