In what year do you think that a pupil should be able to spell...

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DS gets a list of more or less 20 words a week, to learn to spell. He's not very good at spelling and we spend a lot of time on these. There's usually a few easy words and a few more difficult ones, but this week we are struggling. If they get less than 15 words correctly on their test, for two weeks in a row, they get to miss playtime.

Thoughts?

Freetrait

Most spelling mistakes which pupils commit are the result of pupils trying to spell phonically rather than 'correctly'.

If u look at my table which shows the various ways in which the 43 English sounds can be spelt, u see many with which phonics is of no help at all, especially:

1. air: care – hair, bear, aerial, their, there, questionnaire (31-are – 27 other)

1. au: sauce – caught, bought,always, tall, crawl (44 au – 76 other)

11. er: her – turn, bird, learn, word, journey (70er – 124 other)

12. oo (long): food– rude, shrewd, move, group, fruit, truth, tomb,
    blue, do, shoe, through, manoeuvre (94 – 108)

13. oo (short): good– would, put, woman, courier (15 -21)

14. Unstressed, unclear vowel sound (or schwa),
    occurring mainly in 8 endings and 2 prefixes:
    -ary: ordinary– machinery, inventory, century, carpentry(37 – 55)
    -en: fasten– abandon, truncheon, orphan, goblin, certain (73 – 132)
    -ence: absence– balance (33 – 26)

Consonant doubling rule for showing short, stressed vowels:
merry (regular) – very(missing) – serrated(surplus)
(423 - 554 - 195)

As I say teaching them to spell by phonic is different and you don't want the child to fail, so making up rhymes or stories to help remember how to spell may help. I remember an elaborate story made up in my head for me to remember 'manoeuvre'. Not that I ever write that word nowadays
And I have a crazy story of 6 knights, 3 shields, 1 dragon and 2 swords just so I can remember my PIN number. (No stealing my purse please....)

If they get less than 15 words correctly on their test, for two weeks in a row, they get to miss playtime.

What a horrible school! Sounds like something out of the dark ages. A child should never be punished for not being able to do their work. Maybe the teacher needs to consider if the words being given are appropriate to the child's ability.

Ds is 7, yr 2. I think hes a good readwr and speller tho I have no one to compare him to but he is way off that list. Im still impressed that he can spell crocodile.

His speeling und grammer iz betta n mine

DS1 is in year 4 and currently in an international school where they don't 'do' spellings. This is because the deputy head believes they pick it up as they go along... I have to say we miss the weekly ritual of learning spellings and how they did things at his last school in the UK seemed to work really well. Firstly, they were given spellings that were appropriate to their ability level but still a little challenging. Secondly they were also related to the current topic and they were always taught what the words meant. Thirdly they were awarded merits for 10/10 (or however many they had as that to was dependent on ability) and not punished in any way for not getting them all correct. For me that is the really bad thing about your system - missing playtime. I don't believe that missing playtime should be used as punishment for anything - kids need fresh air and to run around above all else! If I were in your situation I would definitely be taking this up with the school.

ds(10) is in P5 (Y4?) and gets lists similar to this. He's good with spelling (better than me!) and would probably get most of them, but ask him to write a sentence with any of them and he would struggle.

Ds is top set in yr 3 and he's had those spellings recently.
He's very good at spelling and remembers them easily but does still sometimes get them wrong. I'd be furious if they had a policy of taking away play time for wrong answers!!

casperthefriendlyghost
I agree that making children miss playtime is horrible.
Besides, rewards are generally more effective than punishments as incentives to work harder.

There is also plenty of evidence that giving regular spelling tests does not enable children to spell any better than not doing so. So count yourself lucky to have your ds in a school that does not do them. Even children who do well in spelling tests misspell many of the words they learn for them when they are concentrating more on what they are trying to say than the accuracy of their spelling.

I never met a child who did not want to learn to spell. But with English spelling being as nutty as it is, a few lucky ones learn easily, but many find it very hard.

If it was up to me, i would make English spelling more sensible, so that learning to write the language became less of such a long and tedious ordeal. For children who find learning to spell difficult, English spelling irregularities make life much harder than it could be.

Unfortunately, this is another to thank Gove for. These words are from the new curriculum and by the end of year 4 (so taught in lower ks2) all children "should" be able to spell them - lovely differentiation!
We don't do spelling tests as research shows they don't improve spelling within writing. We do tests in other areas and try to be positive e.g. A merit for beating your personal best.
We have started sending spelling activity books home (and doing them as jobs in class) as we have to prove to ofsted we are teaching spelling (however spelling is taught in other areas more effectively in other areas e.g. Modelled or guided writing/phonics analysis in reading)

St. Ambrose spelling pages for KS2 really push prefixes in Y5/ Y6 - although not specifically anti- or co-

Link here: www.saintambrosebarlow.wigan.sch.uk/spellingpage.htm

Certainly prefixes/ suffixes are something that seem to crop up from at least Year 4/5 at our school.

Support for Spelling

Year 2

Learning objectives

Spell with increasing accuracy and confidence, drawing on word recognition and knowledge of word structure, and spelling patterns, including common suffixes and use of double letters.
Read and spell less common alternative graphemes, including trigraphs.

suffixes and use of double letters
is one part of English spelling which is actually quite regular.

At least 226 common one-syllable words
(bag, bat, can, cap, cat, chat, clam, clan, clap, crab, dab, dam, drab, drag, fad, fan, fat, flap, flat, gag, glad, grab, ham, hat, scrap, scan, sap, sag, sad, rat, rap, ram, plan, pat, pan , pad, nag, mat, map, mad, lap, lag, jam, jab, slam, slap, snap, span, stab, strap, tag, tan, tap, trap, wag, wrap, yap, zap,

bed, beg, bet, fret, get, hem, jet, leg, let, net, peg, pen, red, set, stem, step, trek, vet, web, wet,
bid, big, bin, bit, brim, chip, clip, crib, dig, dim, dip, drip, fit, flip, flit, grim, grin, grip, grit, hip, hit, jig, kid, lid, lip, pig, pin, pip, quit, quiz, rib, rid, rig, rim, rip, shin, ship, sin, sit, skid, skim, skin, skip, slim, slip, slit, snip, spin, spit, split, strip, swim, thin, tin, tip, trim, trip, twig, twin, whiz, win, wit, zip,
blot, bob, bog, chop, cop, crop, dog, don, dot, drop, flog, flop, fog, grog, hog, hop, hot, job, jog, jot, knot, lob, log, lop, mob, mop, nod, plod, plot, pod, pot, prod, prop, rob, rot, shop, slog, snob, sob, spot, stop, throb, top, tot, trot,

but, club, cub, cup, cut, drug, drum, fun, glum, grub, gun, hug, hum, jug, jut, lug, mud, mug, nut, plug, plum, run, scrub, shrub, shrug, shun, shut, slug, slum, strum, strut, stud, stun, sum, sun, thud, thug, tug, up)

double their final consonant when made longer with suffixes which begin with a vowel, like -ed, -ing, -ish, -er, -y.

But even they are not completely problem-free with verbs. Adding -ed to the 200 or so verbs among the above and doubling their last letter is easy enough, if u know that the verb is regular.

Unfortunately 171 common verbs are irregular in the past tenses (e.g. 'go - went, have done; write - wrote, have writtten', rather than 'bag - bagged, have bagged).