Despite DD1's (age 10, Y5) teachers assuring us that spelling would eventually improve as she is an avid reader, that has not been the case. Having read lots of past posts on here about spelling, I know what DD needs is a crash course in phonics. She became a free reader late in Year 2, aged 7 and a half, and it's always been obvious to me that she does not 'hear' separate sounds, but learnt to read by eventually recognising whole words. She spells inconsistently, often mispelling simple words, muddling up letters. When she encounters a new word to read in a book, her first guess could be that it starts with a letter she sees in the middle of the word.
At her last parents' evening, her Year 5 teacher said she thought she had some spelling issues but still insisted they would sort themselves out. I had it in my mind that I would work on spelling and phonics with her this summer. I know there are lots of suggestions for programmes in the archives here. I, of course, would rather not spend our summer doing this. I wonder if schools are now going to be giving support to the children who enter Year 6 as poor spellers, now that they will be measured on spelling. Wills chools even know the best way to teach spelling after X amount of years of it being deemed les simportant than writing content? Do any teachers or parents know? Our school has already broken up and I have had this thought too late in the day to be able to ask at her school!
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Do you think schools will be offering more help with children's spelling difficulties now that they'll be tested on them in Year 6?
bryte · 23/07/2013 07:35
There isn't going to be an English test level at all this year (probably because they did definitely make it up as they went along last year 
)
1. Each teacher only cares about your child for 12 months. They always say 'don't worry, it'll resolve itself next year' - because they have no interest at all in next year.
I resent that, actually - quite aside from the fact that it isn't true for most teachers simply because they do care, some teachers are managers/coordinators who are responsible for each and every child in the school.
I'm a bit worried that an "englishteacher" should think that a language isn't phonetic 
it's complex because we have 44 sounds (depending on accent) but only 26 letters
Yes - kind of confirms the previous post about teachers not having a clue how to teach spelling 
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