Year 1 spelling tests

[ObsidianGrape]

My daughter is year 1 and has been getting weekly spelling tests. I feel like the words are too difficult for a 5 year old and wanted to get an idea of other school year 1 parents experiences for spelling.

Last week in my daughter's test was words like rectangle, cylinder, pyramid, triangle.... No suprise but she is crying about having to go to school tomorrow and have to sit another spelling test!

Are these words usual for year 1?

aibu for thinking they are too hard!

Mine all had a weekly spellings test of 8 words in year 1. They also had them in the summer term of reception class too. Words are similar to what DC’s have had. Dd is in yr2 and this week some of hers are hippopotamus & beautiful along with there & their. It’s a small rural state school, mixed classes. They bring them home on a Friday, use the look, cover & rainbow write method over the course of the week as homework. Dc1 struggled with them and still does (now yr4) undergoing dyslexia assessment.

My Year 1 child doesn’t have spelling tests yet.

Been having spelling tests here since year 1...but think be, he, bee, etc in year 1... Now year 3 impossible, competition... Still not had the words your child has... So yes for year 1 child I don't think they right

My year 1 ds has spelling tests weekly, a mix of this weeks phonics words and some from previous weeks. So this week we have White, Make, Coin, Bright, and a few others, ten altogether. They've had numbers up to ten, but no shape words yet.

I’d also say query this.

I'm a Y1 TA. We do spelling tests but they are all linked to our phonics. So this week our Y1 have ‘ur’ words. Five words all using this rule (turn, burst, church) and one ‘exception word’ - you can’t sound it out, you just need to know it (said).

Each week we give a pretest before they’ve seen the words. If they get 5 or 6 right they go on to the extension list. Six words that still follow the rule but are a bit more challenging (bursting, Thursday). So we don’t have set groups, it changes depending on how well each child does on the pretest each week.

If they learn then but bomb in the test, it doesn’t matter because they’ve still spent time looking at the rule, reinforcing what we’ve done in class. If they haven’t looked at them, they still have a chance because we’ve done it in class. And to get a reward (housepoint) they only have to do better than in their pretest. So if they score 1 in their pretest, then 2 the following week in the test, they get a mention and a house point in class but it’s not a big deal. We cover it quickly then move on.

Quickly looking at the curriculum-Year One words should be based on phonemes (make, bake, shake) or rules like zz at the end of a word (fizz, buzz).

Spelling tests are a bit pointless in my opinion and Year One Autumn term is young for them. But yes these are too hard and I'd question where they are coming from when the national curriculum stipulates set word families already.

Year 1 teacher here. This is the national curriculum spelling appendix. Maths vocab words are not listed. She should be spelling words that focus on a particular spelling pattern. I’d raise it with the teacher and/or head, and ask to see their English policy (it’s probably on the school’s website). Giving a list of vocabulary words to learn to spell is cognitive overload. There should be one spelling rule per list of spellings. I don’t agree with spelling tests at all by the way, but if people insist on giving them to 5 year olds, they can at least make it purposeful and have it reinforce what they have been learning in phonics lessons.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7ccc06ed915d63cc65ce61/English_Appendix_1_-_Spelling.pdf

So the children are expected to memorise the words rather than be taught how to spell them. It's setting them up to fail - far too much cognitive load for 5/6 year old. It would be interesting to find out the average class score for this test. I'm guessing it would be pretty low.