Some concerns about DD1, not sure what (if anything) we can do.

[AnnieLobeseder]

DD1 is in year 2, 6yo but late August baby so youngest in her year. Not sure if that's too relevant since she's mostly coping fine, but want to get all the info out there.

Her handwriting is absolutely awful, and so is her spelling, and the school don't seem to be doing anything about it.

She's just lazy with her writing, doesn't finish her letters off, does a like an alpha, d like an alpha with an extended top, iyswim - not bothering to add the 'stick' to letters properly. We pull her up on it at home and try to make her neater when doing homework, but the school aren't doing anything and she does most of her writing there, obviously, so she just lapses back into lazy writing there.

And the school keeps coming up with new ways to teach spelling. They did have a list of words to learn and be tested on. That worked well for us and she was getting 8-10/10 regularly. Now they have changed to practising various words with a certain sound, then testing on random words from a large selection. But they have to make up their own words with these sounds, the teacher doesn't check them, and despite promises to send the spelling test books home weekly, they don't send them home so we've had no idea how DD1 was doing.

I found a spelling test on paper in her bag today in which she'd scored 3/10. I asked her about it, and she said it was better than the 2/10 she usually gets. WTF?! I'm furious her scores have dropped so badly and we didn't know about it.

This term DD1 starts with her 3rd new teacher of the year. Both spring and summer term teachers left for better jobs. Not entirely the school's fault but not ideal for DD1 at all.

When I was at school we were made to write neatly and spell correctly. But the education system seems so different here (I wasn't schooled in the UK) I'm not sure what to expect and what I should get upset about.

So, what I'm asking, after that essay, was what I should do about these problems - should I be expecting the school to teach my daughter to write and spell or does that just not happen any more?

Just to add (as if I hadn't written enough!!), the school was recently downgraded from an Ofsted Good to a Satisfactory, which is very worrying and lots of parents are moving their children to other schools. That would probably be my first choice too except that we're moving to a different city in 2.5 years, so I don't want to disrupt DD1 any more than necessary. I switched schools a lot as a child and it ruined my childhood (and a fair chunk of my adulthood) in many ways.

And, also, DD1 is well on target for reading and maths, so overall is doing well, it's just the writing and spelling that are concerns.

From memory I think they focus on ideas and flow and then when they're a bit older years 3 and 4 start consolidating on spelling and letters etc.

Hi

Is she right handed, or left handed? Can she draw and colour-in reasonably well? Can she use scissors and cut-out accurately? In other words, are there problems with fine motor skills, or is it that she doesn't LIKE having to write? If she is happy and OK in other subjects I wouldn't worry too much.

She could practise letter formation on a dry-wipe white board, on a plastic surface with thick paint and a finger, or in a thin layer of sand or flour: try and make activities fun. She could write a diary for her favourite doll or teddy, concentrating on ideas and imagination rather than perfect writing.

My handwriting was always poor, so was my DS, so I can sympathise with DD1.

Wrt to spelling - its not at all important how many spellings she gets right in a spelling test - its important how many she gets right in her writing.

Kids who get 10/10 in a spelling test don't necessarily spell those words right later. So what your school is doing is better - trying to properly teach her a sound.

What's her spelling like in her writing?

It takes a long time to learn to spell properly in English. She will continue to have spelling lessons all the way to Y6. School will expect her spelling to gradually better over that time.

But it's def ok for a child to spell some words wrong. And getting 2/10 in a test doesn't say what her spelling is really like.

Wrt to handwriting. Some schools bother more with it than others. But again they'll probably teach it all the way to Y6 and the expectation will be tha it gradually gets better.

hello

Sounds like my DD (yr 1) who is lazy when it comes to handwriting and spelling. For the handwriting we practice it in the holiday. I bought some very cheap handwriting books and do 5 mins every day in the holidays. I did it at Christmas and half term and it's making a world of difference. We have a sticker chart and prizes for the end of the week if she does a whole week (without moaning!)
My personal view is that handwriting becomes a habit and if they do it wrong now, they're likely to always do it wrong. She doesn't seem to be picked up for her poor letter formation at school.

However I would check out that her fine motor skills are ok first to check whether it is that that is the problem. My DD is left handed which does make it slightly more difficult.

I agree with whathaveIforgotten about handwriting. If she isn't actually forming the letters correctly (which she isn't if a looks like alpha) then that needs correcting now, as it is a habit which is hard to break. Messiness/neatness is less important than correct formation.

How much have you spoken to the school about this? Ideally you should be talking to them first. If you think they're not doing enough, then there are lots of handwriting books you can use at home, and things like roll 'n' write letters to remind her of correct formation.

Spelling it's very hard to know how she's doing compared to others in the class unless you talk to the teacher. But in general it sounds like they're focusing on encouraging sounding out rather than rote memorisation, which is a good approach at this age.

