Phonics....when does it all come together

[Jellyrollgumdrop]

DD is in P2 and will be 6 in June, they use Oxford Reading Tree & The Biff & Kipper books. While her reading on the whole is great, some letters/sounds are confusing ie ceiling sounds like it starts with a s...... thinks like this are confusing her when it comes to spelling. She loves writing her own little stories and trying to sound out the words and makes a good attempt but my concern is when is it all going to come together so her spellings are correct too? She is a bright little girl and I know I am not alone in my concerns as other mothers have expressed the same concerns over this method of teaching.
Someone reassure me!!

Sounds exactly like my DD who will also be 6 in June. She writes little stories and labels pictures and the spelling is generally bizarre. Her most recent picture, which is of a "pepll fracrty" ( people factory) includes the labels "toass" ( toes), "brans" ( brains), " her" ( hair) and "scin" ( skin but with the added benefit of a backwards s).

She's in yr 1 in an English state school, there seems to be little emphasis on spelling at the moment.

Will watch the thread with interest. Reading wise she's really come on this year and is now starting to read things by choice, that is in addition to her ORT books from school.

This link from UCL on phonics talks about phonetically plausible spellings. I think children are encouraged to spell words the way they think that they sound, which makes sense if we're teaching children that words are to be identified by how they sound. (It's just a shame that lots of words in our language don't look the way they sound.)

www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/tta/spelling/teaching.htm

thank you learnandsay

The information on the UCL site is alarmingly out of date

oh?? thanks for that mrz

jeffreyhill.typepad.com/files/pri_lit_sup17109.pdf is the latest Spelling guidance for England

Phonetically plausible spelling are fine at this age - up to a point. Children are expected to be able to spell common words correctly and attempt unfamiliar words using phonic knowledge.

Using anthonytrollopesrevenge examples toass and scin would be acceptable but brans and pepll fracrty wouldn't be.

Thanks mrz, it looks as though the school is following this closely as my DS in yr 4 is covering all the things mentioned for his year. I'll work with DD a little bit on spelling I think, as I can't see her being at the yr 2 suggested activity levels by September! Luckily she enjoys spellings at the moment and the whole learning to write process, seems to regard it as some sort of interesting puzzle.