Until the new phonics 'revamp' which started last year, in many schools cursive began in reception! I teach in Year 2 and totally disagree with this btw! So many children got to me in Year 2 (especially boys) with completely illegible writing, and we had a hell of a job trying to unpick the ingrained bad letter formation that the poor little lambs had come up with. It was just cruel!
Thankfully, I now have the last of the cohorts that have been forced to endure this, and when the current Y1s come up in September, they will have been taught a lovely, neat non-cursive style. We will begin to teach cursive to those children who are ready to start it in the summer term of Year 2...which will be when their little hands/bone structure have developed sufficiently for the task!
I can't begin to tell you the battles we have had with our school 'leaders', about the detrimental affects that forcing children who are not yet ready to be taught cursive writing has on them 😔 There is so much research on this...but did they listen? 😫
Spellings are really hard now I feel...and the expectation for our children year on year is increasing. There's a national 'year group' spelling pattern that we teach to and follow. Depending on which scheme the school uses, the order might differ, but over the year the patterns/words will be the same.
Here's the words my Year 2s were sent home last week, after learning the rule 'we drop the y and add an i before adding the -est or -er suffix'. That's pretty heavy going for 6 and 7 year olds!!
And we wonder why spelling/writing is so difficult 😣