wot no spelin

[halfrom]

Not funny really but could do with advice. My dd school are not too brilliant on results for English, only 60% reaching average at y6. She never brings spellings home and to be honest homework is not a regular occurance. Other kids from other schools I know, all seem to have lots sent home. I am able to work with my daughter but was wondering if anybody had tips to cover more than one topic at once. I don't want all her free time taken up and she has so many after school activities as well. Any teachers who can advise please. DD is y3 I am also QTS (FE) and have some resources and ks2 syllabus. Her school do acheive very high for maths and the social side is second to none, but I feel if I don't help her she will be one of the 40% not achieving average as she is not the best at English.

Read to her as much as you can, anything and everything.

Be careful what you wish for!

The newest DofE programme is called "Support for Spelling" which follows on from phonics teaching in KS1.

Sending home spellings to learn is not very effective for the majority of children. Even those who regularly achieve 100% in the weekly spelling test fail to spell the same words correctly in their independent writing which is why some schools focus on teaching how to spell words in class rather than send them home.

Unfortunately, the 'reading anything and everything' formula is not supported by the research. Unless you focus the child on the particular ways in which we spell sounds in words - is it 'road' or 'rode'? - they often won't notice the spelling when they are reading and they certainly won't if you are reading to them.
Spelling doesn't run in parallel to reading. Reading is easier than spelling because when you're reading you have the visual cue in front of you. When you're spelling, you have no visual cue in front of you and you have hear the sounds in the word (segmenting skill) and then represent them in the form of spellings (which somebody needs to have taught you). Productive language (speaking and spelling) is always going to lag behind receptive (hearing and reading) language.
What msz says about sending spellings home is right, though if spellings are arranged according to sound, there may be some value in the activity.

Thank you for your replies and suggestions. I do have the list of words used most frequently. I think theres 200 in total. I also read an article suggesting the bringing home of spellings doesn't always work. I am now quite confident that I will be able to support her learning a little bit. I panic a little as I am severely dyslexic and she struggled at first, although has more than caught up now. She is top of the class for reading but just recently said she didn't like literacy. I think one reason may be spelling and comprehension. Thank you all once again