Hi AnnieLobeseder:

mrz our resident guru on things writing must be on holiday - so I'm posting a link to various hints he's/ she's (not sure which) offered about writing in the past: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/primary/a1442468-Mrz-I-need-your-help-Need-to-strengthen-muscles-in-DDs-hands

Writing is so tricky - it's strength and co-ordination as much as practicing letter formation. I also found out about these worksheets you can do - we use them to pre-prepare spelling lists so that DDs can practice writing out the words nicely. Link here: www.handwritingworksheets.com/

Spelling. This is also tricky. Our school is so laid back about it their horizontal. Their view is that it will gradually move from plausible phonetic attempts at correctly spelling words to accurate spellings. To be fair DD1 now Y4 is spelling better and better. I couldn't bear some spelling mistakes - so I've been targetting things. Where? There? are place words that have a here in it to help get that 'h' in there. With - doesn't have an 'h' - whith which my DD1 kept doing. I try to remind her question words tend to have a 'h' - so Which? What? Why? Where? - and it seems to help. In essence, I chose my battles.

Anyway I hope that helps and I'm sure mrz will add ideas when back from holiday.

One thing that worked well for our DDs was to take them to a nice stationary store and let them chose a diary and a fancy pen. They have been doing lots of writing in their diary and it seems to have improved their letter formation no end. We also swear by geometric design colouring books (just type geometric design colouring books in amazon) and using crayola twistable colouring pencils (which require no sharpening). It requires lots of fine motor skills and builds strength.

HTH

I had similar problems with dd's school, they wouldn't point out mistakes which then became habits that were hard to break.

In reception dd's handwriting slipped a bit, she had been taught proper letter formation and pencil grip in preschool (in a fun way and she enjoyed it). Then in reception it was ok for her to write however she wanted and no mention was made of mirror writing/bad letter formation as she would just 'pick up the correct way soon' without them mentioining it.

The roll round yr 1 parents evening suddenly dd's handwriting is an issue . It was so frustrating that they could have fixed it so easily but ignored it until it became a hard to alter habit. DD ended up in tears as a boy on her table said her writing was too big and messy (tbf it was). Then didnt want to write much

I now teach handwriting and spellings at home, my own way (was hoping that i would do less after teaching her to read myself!!!). She gets spellings every week from school and is tested but Im not told the results. I dont get involved in that much she copies them out at afterschool club (childcare). I correct a percentage of words in writing.

At the moment her project is a diary about a seed she has planted so I'm reminding her that 'plant' is not 'plarnt' and wait is not a long vowel 'wate' daily.

Thanks everyone. DD1 is left-handed (which I should have mentioned) but her fine motor skills are good. She can draw and colour beautifully, and cut out shapes neatly. She's just lazy and she knows it! She writes long, very imaginative stories, but her writing and spelling are so poor throughout it's tricky to read them. The school have said they're trying to encourage her to write shorter stories with better writing and spelling but I'm not seeing an improvement.

I'm sure spelling will come with time, but the lazy writing, as some of you have said, it going to become ingrained a harder habit to break as time goes on. Those who have noted that it's poor letter formation rather than just messy writing are correct - she just doesn't form her letters correctly at all, and just wants to get her words down while caught up in the story and her imagination.

Once her new teacher has had a couple of weeks to settle in I'll speak to her and see if she's being pushed to form letters better. But there's not much of the year left.

She does love to write, and already has various special notebooks, diaries and pens at home. And she will work hard at writing neatly if I push her, but it just degenerates as soon as I'm not hovering over her and reminding her.

Sigh.....

Has she actually been taught how to form letters correctly or has it been a bit of this is what a looks like can you copy it?

I think too many schools let children overwrite, either dots, highlighted lines etc or underwrite from a teacher's model unsupervised, so children learn to draw the shape without learning where to start and finish and which direction to go. You mention a and d in particular I see lots of children draw these as a clockwise circle ending up at the top so have to add the stick or start at the bottom and then aren't quite sure what to do next.

I don't know, mrz. I try to teach her the right way to form the letters when I work on them with her, but it's a bit trickier since she's a leftie.

Left handed formation is exactly the same except for cross strokes which are formed right to left rather than left to right.

OP IME it hasn't mattered at all with DD being a leftie - I thought it would be a big issue with her book turned through 90 degrees etc, bizarre pen hold but none of it - maybe we have just been lucky?

I have a child this year who has his book pointing straight up drives me mad!!!

So, should DD1 have her page/book turned then? No-one has told us this and he writes with the page straight.

yes it should be tilted slightly www.lefthandedchildren.org/left-write.htm

We'll have to give that a go and see if it helps. Do schools/teachers get training in teaching left-handed children to write? I guess I should have researched if she'd need any extra help, but figured that beyond leftie scissors, she didn't need anything special.

Every child is different and some lefties won't have a problem and some right handed children will struggle. Teachers should know how to teach all children to write but not all schools actively teach letter formation it can be very haphazard.

HI my ds(yr3) had terrible h/w and spelling..he always spelt things as they sounded but always got good marks for the content of his stories(how the teacher could understand it i will never know!!)

He was and is a good reader and could "sound "out words well...just couldn't remember how to spell them later!

Any how now that he has progressed to joined up writting which he found very easy his h/w is impressive apart from homework when he wants to get it over with!

Another thing i found made a BIG difference was to always use a SHARP pencil.
He has small writting and slightly blunt pencils make it harder for him to be neat....and it can look smuged.

IT took us a while to get there...but remember ..while a child might be struggling with one thing ..some other type of learning will be stronger...and eventually it all catches up and CLICKS.

HTH

FORGOT TO SAY ...HE IS A LEFTIE