Do you help your children with their spelling or leave them to it?

[strandedatseasonsgreetings]

Disclaimer: I am not in the UK but soon will be. Dd1 will be starting at our local primary in recepetion in January so I am interested to hear what parents in the UK would do in this situation.

dd1 has been bringing home homework from school involving learning to read and write. They are teaching them phonetically but when she is writing a sentence should I teach her how to spell it correctly even though she is writing it phonetically?

For example yesterday she was writing a sentence using the word "blanket" - which the teacher had already written out for her. She wanted to write "the shoe is on the blanket" but was going to spell shoe as shoow. I spelled it out correctly for her but am not sure if I should be or leaving her to learn it all in good time.

Any experience/wisened advice much appreciated. Thanks.

I would start helping her to spell it correctly.

I went to live in France when I was 14 (I didn't know any French) I picked up playground French and learnt to speak very quickly but my written Frech was terrible and continues to be because it was never corrected.

I am also a teacher of English as a foreign language and have come across this problem many times. Is her first language English and how old is she?

If she is very young (4-5) I wouldnt worry too much but 6 yrs plus they should be learning the correct spelling.

It seems spelling in the UK is a universal problem!

She got the initial sound right and she used her phonic knowledge to have a go at the rest. I think she did very well.
There are certain 'sight' words that she will be taught early on and shoe isn't one of them!
If she can work out words or parts of words on her own I would encourage that.

Thanks - she was 5 in September. The trouble is I am not a teacher and don't know how to explain why shoe is shoe and not shoo.

I agree she is doing really well, she is picking it up quickly - perhaps too quickly as she wants to write more and more complicated words!

beebuzzer - English is her first language.

She will learn the 'rules' (and exceptions) to spellings as she moves through the school.
It will be a while before she will be expected to know that 'oe' 'oo' 'ue' 'ew' etc all say the same thing (sometimes!)

That's not too quickly! Encourage her all the way, but encourage her to try and work them out as far as possible. That way she'll remember how to do it.

Yeah I know, it's just hard as I am used to getting her to think things through but then with some of these words I just think how is she meant to work that one out? There are some words she already knows through memory/sight/practice not through understanding how it should be spelled and I assume that more and more will fall into this category as well as learning the rules. It's fascinating watching the human brain in action!

My dd is 6 and in year 2. I try to correct her spellings now because I don't see the point in letting her spell something incorrectly over and over again. But I don't correct all the words sometimes if there are a lot of mistakes. I tend to go for the more common words. I want her to learn the correct way but she is still only 6!!

I don't know if this is the best way to do it or not but I think it's important that she is corrected, at least partially. Sometimes if she's doing a quick note or something I don't correct her as I don't want her to think i'm always telling her she's wrong.

DS is in Y1 and they sort of gently correct spellings now. He has a chart to refer to with different spellings of sounds grouped in boxes, so there is a box for 'oo' 'oe' 'ue' etc. So I sometimes ask him which one does he think it will be just to get him into the habit of thinking about it.

Did not stop him from writing about Transformas this week though

In reception I'd probably let it go, from age 6 onwards I'd probably encourage them to check it again. I do this with DD2's spellings - I don't tell her which ones are wrong, just that some of them are. She always works out which ones. Teaching them to edit their own work will come in handy later.

Thanks all. She always asks me if it's right so I tell her the truth but I hate to make her think she is not doing well when she is! Trouble is she is a perfectionist and can get angry with herself when she does something wrong so I just have to strike the right balance between correcting her (because i can't lie and tell her it's right when it isn't) but praising her at the same time.

I'd also praise anything that is phonetically correct and let a lot go as she's only 5.

A teacher needs to see her mistakes so that she knows the logic, ideas and effort is coming from dd and not you.

The logic bit is really important - Some mistakes are fab in that they can tell you what a child is guessing and trying to work out.

I would gently correct as long as it didn't annoy.

DD was happy to be corrected on almost everything, DS gets very discouraged by more than one or two small corrections. So depends on the child, really!

wowooo - I think you have hit the nail on the head about my problem. I want the teacher to see what she did not what I did but if dd asks me if it's right and she has written "shoow" instead of "shoe" what should I say?

Should I perhaps not look at her work at all? I sort of sit with her when she is doing it to chivvy her along and help her if she gets stuck put perhaps it would be better all round if she was allowed to do it all and the teacher was the one to correct it.

My approach:

Always praise spellings that are sensible but wrong, but always correct him if he asks if it is right. IMO the key is to make it clear that it is not his fault if he's got it wrong. "That is a really wonky word that isn't written the way that you'd expect. Your guess was really sensible, but I can show you the right way if you'd like."

The grey area is whether to spontaneously correct mistakes. I try not to overdo this as I don't want him scared to write in case he makes mistakes. (He has perfectionist tendencies - no idea where they came from .

"Should I perhaps not look at her work at all?"

NO NO NO

just make sure there is more praise than correction. and that even corrections are given in a helpful way.

It might depend on the school. At my DCs previous school, the teachers preferred to see how the children wanted to spell it themselves, and so understand their learning process, and help them towards the correct spelling. No rubbers were allowed, mistakes needed to be crossed out, so the teacher could see the first attempt.

At their new school, red pens and crosses everywhere is seen as "better" (not IMHO) rubbers must be used from day one.

When you know what sort of system she'll be going in to, perhaps you could work along with that.

No, sit near her. That's nice. Look at her work after she does it perhaps.

Get her to practise words with pictures in rough.?
Get her to draw a v small shoe next to the word shoe?!

Sometimes I'll write the words in pencil. It's bloody obvious that ds has copied from me, but I want teacher to know: He had lOTS of help with this, a BIT of help with this, NO HELP at all with this (illegible scrawlings)

If he asks how to spell something I'll tell him, and if he asks whether he's spelt something correctly I'll tell him. Generally, I don't apart from that. I tend to agree with escorchio's DD's first school that it helps the teachers to see what mistakes the children are making. DS (Y1) doesn't have any problem with the actual "spellings" that are sent home and his spelling is rapidly improving in general, so this approach seems to be working for him.

Ok thanks I think there is some really good advice here. What I will try for now - while she is still at the school she is at (for another 3 weeks) - is writing the correct spelling under where she has spelled it and see if I can get her to practise it the right way but leave what she originally wrote. That way, she is learning but at the same time the teacher can see her original mistake.