Year 5 DD has now been put in the bottom group for spellings

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Dd has just gone into year 5 and we have always had to practice her spellings every week without fail. Her reading is spot with expression. It is the words with a "y" at the end she sometimes spells "story" as "stori" or words with "ea" she will put an "i". But she is getting there, she seems to spell phonetically.

She was in group 3 which was in the middle but now she has been put in group 1 which is the bottom, so two levels down She brought home her spellings this week and she got 10 out of 10 because they were easy for her. How to I tell her teacher that they are easy for her without cheesing teacher off.

I haven't got a straight forward answer cause I suppose it depends a bit on the teacher. I would maybe say I'm concerned since thought dd was progressing and dd feels demotivated by moving down. Ask them to be specific regarding how dd can progress . If teacher is professional should not mind you asking . I had bad experience in YR when teacher took everything personally but in YR 1 when asking similar questions teacher was fine and happy to help. Good luck.

If she does well for a few weeks she'll probably get moved up anyway. Or maybe she is not applying them in her writing?

I was really pleased when DD was put down for spellings. The extra time on the groundwork has benefitted her considerably.

If she performs well and applies it in her work she will be moved up.

Spelling tests are a waste of time.

Exactly! Many can learn for a test and then forget it.

I would say that her general spelling when writing is below average.

As others have said, being able to spell is not about whether you can spell 10 words in a list when you have been learning them for a week. It is about whether a child is able to take those words and spell them correctly when using them in a piece of writing. I work with SEN children who are brilliant at learning their list of ten spellings and regulalry get 10/10 on their test. But if they need to write the same word, ten minutes later, in a piece of writing, they do not remember it. They do not associate the word they have learned in a list, with the word they need to write in their science/history.geography/literacy/whatever book

I was never a good speller at school but I always got 100% in tests-it is fairly meaningless if you are 9yrs old and still putting an i where there should be a y.