Writing in KS1 - a bit a guidance from any teachers, please!

[WomanwiththeYellowHat]

My DD1 is in Reception and doing well. The school is lovely - we are really happy and the school has already organised several events / visits etc to show us how the children are being taught and to explain their methods etc, which has been great. The thing I just don't get is that when they are doing any kind of writing practice, the focus seems to be so much on being led by the child that they generally write any old rubbish down and the teacher says 'that's great, well done', even if the word is not only not recognisable as the word they are trying to write, but often not any word at all.

When we are writing eg birthday cards at home etc, I then find it hard to encourage my DD to write is correctly, as she is getting the idea that anything goes.

I know this is part of some kind of theory, and am sure loads of people will jump on me and say 'she is only 4' etc etc, but i really just want to get an idea about how the approach is meant to work, and at what point the kids will start to focus on there being a right way to spell things. My DD is very bright, but quite a pragmatist (!) and if she sees a short cut she will take it. I just want some reassurance that she will be stretched twoards spelling things correctly at somme point soon?

Thank you in advance for your helpl!

Not a teacher (a parent). My experience is that the sequence of events goes something like - encouraging child to make marks (any marks), encouraging child to follow patterns, making recognisable letters and then ... (linked with reading and phonics teaching) understanding that a certain sequence of letters make a word that has a specific meaning, writing one's own name, writing other recognisable words, trying to hear the sounds in words and write them in a phonetically plausible way, learning that words have a "right" way of being spelt.

In R/Y1 I think most children will be writing "nonsense" words moving on the phonetically plausible with encouragement to spell more and more "common" words "correctly". Then going into Y2 and beyond more words are spelt correctly. Depends on individual child of course.

IME not fussing about the spelling early on makes the child a better writer. DS was (is) so hung up on his writing being "wrong" (he was a good early reader and could tell by reading back it wasn't "right") that he scarecely writes at all whereas DD has progressed from stories written in a language that only she could read, to ones that are more phonetically plausible, to ones where at least half is spelt correctly - and writes prolifically - and isn't afraid to try different things.

DS for a very long time insisted that DD's name - let's say it is "Molly" - was spelt "Molle" - because of the "e" sound on the end. Because it was her name we felt we should insist on correct spelling - but to no avail, he eventually got to the stage (in his own time) that he realised sounds could have different spellings and started spelling it correctly!

Thanks Redsky - I note on re-reading my own post that it is (ironically) full of spelling mistakes! My excuse is that I am speed-posting at work!

My DS is in year 1. They seem to allow children in reception and year 1 to write nonsence words.

My DS wrote at christmas a sentence containing the word:

"preznts"

and his teacher was pleased.

In year 1 upwards, they will get spellings to learn. I would think that they would then be expected to spell the words from the spelling lists properly, but any other words they want to use would be done phonetically.