How well should children be spelling by the start of year 2?

[ohmygosh123]

We will be coming back to the UK next September and my daughter will be going to prep school. How much is covered in Year 1 please, as different threads indicate different things. She hates getting things badly wrong (yep its life, she's got to get used to it, but ......), and is good at putting effort in. She isn't being taught in english at the moment, but I am British.

I can go for the "no worries" approach and let them sort her out which is the school's suggestion, but I don't see the point of that if I can help her now. Any advice from teachers or parents would be fantastic as I have looked at spelling lists of different primary schools / spelling programs and it seems to be wildly different to a complete novice.

current y2 (state school) spellings are.....

here
sphere
deer
peer
cheer
share
scare
wear
pear
bear

It varies. In our year 2 class last term, some were writing stories with all words correctly spelt, others were very phonetic (is that the right description?)
Most had a mix of phonetic, guesses and correct spelling e.g.

The dog was warking with his owna.

That kind of thing anyway.

Thanks for helping. So by year two it seems they are still reinforcing phonic sounds, but knowing which to apply where. Looks like I've quite a bit to do with her.

I am just relieved that she has finally started trying to spell phonetically (trying being the operative word!), rather than trying to make me her personal spell-checker. She spelled 'thought' as 'fort' and I was delighted because at least she did it on her own. We are complicating things by learning phonics in french which makes things more entertaining!

My ds seems to be focusing on the alternative spellings of sounds, ie -ear, -air, -ure, etc. He is doing the months of the year as his difficult words a the moment, but some kids are still learning to read cat and hat. It really varies. In year 1 he didn't get a spelling test until the second half of the term as he was so far ahead and some had them on day one. Seems to depend on the teacher if they actually correct the spelling or not (seen from helping in class).

To ask how well should a child be spelling by the start of Y2 is not easy to answer. The variables involved are many and varied: the child, the carers, the cultural background, the teaching the child is receiving, and so on.
However, during YR and Y1, children should have been taught most of the ways of reading and spelling the sounds in English. The thing to remember is that although reading and spelling are, if taught correctly, two sides of the same coin, spelling is always going to be more difficult (McGuinness: 2004).
The reason for this is that reading requires recognition memory: the cue (i.e. the word) is in front of the reader. Spelling, on the other hand, requires recall memory. In other words, the writer has to recover from their memory the way of spelling the word. This demands a deeper kind of memory. For example, if you want to spell the word 'rain', you need to be able to hear all the sounds and then to represent them. The sounds 'r' and 'n' are relatively easy. For young children and people who have been badly taught, the hard bit is knowing and then remembering which spelling of 'ae' is the correct one.
So, how is the child likely to know which is the correct one? Answer: from exposure - seeing the word in text enough times for the spelling to register and being taught to notice that the spelling in 'rain' is and not any other spelling of the sound 'ae'.
So, what to do, ohmygosh123? Take your daughter systematically through the sounds in the language and teach her to begin with all the common ways of spelling them. [For 'ae', for example, you might teach her , , and the split spelling ]. After you've worked through all the common ways of spelling the sounds, teach her the less common ways, but systematically and with lots of practice. For the sound 'ae', for example, you might go on to teach , , , and . Of course, when you're reading and you come across a spelling of 'ae' your daughter hasn't seen before, you simply point to the particular spelling of 'ae' and say this is another way of spelling 'ae', say 'ae' here.

So if I've downloaded the sounds and write programme off the government website, and work my way steadily through that or use one of the spelling lists like this one www.primaryresources.co.uk/.../phonics_and_spelling_programme.doc to make sure I have done all the blends with her, then that should be about right?

Husband and I are both British born and educated, so she gets plenty of english at home, and I love books so we do read alot together. I was trying to work out the level at the average / above-average child would be spelling at by year 2. I don't want to let her race off ahead, nor do I want her to end up behind.

Many thanks for the help.

Hi ohmygosh123,
Just a couple of things: the Sounds-Write programme on the DfE site doesn't give specific information. It gives only the principles underlying the programme.
After you've taught all the one-to-ones at CVC (sat) level, (gently) introduced double consonants (, , , ), followed that with CVCC (lamp), CCVC (frog) words using all the one-to-ones you taught at CVC level, go on to teach , , , , and at the same structural level until your daughter is really good at blending sounds and segmenting sounds in those words.
When you're satisfied she can do that to a high level of proficiency, go on to teach all the rest of the sound/spelling correspondences in English. We teach in this order: teach four of the most common spellings (as indicated in the last posting) of 'ae', 'ee', ?oe?, ?er?, ?e?, ?ow?, m?oo?n, b?oo?k, ?u?, ?s?, ?l?, ?or?, ?air?, ?oy? and ?ar?. The order doesn't really matter. What matters is the amount of practice you give and that your daughter understands that the squiggles on the page we call spellings stand for/represent the sounds in the English language. Get your daughter to say the sounds as she writes. This will help to link the spellings with the sounds.
For ethical reasons I don't want to give you our web address, where you can find out more information. However, I can give you someone else's (Debbie Hepplewhite). You'll find further help and information here: www.rrf.org.uk/pdf/DH%20Alph%20Code%20with%20teaching%20points%20PLAIN%20A4x7-1%20final%20version.pdf
And, read, read, read!
Good luck!

Here's the Sounds-Write website link

www.sounds-write.co.uk