High Expectations or setting them up for failure

[tigerfrog]

How can I help my DD?
She is five and in year one. I have had an issue with the spelling tests given by her teacher since the start of the year. They are always 10 random key words from the Y1/Y2 list. They are all tricky words, do not follow any phonetic pattern and include different vowel phonemes that they havent been taught yet!! I have spoken to the teacher several times concerning this but have been told they are just seeing how the children get on!! She generally gets 9 or 10 out of 10 but thats through a lot of work and tears!!!
She has come home this week with another 10 spellings - aeroplane, airport, holiday, suitcase, island etc!!!!!
I am all for challenging children and having high expectations. I understand that these are topic words but I am in for another week of tears!!! Where are the phonic patterns, where is the word building, where is the fun!!! Surely at 5 she should be enjoying playing with words and seeing the patterns. What else can I do to help? I don't want her to dread Friday tests already!!!

It sounds like the teacher can be all laid back 'seeing how the children get on' while you have all the stress of 'a lot of work and tears'. I can't really suggest anything neither my DS or I ever had to learn spellings for a test. Though in your position, I don't know if I would be brave enough to just say no.

If these are the topic words, and far to hard to have a go at using the children's phonic knowledge to date, why can't they just be displayed in the classroom for the duration of the topic.

One teacher we had continually sent home words which were too hard - despite me asking her not to.

So we didn't learn them. DD got 0 out of 10 each week But she didn't care. She knew they hadn't studied for them. Teacher never spoke to me.

This year she's getting appropriate words and she's learning them. I will only support the school if it's being vaguely sensible.

Too hard spelling lists is not sensible. The world won't collapse if she doesn't learn them. Either learn a few of them or none of them. But don't put her through tearsat 5.

If your DD is only 5, u really should not worry about her getting all those spellings right.

It's not surprising the words she gets are all tricky ones. The regularly spelt ones don't take much learning. It's the 3700 common words with some tricky letters englishspellingproblems.blogspot.com/2010/11/english-spelling-rules.html which take all the learning, and it's a gradual, cumulative process throughout the whole of schooling and even higher education.

Learning them in context, as the teacher seems to be trying to get the pupils to do, is actually a good idea. They tend to stick more that way. The teacher is probably amazed by how well your DD is doing.

Fgs, Mashabell, if you insist on infiltrating this place as well with your mantra then you could at least a) learn how to do links and b)make sure your links bloody well work!

Although if they link to advertisements for your dodgy wares, you can expect a deletion from MNHQ - there is a fee in the small business section for that sort of thing, and they are a lot stricter here on that than TES are.

DD went for over 6 months learning just sight words in Australia for spellings. It wasn't until she moved here and her teacher gave her spellings that made sense and were much easier to learn I realised the error. She now gets a group of say 7 spellings in which she can use a sound and a variation of that sound and then a few tricky ones. This is working really well. If she practises she get 10/10. If she misses a day it will be 8/10. Her confidence was definitely dented through the way her school approached it in Australia. It just never made any sense to her.

If the teacher isn't listening perhaps you could take a few of the spellings and teach other similar words i.e airport, chair, stairs, holiday, may, bay, ray. Keepings the idea of sounding out going and then point out something tricky like island. Seems better than bagging it totally.

Sorry not much help really. Hope it works out for your little one.

"...if you insist on infiltrating this place..."
Is this some private little spot controlled by u Feenie? I thought it was a public forum.

But u are right about me not knowing a) how to do links and I don't where I can learn.

and b)for some reason this website put in an extra space in the /11/ in the URL
englishspellingproblems.blogspot.com/2010/11/english-spelling-rules.html which links to the 3700 most common English words with irregular spellings.

I am really sorry about that.

I see there is an extra space in /2010/11/ again. So u would have to copy and paste the URL and get rid of the space if u wanted to see the word lists.

englishspellingproblems.blogspot.com/2010/11/english-spelling-rules.html

tigerfrog, it sounds far too difficult for Y 1. My dd is in Y1 and she has had 3 tests so far.

Try to change the way you view these tests. I choose to look at it as a way of just getting the children used to having tests, not literally testing them. We only practice once and I praise here whatever the result after the test.

I'd just relax about it. From my DC's experience DS1 jusn't couldn't 'get' spelling in Y1. I chose not to push him for the tests as it got him really wound up. Now he's in Y6 and his spelling is amazing.
We used to read to him all the time. Now he reads loads of books himself which must improve spelling.

Thanks for all the messages and advice. I agree its just not worth the fustration. She has plenty of other things to deal with as she is now learning Greek - we are overseas!!I want her to have fun and be a child rather than getting herself uptight.