YEAR 5 SPELLINGS - GONE FROM LEARNING 10 A WEEK FOR TEST TO NOW 30, TEACHER SAID ITS THE NEW CURRICULUM!!!!!!!

[hulahoopsilove]

DD came home with 30 spellings this week all teacher said was its the new curriculum!!!

[meditrina]

It's 'new curriculum' to the extent that it is your individual school/teacher's new curriculum.

It'll have come from somewhere within the school, based on what the teachers, in their professional opinion, think is the best way to teach.

[diamondage]

Unless it's running through the statutory year 3/4 (I think) spellings to ensure yr 5 know them too?

[beatofthedrum]

That's a ridiculous amount to learn (am a primary teacher) and unless your child has already learnt the spellings previously and is consolidating them, I can't see how such a task is realistic.

[ChlorinePerfume]

I can not see the point of learning spellings lists tbh. My DD1 mostly got full marks in the spelling test only to spell them wrong in her written work... Thank god our primary stopped doing them. DD1 is now at secondary and pleased to report she mastered spellings eventually. :-)

[hulahoopsilove]

just asked him and the additional 20 spellings are from the other groups in the class

[hulahoopsilove]

hes in the top group for spellings so perhaps these addition are ones that they should know anyway?

[redskybynight]

What are the words? If he can already spell 20 of them (and is just consolidating) then that's not too bad. If it's 30 hard words by next week, that's not good.

[maizieD]

This is the new primary English curriculum for KS1 & 2
It has the spelling requirements for Ys 5 & 6

tinyurl.com/ohabega

[maizieD]

Hmm, I hope it is! It says Sept 2013 but I'm sure that's the one...Statutory from Sept 2014

[TheWildRumpyPumpus]

DS2 is year 2 and gets 14 a week (4 of them only for the 'advanced' group).

It doesn't sound like all 30 words will be new to him, and if he's in the top group then he should manage OK.

[Pagwatch]

OMG!!!!!!!!!

[AgentProvocateur]

Pagwatch

[Pagwatch]

[mrz]

There is nothing in the curriculum to say schools should be sending home 30 spellings a week.

[CastlesInTheSand]

The new curriculum only contains 50 words for each year!

[Feenie]

I can beat that - ds (Y4) had 150 to learn over the Christmas holidays.

[ZebraGiraffe]

I'm assuming their trying to learn the year 3/4 ones too just in case for the currently unknown new tests...
Your poor DD.

[Mashabell]

ds (Y4) had 150 to learn over the Christmas holidays
As u are a phonics evangelist, Feenie, u no doubt devised an easy method for learning them? Or perhaps u are beginning to realise that for learning to spell English 'correctly', phonics is of quite limited use?

After next May policy on this will probably change again, but the only way children can learn all the 4,000+ quite common words which contain one or more irregular letters (from 'once, only, other' to 'xylophone') is by spending quite a bit of time on learning them.

There is no other way of improving the fairly abysmal spelling of many people right across the English-speaking world, and which got Mr Gove's pants in a twist.

But perhaps it's worth asking how important 'correct' spelling really is?

When children make spelling 'mistakes', their spellings are nearly always still perfectly legible. If they spend more time on learning to spell, they have less time for other learning.

[PastSellByDate]

Thanks for posting this hulahoop

DD2 came home at Christmas with a long list (more than 100 words) labelled Year 3/4 spellings and was told to review the ones she had missed on a test covering the full list just before Christmas - so the discussion above (that there is some form on underlying spelling list that children are meant to know/ that a Year 5 teacher might be trying to consolidate spellings at year 3/4 level) does make a lot of sense.

I stumbled across this guidance (2013) at some point: www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/239784/English_Appendix_1_-_Spelling.pdf - and just checking the year 3/4 word list in this document - this is indeed the list DD2 came home with.

HTH

[PastSellByDate]

sorry just realised my link is the same document as that in MaizieD's.

[Feenie]

I gave him strategies, Masha, in the short amount of time we spent on homework in the holidays. They helped him to spell some of the words more easily, rather than learning each one in isolation. We did not practise spelling 150, which was ridiculous.

[LePetitMarseillais]

What happens to the kids with parents who won't do this?

[mrz]

It depends on whether the school actually teach children how to spell or leave it to chance.