6 year old spelling ability

[itstheyearzero]

Hello. I wasn't sure where to put this question, so I thought I would try this board. Hope that's OK? My DS is 6, started in Year 1 in September. I don't for one moment think he is G&T (I actually don't really know what that means to be honest), but I'm thinking he might be a bit ahead in his spelling ability, so would appreciate your opinions.

Last night he was sitting in the bath so we went through the spellings for his spelling test today. there were 6 words, things like scout, treat and cream. He got them all right, so just for fun I started throwing random words at him and he got every single one of them correct. Examples:

television
mountain
volcano
station
Egypt
ocean
shoes
biscuit
medicine
ghost
radio
photograph
earth
spaceship
mouthwash
sponge

What do you think? He really enjoyed the game and loved it when he got them all correct, so I will obviously continue to do this with him. Any thoughts?

I would think he has a good head for spellings. My 7yo dd never spells things wrong and we chuck all sorts at her. With her it's symptomatic of a love of reading, a good memory and excellent vocabulary. It is a relief tbh. DH struggles with spelling and it is a pain for him. DD is lucky.

Some people are naturally good at spelling, and some people have to work harder at it.

My ds1 was spelling ridiculously complex words at that age (reconnaissance for example). He is naturally good at spelling, a voracious reader (which helps). Dd is older and less naturally good at spelling and goodness knows about ds2.

I don't personally think it means anything much, apart from that ds1 has quite a photographic memory.

Our school did away with spelling tests for the simple reason that children are either naturally good at it and will get 10/10 or not so good at it and will feel rubbish every week.

Instead, the school concentrates on building up reading ability and enthusiasm and ensuring that phonics teaching is top notch, attempting to give all children the toolkit for developing their spelling, always interspersed with seeing and writing the 'tricky' words.

There's interesting research to back up the theory of good spellers having an inbuilt ability. Poor spellers' brains have been shown to work differently when trying to recall spellings and don't make the right pathways in the brain to aid spelling recall. DH cannot spell. I can tell him a spelling and hours later it is gone. We both read voraciously.

Thanks for the feedback. I was a good speller at DS's age, and so was DP, so I guess genes have something to with it. DS is a good reader as well, it seemed like he just woke up one morning about half way through Reception year and he could read. It just clicked with him I guess. So I'll just keep challenging him going forward

Pooka - what did your school do about the year 6 SPAG SAT exam when it decided to stop testing spelling?

Var123

Nothing special really. Results were very good. It's not the weekly testing that improves spelling IMO. The test itself does nothing as far as I can see, apart from perhaps make a 6 or 7 year old think they're rubbish at spelling.

I think that they did a few random checks in year 6 (dd was in year6 last year). Certainly ds1 used to do spelling tests until year 1 (now in yr4), when the school did away with them.