Question for Reception Teachers Please

[wildmutt]

My dd has just finished reception and I have been looking through her workbooks and pictures that have been sent home. The teacher has marked some of her work sometimes with an 'I' and sometimes with an 'A'. I was just wondering what they mean. Also is it right that teachers do not correct spellings at this age? My dd has written little stories and sentences where alot of the words are written as they sound but the teacher has ticked to say well done and not put down the correct spelling. When at home if she is writing I always tell her the correct spelling of a word but now I wonder if I should just let her guess it??

I'm not a reception teacher but I'm going to guess at "Independent" and "Assisted", or maybe "Adult".

Thanks Shaz, that does make sense as the one's near the end of term are marked with 'I'.

Also not a reception teacher, but DS's reception teacher will correct a couple of the most important words, but I think the focus is to get them writing sentences at all. They are getting the hang of phonics and that it's possible to transliterate the sounds in their heads into marks on paper -- that's a huge step forward for a small child and putting a step in the middle to tell them that in the case of this particular word we don't use this particular way of writing the phoneme, whe use this one instead is just likely to interfere with that. I think spelling is something that's pushed more in Y1.

At home I don't proactively tell DS how to spell something or correct him. If he asks me how to spell something I'll ask him how he thinks it ought to be spelt and then let him know the correct spelling if that's different.

His spelling is gradually improving the more reading he does, so I'm quite happy that this approach (from the school and from me) is working.

That's a good point about the spelling getting in the way at this stage Prof. I never really thought about it before. I just thought it looked odd seeing her work with really odd spellings but being marked as very good. It is very sweet though eg I like Apple Joos and paster with sors.

One of DS's from a few months ago:

Bentenpitis and thae need to hav pits oth fror ams and the atha aleens naw wit aleen is the shjrongisd I no what is it it is fro rams naw wit one is veree hot I no what then heet blasd nawwit one dasint have nee ise I no then wit wiyldmut I dont no what to sae you a so gd i am veree pruod of you

[Ben 10 pictures and they need to have pictures of Four Arms and the other aliens. Now which alien is the strongest? I know. What is it? It is Four Arms. Now which one is very hot? I know. What, then? Heatblast. Now which one doesn?t have any eyes? I know. Then which? Wildmutt. I don?t know what to say. You are so good; I am very proud of you.]

(he wrote that on the computer, though -- doubt he'd manage that much writing with pencil and paper)

As your DD is being taught to read phonetically, she will be trying to apply the same techniques to her writing.
My DD got so caught up in the presentation of her work (was it spelt right? was the writing neat?) that it actually meant she was producing next to no output for the teachers to assess her abilities. There's been a lot of effort in Yr1 to encourage her to cut loose and just get the words on paper.
However, they do work on spelling in Yr1 and DD's class have bi-weekly spelling tests.

I used to teach Reception and whether or not I would correct spellings would depend on the point of the task. For examply it might be more important that they think of the appropriate vocabulary than spelling words correctly - if writing a menu for example it would be more impressive to write 'sausages' incorrectly than 'cat' correctly!
A major aim in Reception is to give children the confidence to write independently. I have often worked with children who will rather write nothing than get it 'wrong'. So I would rather praise plausible attempts than dent their confidence by pointing out where they went wrong.
Once children are writing confidently then I will correct spellings, but usually only if it is a word that I would expect them to know. E.g. I would correct the word 'and' but not a word like 'although'. I would not want to correct every word as at this age there would probably be too many and they would never remember the correct way and it might dent their confidence. At this age it is good if they are spelling some words correctly and making phonetically plausible attempts at the others.

Agree with everyone else.
Oh and the 'I' will be independent and the 'A' assisted.

Prof, I'm v impressed with your ds's writing but even more impressed with your translation. I see you have like myself a sound knowledge of all things Ben10 .

Thanks all for your wise replies. There is alot more to being a reception teacher than I ever thought.

You will always be wiyldmut to me...

I teach Reception & totally agree with moajab We really want to get children to write- shopping lists, menus, captions, sentences, anything really. I would correct a spelling if it was a phonetically correct word they'd been taught but otherwise I'm more concerned with the actual writing
professorlayton I think that's fantastic writing by your ds! keep encouraging him great to see boys choosing to write..lots don't

I think the spelling issue is a controversial one. I understand the motivation behind not correcting spelling when it is not the 'point' of the task, however, due to the fact that written English is not logical, it can only really be learnt by constant reinforcing/learning.

As an employer I frequently come across well educated job applicants/employees whose spelling is very poor, and I think a generation has been let down by this approach, as they suffer in the job market.

If the school is a good one, then they should have a policy to counteract the effects of not correcting spellings in all work, such as always noting spelling errors for each child and ensuring that they are practiced at the end of the week.

I'm sure a good teacher would do this anyway (in an age-appropriate way).

ChoChoSan the way it works in many primary schools is that the teacher will only correct words that a child should be able to spell correctly so in reception the teacher would correct woz and sed but not beeyooteafull as children move through school obviously the words they are expected to be able to spell increase in difficulty

and it's practised

I know, mrz, that's why I said age-appropriate...and d'oh! of course that was a type ahem

typo, ffs!

yes we can all make mistakes but I thought your point was they should be noted???

Indeed.