Helping 6 year old with spellings

[dippydaydream]

I think my DS is going to follow me and find spelling tricky. He can read well but really struggles with spelling. My English teacher always said that I had imaginative spelling!! I know that there has recently been a discussion on here about schools no longer having spelling sent home which is the same as my sons class. I personally thought that it helped him but don't want to start that discussion up again. What I would like to know is there any resources that anyone can suggest please. I thought about having the most common sounds such as "ai" , "ch" etc etc on cut outs on the wall. Is there any lists that will tell me all the combinations and rules that they need to know. Many thanks

If your son is a keen reader, his spelling will gradually improve, especially if u can encourage him not let worries about spelling prevent him from writing what he wants to say.

Many schools (very sensibly) don't have spelling tests any more because they tend to be of little help in improving the spelling abilities of poor spellers. Doing as much real writing as possible is much more useful for that.

Spelling tests give naturally good spellers opportunities to shine but are a nightmare for poor spellers, without helping them to improve. The latter tend improve most by learning from their own mistakes, by the old LOOK - SAY - COVER - WRITE - CHECK method, picking out just a few words at a time, again, and again, and again.

Because so many English words contain one or more illogical letters (e.g. mANy, English, wOrds, OnE, morE ) they give some children a very hard time. Good spellers are generally simply lucky to be born with a better visual memory and are able to imprint the right look of words on their minds more easily, without having to work at it. So they love spelling tests, but most children they are largely a waste of time.

PS
I am not saying that spelling practice, with all kinds of excercises is a waste of time - just spelling tests.

Hi -

I find the best resource to help with understanding and learning spelling is the Oxford Phonics Spelling Dictionary. It lists words according to the initial SOUND, not just the letter as in a 'normal' dictionary. It has hints and tips to help children, Nouns have the plural, and Verbs have the various tenses. A section on 'confusions' includes things like "to, too, two" etc. Amazon sell it for under £7, and you can see several sample pages from it HERE:

Dear Ferguson

U keep plugging that book all the time, and I am beginning to wonder why?

There are plenty of free word lists on the net nowadays, including heterographs like 'to/too/two'.

the problem with lists on the internet is you can't be sure of the quality ...there are lots of very poor examples

There are lots of poor books too.

very true masha

Ferguson keeps plugging the Phonics Spelling Dictionary because it is a very well thought out and useful resource. With his many years of experience with beginning readers he's probably better qualified than an ex-secondary English teacher (remind us how many children you have taught to read, marsha), with a bee in her bonnet, to recommend truly useful resources.

And when you've found a good one you want to share it with as many people as possible. (Which is why I, mrz and many others on here promote, support and explain the use of synthetic/linguistic phonics for the teaching of reading).

Maizie
From Yr6 onwards phonics is of very little help with learning to spell English, because for the next 10 years and more it involves mainly learning
1)exceptions to the main English spelling patterns,
e.g bed, fed - said, head; bend, send - friend; much, such - touch; loop, scoop - soup; fool, pool - rule, and so forth, for at least 4,000 common words.
2) the use of different spellings for around 250 identical common words (heterographs) which depend on context,
e.g. their/there, to/two/too, its/it's.

[rolls eyes]

Getting away from the predictable arguments, I wouldn't be quite so fatalistic about your DS following in your footsteps. If you are too negative, it could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is early days yet and he is only six. I am sure even the best spellers weren't all that great when they were six. He will still be covering phonics and spelling patterns in school at this age. Unfortunately they are no rules that cover every spelling possibility but there are patterns that are the most likely. By all means keep an eye on things and try some resources like Ferguson's dictionary recommendation although I think he may be a little young for it (I am quite partial to the pocket spell-checker, myself). And the world has moved on since you were at school - if DS wants to check a spelling, he just Googles!

Hi dippydaydream:

We found the on-line spelling games from St. Ambrose Primary very helpful: www.saintambrosebarlow.wigan.sch.uk/spellingpage.htm

We discovered these over the summer before Y5 and started at Y3 and worked our way right through.

Not all the games work, but most do and you can help them where it doesn't.

Oddly enough we found the GCP literacy workbooks (Y4 & Y5) which are meant to focus on grammar actually do review a lot of the spelling rules and in a very entertaining way. These are easily available from most large newsagents/ amazon/ book shops.

HTH

Sorry, Masha if I am causing you distress.

Live dangerously, risk £7 to buy one, then you can comment from a more informed viewpoint.

My DS is 6 too and we had real problems with spellings last year - reading was a nightmare too :(

However somebody recommended (probably on here) an ipad app called squeebles. I can honestly say for this past 3 weeks of spelling tests the change in him doing his weekly spellings has been amazing. Previously he was lucky to get 1 or 2 right but now we are looking at him only getting 1 or 2 wrong. This app seems to hold his attention. Basically you type in the spelling test words and then record it so he gets used to listening to the word and then spells it. For each correct spelling you get a star, if you get 3 in a row you get something else, 5 in a row you get something else and all correct you get bonus stars. He wants to do it and as it only takes a few minutes to complete he is happy to do it several times a day but I am happy if he only does it once a day.

This app has transformed the weekly battle of spelling tests and we are also improving his reading too as we are not labouring on spellings, getting uptight (me) and just spending 15/20 minutes on his homework or less.

Please give it a try :)

DS school still give out spelling tests. It is a leading independent prep so they obviously still think it works. As has been said, phonics only gets you so far. After that it is a question of learning the spelling of words in context which brings you back to some form of memorising. Reading helps a great deal too as does being very picky about spelling in homework - which might be tricky if you struggle yourself.