Spellings in YR

[MimsyBorogroves]

DS has come home with a note today saying that instead of new high frequency words, he is receiving some spellings instead. He has a small book with the date written on a page, with 6 words including "to", "go", "into" and "the"

So, how do I go about helping him to learn them? Obviously, some are easier than others as they can be deduced with phonetics. But I'm having flashbacks to years of "look, cover, check" in my primary school years.

Has anyone got any good (interesting?) strategies? We had a chat over tea around "how would you spell..." and I was surprised by how many he could do. Obviously that isn't going to be the case all of the time, though.

He's good at reading, but struggles more with writing - he's left handed so we still have issues of all of his writing smudging. He is also very careful when he writes, and writes nicely - but it's very time consuming and I can see him getting bored easily. I was thinking of encouraging him to write on one of those wipe clean drawing toys (hope someone knows what I mean!) as practice.

Thanks

Which are the ones that he can't spell?

Not really had much of a try yet, but "into" was the one he struggled with. We talked about splitting it into sounds, but I think it'll be easier when we write them down so that it's less abstract.

It's more for when he's doing the more complex words - I am guessing that the spellings will now follow the 40+ high frequency words we've worked on with him at home with his reading.

Is he your oldest child??

The reason I ask is because DD (reception) loves doing her spellings with her older brother, it makes her feel grown up!!

Firstly I would check that he can read them all, then maybe copy them when seeing the word he is supposed to be spelling.

Whiteboard sounds a good idea.

Also have you got any magnetic letters for the fridge or foam letters for the bath?? Maybe try using them.

Or the bath crayons and write on the bath (although they can stain

DD is left handed too and has found the physical side of writing tougher although she is getting there. Until 3 weeks ago her S looked like a kind of 3 but longer!!!

DS refused to write at home in YR, but he had no spelling then, just reading.

Now in Y1 (age 5, young for his year) he has weekly spelling and his wonderful teacher suggested using magnetic letters for spelling to take the pressure off by not having to write words down, also use etch a sketch, white board , black board etc. DS is delighted to write on my own office white board for spelling practice as he is not usually allowed in my office at home so this gave him access to my territory ;-)

He is meant to ' read cover write check' but we only do this for new or complex words as he likes to just write the words down when I read them to him. Our home rule is: I say the words, he writes them down but if he does not know or get them wrong, he comes and looks at them to learn them. Like your DS he was fine initially without looking but some weeks, he needs to learn the spelling for a few days before he knows all of them. We try to make it low key and do not fuss if he gets it wrong as he is very young for this in my view and gets 11 out of 12 right answers most week in his school test, so that's working for us.

I am in charge of the frequency of spelling practice(6 days a week) but he chooses how he does it so we share responsibility and both feel in charge :-)

into is a compound word.

Yes, he's my eldest.

I hadn't thought of fridge letters! We've been using them to make nonsense words for phonics, so that would be a brilliant way to help him.

My 6yo learns his spellings by writing them on the patio door in a whiteboard pen. :D

'into is a compound word'. What help was that exactly? (genuine confusion)

The only trouble, as you've said, with left handedness and white boards is they tend to rub out what they've just written as they go. Same for chalk boards. I'd definitely try magnetic letters.

Posted too soon!

You could also chop the words up in to sounds and ask him to put them back together and then copy them