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Testing spelling 'rules' that haven't been taught

6 replies

lecce · 29/10/2013 10:37

Ds's (Y2) spellings for this week were a series of words all ending 'ing'. Some just required the addition 'ing', some needed the final consonant doubled and others required the removal of the final 'e'.

Ds had no idea about any of these 'rules' and when I asked him whether he had been taught to, for example, remove the 'e' from a word with a split diagraph before adding 'ing', he said he hadn't. He said he had had no teaching of this at all.

I am wondering about the point of testing pupils on this if they have not been taught it yet. Why tell them to learn individual words when there are guidelines that cuold help them with this?

I am considering raising this at parents' evening this week, but I wanted to see whether there may be a good reason behind it before I do. Of course, there is also the possibility that ds may have forgotten being taught it, but he is generally pretty reliable. I have no intention of raising it in an aggressive, confrontational manner, but it's not the first time that spellings have seemed to be chosen with little thought.

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Mashabell · 29/10/2013 16:09

Perhaps the teacher is hoping that by learning the words the children will discover the rules for themselves?

maizieD · 29/10/2013 17:14

Which is a perfect way of guaranteeing that a significant number of them won't, marsha.

I would gently query at parents' evening.

Sadly, some teachers don't have much understanding of spelling themselves and may not have enough understanding of phonics to introduce spellings in a systematic way.

maizieD · 29/10/2013 17:17

Well, not exactly 'phonics', more 'spelling conventions' (I hesitate to call them 'rules' because there are always exceptions to be found, as marsha will no doubt illustrate with a mind numbing listWink)

mrz · 29/10/2013 19:24

I think lots of schools use spelling lists taken from random published schemes without considering if they match what is actually taught in class.

lecce · 29/10/2013 20:53

Thank you. At the start of term I put a brief note in the reading record stating that the words for spelling seemed very easy and was told that they would be moving onto phase 6 the following week. Does anyone know if 'ing' words fall into phase 6 - skating, chatting and snowing are some of the words he was given. If the words are from phases, should that suggest that they are based on what they actually do in phonics sessions? I checked again with ds today and he is adamant that he hasn't been taught how to add 'ing'.

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mrz · 29/10/2013 21:01

yes phase 6 teaches suffixes and prefixes

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