Spellings year 1 - DS is struggling and we are!

[bacon]

Can I have a list of your spellings for year 1 please. I dont understand the sequence with ours. I think they are too hard - crush, bath (5 in total). Ive been told from another teacher from a different school that they should be concentrating on high frequency words - three letters.

We get them weekly which he struggles to do then the next week a new set. By then he cant remember the words from last week. Pointless just bull dozing through every week if words arent duplicated IMO.

As with any parent the evenings are frought enough and getting him to concentrate on these and remember is causing household stress! He starts crying and going nuts. Typical, talk to the other parents and they havent a problem at all. DS is very bright, excellent vocab, happy and enthausatic but with english reading and writing just struggling.

Help!

We also do not send spellings home but also teach them in class. We teach 'tricky words' linked to letters and sounds which come in the following groups.

Phase 2: no, go, I , the, into, to

Phase 3: he, she, me, be, we, was, you, they, are, my, her, all

Phase 4: said, have, like, so, do, some, come, were, there, little, one, when

Phase 5: out, what, oh, their, people, Mr, Mrs, looked, called, asked, could

We also teach spelling words by sounding out.

blimey, some hard lists on here. My ds is in year 1 and there are several groups for spelling - 4 or 5 groups?
I think he is bottom but 1 group (but the teachers are always reluctant to rank them!)
he is getting things like 'slip, get, the, can, swim, hat.'
They are too easy for him as he gets them all right the first time we do them.

DD gets 12 spellings a week. Nine focus on whatever "pattern" they have chosen that week and are very very easy (this weeks in "et and en" so bet, let, ten, men etc) and three "tricky" words (this weeks are going, for, away)

I teach y1 and no spellings at all for us

No homework

Lots of learning through play still going on

I have a child moving away next week, anyone suffering from spelling and homework overload want to send their DD or DS to take his place?

Disclaimer...already have 19 boys out of 30 so another girl would be nice!

No spelling yet here.

kafay that's just not fair is it? and its far too many

we used to do between 5 and 10 depending on the children's ability

Spelling homework can be useful to consolidate phonemes / tricky words and it is a way for parents to be involved & keep informed as to how their child is doing, but for some people it seems ridiculously important and over competitive. Do your best and then let your children have a life!!

bacon it's good that you are keen to help your ds - it can be so tricky when they struggle with something, keeping homework/support light and fun and boosting their confidence. There are lots of online games/activites he could do if he likes that sort of thing. I used to tell parents " you are the expert on your child so you can tailor the work to incorporate his interests" e.g. dinosaur /train spelling activities (I don't really know what 6 year olds are in to these days sorry - X factor? space?)

Hi Bacon:

I think the first issue is whether the words set are simply too challenging for your son. If you feel you are spending far too much time, your son isn't enjoying it and he isn't retaining it - maybe you need to honestly raise this with his teacher and have him moved down to a lower set (as it is likely the spellings are linked to spelling groups, ask your son what group he is in and where this is - i.e. highest or lowest).

Second issue is whether he just doesn't like how he's learning it.

Are you just having him memorise words? - either by spelling them out loud or writing them out?

Writing out can be made more interesting by timing it - how fast can you write 'bath' 10 times. Or by racing. You and he each write out the word five times and then review each others penmanship - words don't count if writing is not clear. How small can you write the words? How curly can you make the words? How neatly can you print the words? The options are endless really.

Some teachers at our school have the children use words in sentences and the game we have started at home is getting our girls to use as many words as they can in one sentence. This also helps with thinking about the type of words set - verbs, nouns, adverbs, adjectives, etc... (although possibly a bit much for Y1 - but certainly worth discussing from Y3).

Another great game is to use hangman to review spelling words. So chose a word and have your son guess the letters. This might be useful to review old words, thus keeping their spellings live in memory.

Finally, it is a great long journey game to play EVIL SPELLING TEST in the car or on the train. Whoever isn't driving holds the spelling book or books and the child is given a spelling word. If they get it right the driver has to get how many ever letters worth of spelling words right before it is the child's turn again. So if your son gets 'bath' correct, you will have to spell 4 words in a row correctly before he gets another spelling word. Somehow seeing Mum and Dad suffer makes spelling words out loud a lot more fun .

If it is any concellation, my eldest went through a phase of doing well on the test but completely forgetting how to spell the words a few weeks later. We despaired but eventually it did click, and now she rarely misspells her spelling words and also seems to be getting the hang of spelling other words, which haven't been set for spelling but are words she's had trouble spelling correctly previously.

Research shows that spelling tests in the earlier reading stages (ks1) might reward those with good short-term recall but do little to develop phonic skills. Many schools persist with weekly spelling tests because parents expect them. Practising words which use the phonic rules being taught that week is good but there's no need for a test...ask your school to introduce a weekly list of words to practise, but ask them to remove the scary Friday morning "Quiet, and write the numbers 1 to 10 in the margin" session which might be a breeze for some but is tough for others, even though they may be at a similar level in their phonics teaching groups.

can I just add some usefull advice from dds teacher...memorising spellings are not very usefull. end off!!

Your child needs to attempt to spell the words that are consistent with what they are reading as this compliments both memory and learning to read.

My dd had completed all spellings from y1 and 2 in the first month of year 1. I was at pains as the teacher was not sending more spellings home and so I had a word and she told me that she would give this advice to all parents, that is. it is pointless giving children random words to spell on weekly basis.

The spellings need to compliment what they struggle to read. so i suppose this would fit all children, bright, struggling or other wise. She said make note of the words dd struggles to read or does not know the meaning of and give these as spellings.

do this routine for any spellings.

Look
say
trace (pencil over the letters)
say
cover
say
write

once your child can get them correct a few times go straight for quick calling out and getting child to write. Then move on.

it is pointless having new spellings weekly untill they can spell or write the words they are struggling with.

I would ask the teacher if there is an easier group's spelling list. Ds2 is average in terms of Y1 reading ability and would find crush, bath etc fine as they are phonetic. He would have to practice so that he didn't write "baf" rather than "bath" but no biggie. We practice covering and writing his 10 spellings every day (Monday to Thursday and test on Friday)and it takes about 5 minutes a day. There is an easier group and they had words like "do, the, and"
Last week we had "qu" words and the hardest bit was getting him to write q rather than g as he hardly ever writes q.
His spellings usually follow a pattern like "c,k or ck?" "ai or ay?" I remember my older 2 doing this sort of phonics consolidating in Y1/2 so I assume this is in line with letters and sounds.