Guess which year these spellings are for

[Todaynotalways]

... English primary school... Which school year/age do you think these spellings are suitable for...?

Cylinder is a KS1 maths concept. The other words are various types of /s/ sound. I would guess end of Year 1 if in a higher streamed but normal Age related expectations for Year 2.

Year 2 or Year 3, we had school last year in year 1, but our school don't do spellings anymore for some reason!

You thought wrong for many independent school parents. We sent our school to a prep school because it has a wide range of subjects, good facilities and small classes. There is a lovely ethos, a strong outdoor learning vibe and not many pushy parents at all. Plus the state schools near us are terrible.

Spelling is a bugger anyway. I once saw 'abattoir' written 'abbatoir' in a heading on the front page of The Times.

Year 2 - 3?

I was going to guess 2.

my recommendation would be to change how you work the list.

we would practice in the car or while doing other chores. Practicing spelling multitasks very well with the mundane day to day tasks.

when you have to actually study, dd liked to be physical. We would use sticky notes and run around and hit the letters Or you can jump on them.

Really?! My DC is doing this in Year 3 😳

Oh I was going to say 1985 😳

Appropriate for?? I’d say Y5 or Y6

In reality I’m going to assume they are Yr2 or 3 😓

Y2

We moved our ds from an outstanding cofe SW London leafy state school to a SW London Tatler endorsed SW London independent in 2004, at the end of Y3. He was very behind in English and that's what he excelled at.

In Y3 he was taught to spell gauge as gauge and the teacher marked the corrected version wrong and told me off for complaining.

State standards were and are I suspect, an utter disgrace.

My daughter (state primary) definitely had ‘school’ in a weekly spelling list in either year 1 or 2. She was also able to spell ‘pyramid’ and ‘cylinder’ in year 2, but not year 1. I can’t remember whether they were in a spelling list, but they came up over and over again in maths, so she might have learned them that way. I am pretty sure that ‘science’ has not been in a spelling list yet, but again, it comes up a lot, and she knew how to spell it.

She’s now year 3. I’ve just asked her, and she can spell ‘thistle’, ‘glisten’ and ‘enormous’. They have definitely not been in a spelling list. I could see ‘glisten’ and ‘enormous’ coming up in comprehension or in a writing assignment, but was surprised she knew ‘thistle’.

Your spelling list looks a bit disparate. There are 2 words of ‘s as st’ and 2 words of ‘i as y’. Although science and school both begin ‘sc’, they are very different, and then ‘enormous’ is out there by itself.

In our school, in year 1 and 2 they consisted of 7 words following the same rule or two alternative spellings (e.g. -ey and -y) plus 3 exception words, so it was more obvious what they were trying to teach them.

I thought age 8… this is deffo hard. My child is now at a (top 3) academic private secondary, but went to a state primary, to give context. Also worth mentioning, kids develop at their own pace. Eg in year 2 DS could spell just about anything, but in year 1 his spelling was zero.

Yeah, that’s madness. I hope for your daughter’s sake it doesn’t reflect a cramming/hot house approach to the rest of schooling. At 5/6 lots of other countries would still have them doing entirely play-based learning. Agree with people saying - you are paying for this, you could choose to pay for something else!

I definitely couldn’t spell those words aged 5/6, although i probably could have read and defined them if asked. I got pretty much straight top grades throughout my later years and got a 2.i from Cambridge so I reckon your daughter will be just fine.

Just goes to show that you don't get better teachers in independent schools!

Ahhahahhaa

I guess year 1 straight away when I saw the words and then saw that I was correct in my guess! I saw another poster wrote about people boasting if they wrote year 1, but that was my initial thought and my dc are in a state school year 4 and 6.

Age 8?

Year 4

Speaking as a teacher, I don't think anyone in the profession, either state or independent, believes that the quality of teaching is markedly different either way (except in certain independents who routinely employ unqualified teachers and don't offer on the job training so they're just expected to pick up pedagogy as they go), and I wasn't aware that parents thought so either. There are many reasons why parents choose an independent education, class sizes and facilities probably being the top two, but I don't think many people are under the illusion that the teachers are better.

Y3, although it wouldn't really surprise me if they were for younger.

Is there any point in boasting on an anonymous forum.

🤣🤣🤣 it’s a spelling chat so I found myself cross checking all my spellings 🤣

I'm a teacher and have worked a lot on spellings as the school lead. There's evidence to support the fact that spelling tests are largely pointless and don't improve spelling (as pupils forget them as soon as the test is done). Tests do promote spelling at school / home as an 'important thing' so that's one reason why they're still used. What helps spelling is application of words. I guess like anything, using it again and again. Practice. As others have stated, there should be a context which is why themed spellings are helpful e.g. topic words when learning about electricity (bulb, switch, circuit, current) with the idea that pupils write these words many times. I do think learning the year 1 and 2 common exception words (Google it) is helpful. The yr3/4 and 5/6 curriculum words are challenging but give you an idea of the expected level. Personally, I'd encourage your daughter to not be so worried about the score but rather on her spelling in her school books. How does she do with her everyday writing? I would ask the teacher if everyone has the same words. Could she have the level down? And I would mention it again if she was becoming very demoralised as this is the opposite of what learning should be like.

This is exactly why we chose an independent, smaller classes. Esp for those first few years, a class of 15 children felt like a massive benefit.

It is a double edged sword though, it makes the difference between the top performers and the rest more obvious. Everyone seems to know how 'good' everyone else is at every subject. And that's hard to tackle when they're so young.

Y2