After two years at school, do you think my son should be able to spell....

[ohanotherone]

words like keep, see, pick etc..???? Or is he woefully behind??? He is up to stage five in the Oxford Reading books and reads every night.

Is he in Y1?

My yr1 ds is on level 3 reading books as he isn't fluent enough on these, although he decodes well. He would be able to spell those words,as the phonic sounds are quite easy in them. However, he still makes mistakes when writing several sentences together rather than individual words.

How does he spell those words?

And is he in Y1 or Y2?

Kids do mix up phonics too, like my ds is now adamant that it is Spane rather than the Spain he was spelling. If it is pik or keap then try not to worry too much as writing is slower to develop than reading.

I never spotted a link between reading and spelling (very good reader DS, poor speller).

The words you've listed have reasonable phonetic alternatives - which a Y1/Y2 child might well choose.

I just asked DD2. She's 4.7 (August birthday) in reception.

Keep - she said 'k' 'ee' 'p' and could air-write the word correctly.

See - she said 's' 'ee' and could air-write the word correctly.

Pick - she said 'p' 'i' 'ck' but air-wrote 'b' 'e' 'c' so not even nearly write.

I don't know what that tells you though - DD1 is on stage 3 books (ORT) but I don't know how that compares to normal 'YR' levels - I suspect she's somewhere in the middle.

I think there's still quite a big range of 'normal' at these ages tbh.

really, Lougle? At 4.7? That's good.

I asked DD who is in Y1 and generally pretty capable. She did "keap" although said it looked wrong, "sea" (I had said which sort it was), and got "pick" right. I have no worrries about her at all - am pretty sure she is better at spelling than DS was at the same stage and he is fine in Y3.

If he's been at school for 2 years then is he in year 2? To be honest I think even the majority of year 1's should be able to spell those words. But my (very able) reception child could spell them easily so maybe I expect too much from older children and am completely misjudging it!

My ds is nearly 6 and pretended to faint when I asked him to spell the words.

He should know how to spell them as I'm sure they have all been on spelling tests. But I'm not confident that he would spell them correctly all of the time. (actually, I'm sure he would write pic and kep - he isn't known for his attention to detail)

DD2 (y1) seems to be on ORT L8/9 and I wouldn't trust her to spell that lot reliably. I just asked her and she got Keep and See OK first off, but Pick took 2 goes.

Thanks, BodyofEeyore Her (OFSTED outstanding) school don't like the children to be pushed beyond their ability or desire - they told us firmly at the beginning of the year that if our child didn't want to do the stuff they sent home (such as 'sight words', phonics cards for word making, books, etc.) then not to do it because it indicates our child is just not ready.

As a result, though, they don't give much feedback about where the children are 'at'. I know that they expect an average child to be on yellow/blue band by the end of this year, and DD2 has had her first blue band book home this week. I also know that they 'set' the children for phonics at this point, and DD2 had her first spellings home last week (I, a, is and it - heady heights ) and this week is spelling 'in, at, on, am'. So she must be in the top half of the class.

Apart from that...it's a mystery. Her teacher has her at 'meeting expectations'. She knows 49 sight words. But she changed groups in the class with no explanation earlier this term. In fact, I only found out because DD2 told me off for putting her water bottle in the wrong holder (the same one I had always put it in ) because she is a zebra now, not a giraffe, don't I know? Well, no, actually, I didn't...

Either way, she loves reading despite the fact that I don't do much with her at the moment (3 children, DD1 has SN and we're moving house). That's all that counts.

I appreciate the ranges of ability that children have. He is Y1 (we are in wales so they go to school at 4). But I have been through these spellings about 6 times ready for the test already and he seems to just forget by next evening. He also writes p's backwards like q and confuses b's and d's and forgets how to write an f. I have been told that he is behind the others by the teacher as he seems to be unable to concentrate and is in a world of his own. He had glue ear but generally passes the hearing tests now. His speech is really good.....

I have heard (like Lougle have a SN LO as well as NT one so in my case that means I tend not to take the NT issues very seriously so I have to trawl my dim memory for this stuff) that the confusing p, b, d thing etc is actually v common and it's perfectly normal for it to continue at this age and beyond. DD2 still does it a bit, and for some reason cannot tell the difference between "th" and "wh" at the start of a word, especially with capitals. Sentences starting "Where" and "There" are all alike to her. As DH would say: "It's a Thing."

I think your problem is that although there's the whole Curriculum thing going on and though there's a push for literacy and phonics and all the rest of it, actually schools differ HUGELY on their approach to literacy at this stage. I imagine it doesn't get properly measured till Y2 and some schools try to get ahead (like DD2's which is A Bit Fascist about the reading, tbh) and some think it's better to get them engaged and enjoying it. Which means you can't benchmark your kid against anything other than the rest of the class, and if the teacher isn't forthcoming about that, you don't know where you are.

Indigo - He spells keep ..... keeq or cip.

But if he is reversing his p and q then actually he is spelling keep right in your first example... It is his letter formation that is wrong! My Y2 DS is above where he needs to be and at the beginning of this year was still reversing letters, putting in random capitals and generally awful at writing. It has come together this year.
In year 1 he could regurgitate his weekly spellings correctly but he would then never spell them right in his writing work anyway... In fact I am not sure of the merits of spelling tests as both my DSs get 100% every week and then when they do homework revert to their 'plausible phonetic' versions anyway... I guess eventually it might sink in!!

My DD3 is in YR, she's 5.5 and had these as her spellings a couple of weeks ago.

She had long, look, weep, keep, kick, pick, pack, sleep, words like that.

She's on RR11 of ORT but I have no idea how that compares to her classmates.

Spellings in reception??

DS2 in yR (5.3) can defo spell "see" and "keep", not sure he'd manage "pick" although he did produce "think" while in the car earlier and I don't think he's anything special - just plodding along with the phonics at school (which admittedly seem to be rigorously taught)

dd1 is perfectly capable, when not concentrating, of spelling just about anything wrong - and she's in Y3, and a very good reader. She may be very slightly dyslexic, or maybe spelling just isn't her thing .

She usually gets 100% in spelling tests, and her phonics are fine. Its just when she's thinking more about content than form, iyswim.

dd2 is in Reception and could spell see, keep, possibly not pick....but she has an amazing visual memory. I was a very good speller at an early age, my sister wasn't. We had the same teachers, the same parents, and the same books.

(but if its at all relevent, she is the high achiever of the family )

OP - those spellings seem fine for his age.

Okay, will plod on then. I worry alot because of his glue ear. I wasn't too worried until last parents evening when the teacher said about the other children flying ahead.

If you are particularly concerned about his spelling and want to do extra work with him at help then I recommend Apples & Pears

you do it at home, for 10 minutes a day. I think it is the best spelling program for parents.

I'm not saying you need to - just if you want to. It certainly won't hurt. And if the teacher has mentioned concerns, then maybe it's a good idea.

Strikes me that youngsters can spell if you show them how to. You can't expect them to know how to do something if they've never been shown how to do it. Cut some letters out of cardboard, spell see on the floor followed by bee and pee and then let the child make tee and wee and dee and so on and so on. By tea time they'll be spelling any three letter word that ends in ee. Tomorrow you'll no doubt have to do the whole thing over again. But they get the general idea in no time. Later on you have to do it with cat, hat, bat, tat and so on and so on. It just seems to me that they need to be shown.

Indigobell, thanks, that is really helpful I will look at that.

Learnandsay, you probably mean well but as a mum who spends alot of time talking and reading and doing homework with DS your comments haven't come across as helpful. If only things were that simple!