I was in a school-based reading/writing session with my dd today, which involved reading a book with her, then her writing three sentences to summarise the story.
The teacher mentioned at the start not to worry too much about spelling etc. as long as they get the sounds right. Fair enough.
In working out the sentences though, dd was suddenly unsure of how to spell "woman" as WOMAN or WOMUN and asked me which it was. She got the WO bit correct, and then for the rest, I said "when you say "man", is it muh-ah-nnn, or muh-uh-nnn?" She then worked it out.
I also pointed out to her that she had written "g" backwards a couple of times, and reminded her that "g" and "y" sits on the line, with their 'tails' hanging down below. They were 'floating', which she does habitually. In general her writing is good - neat, good spelling, good spacing of the letters, letters fairly even in size. So I was giving her constructive feedback on areas she could easily improve on, I thought.
At the end the teacher came over and had a look, and asked dd if she did it by herself, or if mummy helped her. Dd said she had a bit of help from me, so I explained where I had given my input. The teacher reiterated not to worry too much about spelling as it's far more important that they get the sounds right. Slightly slapped wrist I felt.
Well, I know, but I didn't just give her the answer, I prompted her to sound it out - was I wrong to even 'prompt'?
So next time do I just shrug, even if dd's asking me a question? I have to say if she spells something incorrectly and I'm sat there, I can imagine myself getting the urge to do what I did again - why is it not the done thing? And with the letters sitting on the line - well, it's practice isn't it, if she's not reminded to look at the position of the letters, how is she going to learn to remember?