Spelling

[squashpie]

My DS often gets all his weekly spellings right but, if he includes them in a piece of written work, he 'forgets' or actually seems not to know how to spell the word(s). Is this common? How can I get him to really LEARN the spellings? Is it just learning by rote? Or are there other methods? He can often successfully guess at words but for the 'sounds' such as 'ear', 'eer' or 'ier', you have to KNOW, not guess.

Any help/advice gratefully received!

Very common which is why spelling tests aren't helpful to most children.

So why do we have them and how do children actually have spellings?

that should read 'how do children LEARN spellings'?!

I don't know why your school has them mine doesn't.

In very young children it starts off very much trial and error but we need to recognise that children learn to spell in stages and some misspellings, which would be a worry if they came from a child of eight are a sign of normal progress in a child of six or seven.
Support for Spelling

my dd;
's teacher makes them do their tests in sentnaces so she knows if the really can spell them or if they're just memorising a list of words iyswim. Her spelling has come on leaps and bounds since they have been doing it this way. why not try practicing them in sentances at home.

I hate to say it but it's a brave school that stops spelling tests. I don't believe that spelling lists work, whether or not you test them in sentences. I think they're harmless and schools often get parental protest if they stop. What I used to do is give children a spelling rule to learn, with examples, and an activity worksheet, but then give them different spellings with the same rule in the test. Think it was better. The ones who loved learning spelling lists weren't keen to begin with but it was well received in the end.

Littlebylittle. Sorry, still quite early. What do you mean quite when you say "then give them different spellings with the same rule in the test"?

I think my DS still gets confused when you can have, say "bough" spelt with an "ough", so he continues the spelling rule to make "cough", when he actually wants to spell the word "cow", if you see what I mean !!!

Sorry, don't know how the word "quite" got into the first line!!

If I were doing plurals where you change y to i and add es eg party becomes parties, I would give different words that follow the same pattern. This would be year five or six. Does that make any sense? Easier to explain verbally!

Littlebylittle Doh! got it. That sounds like a very effective method.

Like your MN name by the way - that's my approach too!

They forget them because they haven't completed all the stages of learning. As with any new skill - if you don't use it, you lose it. Once the spelling test is over they might not need to write them again for weeks... by which time they've forgotten.

Much better to learn new spellings over a longer period where they have the same words for several weeks or until they are consistently spelling them correctly and have transferred the skill from test to text.

I know what you mean, mullymummy. If and when dd gets spellings to learn, I'm going to get her to write sentences with them in and keep going over one or two from the previous lists. I'm not looking forward to fitting another thing in though!!