How to improve spelling and use of sounds in writing??

[atiredmum]

Hi all,

I'm after some tips advice please.

A little background. I've been fairly happy with the progress of my second child but I would like some tips so that I can help him with his writing. In year r he was fairly switched on but I never felt pushed which was ok because it was reception. His teacher offered many other qualities that to me were very important. Looking back now though I do think he could have started writing more towards the end of the year. We kept a diary over the summer with odd sentences in it and photos which really helped. Roll on year 1. He's doing fairly well with reading. Some of this is because of his bank of sight words and some decoding. We are able to discuss decoding and alternative ways of writing the same sounds and he is starting to grasp the concept of split digraphs. So all of this I'm happy with as it's going in the right direction. However, the feeling I get is that he just hasn't seen or more to the point heard the sounds enough in each word he writes. I will also add that I didn't see much writing at parents evening. There were bits for science but no recount or story writing. He's a very creative little boy and would enjoy this.

So my question is does all this come with practising writing or do I need to go back through the phonics with him and sound out a good chunk of words so that he can hear the sounds more clearly.

Thanks for any advice.

Merry Xmas

I encourage my class to say the sounds as they write the word.
Phonics is about learning the sounds for decoding and encoding and it's important to practise both

Mrz is absolutely right about this. There is a considerable body of research evidence to support the practice of getting young children to say sounds as they write them. This helps them to remember the spellings and links those spellings firmly to the sounds - there is a direct connection between sounds and print and print and sound. The practice is also a genuinely sensory-motor activity: they say sounds as they write them, they see the spellings of the sounds as they write them, they hear the sounds as they write them, and there is obviously a tactile element as they write.

there is a direct connection between sounds and print and print and sound.

Man, many, Amy? Blue, shoe, flew, through, to, you?

If there was a connection, learning to write English would not take as long as it does.

In one of my books I have given this advice for learning to spell:

Tips for learning to spell

1. The hardest part of learning to spell English is memorising all the exceptions to basic spelling rules, rather than the rules themselves: bed, fed, led ? said head; catch, dispatch ? attach.

1. (refers to things in the book.)

3. Regular writing or typing out of words with tricky spellings also helps to fix them in your brain. So does making lists of the words which you keep misspelling, revisiting them and having them to hand for longer writing.

4. A few mnemonic aids, such as ?one collar, but two socks? for ?necessary? or ?big elephants can always upset small elephants? for ?because?, can also be helpful. But their overuse can clutter your brain, without helping your spelling.

5. Some troublesome spellings can be linked to other words, such as ?definite? to ?define?, but most just have to be learned one by one, such as the spellings for the /ee/ sound in:
   
   leave, sleeve, even, believe, protein, police, people.

6. Don?t let your difficulties with English spelling make you think that you are intellectually inferior. Your problems are due mainly to 3695 common English words having some logically unfathomable letters like those above.

7. The best way to learn to spell English is to read and write as much as possible without getting anxious about making spelling mistakes. Many great people, such as Darwin and Einstein, spelt very badly. Shakespeare appears to have been confused about English spelling too. He spelt his name in several different ways.

Masha Bell

Merry Christmas Masha

Thanks to you all for replying. I know some people frown on doing school work during the holidays but in our house it's actually a time where we are all relaxed and fresh enough to do it and 10 mins in the morning still gives us loads of time for play.

I got a little whiteboard out with DS and we've gone through some of his sounds and then we have tried to come up with loads of other words using the same sound. He does pick things up quickly but he definitely does need to say the sounds as he writes. If you were teaching the word frown would I assume the correct way is f-r-ow-n. Is it ever taught fr-ow-n or dr-i-n-k? Thank you for the tips.

Merry Xmas

'I assume the correct way is f-r-ow-n. Is it ever taught fr-ow-n or dr-i-n-k?'
You'd assume right, atiredmum: f r ow n. It used to be taught the other way but this has, for very good reasons, now been abandoned.
Not everyone believes that school work shouldn't happen in the holidays: read (with irony) Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of a Tiger Mother.
Good luck and merry Xmas.

I would always teach f-r-ow-n and d-r-i-nk

Merry Christmas

Masha a small point/tip re: mnemonic aids. IME first word mnemonics work much better and once taught most can recall surprisingly well. If you get children to draw the image and chant the rhyme it seems to embed things further. For example 'enough': enough nails on uncle's garden hut. 'About': About bats Oliver usually trembles. 'Always': Always laugh when Adam's Yacht sinks. 'Because': because eagles can add up so easily, and so on...

IME first word mnemonics work much better and once taught most can recall surprisingly well. If you get children to draw the image and chant the rhyme it seems to embed things further. For example 'enough': enough nails on uncle's garden hut. 'About': About bats Oliver usually trembles. 'Always': Always laugh when Adam's Yacht sinks. 'Because': because eagles can add up so easily,

Mnemonics have heir place but do have to be used in small doses! For instance, why teach a mnemonic for words like 'about' and 'always' which are pretty straightfoward ones to spell? Also, there must come a point where there are too many mnemonics to remember . I would save them for the trickier words and encourage use of letter/sound correspondence knowledge where ever possible.

doh! 'their'...

One of my class had been taught big elephants always understand small elephants so wrote becaule (well small/little)

My DS was taught 'big elephants always.....'. But he didn't know how to spell 'always' and thought it started with an 'o'.....

Which just goes to show that it's not always useful to rely on mnemonics! Kids forget them!

I think that 'because' is 'taught' far, far too early, anyway. If it was left until later in the phonics programme it would be a doddle