Writing and Spelling - Cause for Concern

[SoulSista85]

Sorry if this is a topic that has already been raised.

My daughter is in year one now and we are having issues in that she is being taught to write in cursive and spell words as they sound - in short: incorrectly.

She can barely read her own writing and I can't either.

When addressing this with her teacher and his TA, I was told that this is the National Curriculum now and that this is the way writing is taught, pure and simple.

She can read perfectly well as the text in her books is all standard font.

It just strikes me as absolutely bonkers that this is what they're teaching in schools.

Anyone else having any issues along this vein?

It would be helpful to read other people's tips and experiences as I feel at a loose end with my child who is confused, being taught to spell incorrectly and can't read her own writing because of a frankly fucked up way of learning.

I would have said as a spelling for /z/ in my accent. But yes, the vast majority of our Year 1 children know that too.

My phone likes changing spellings - which is why we can't rely on spell checkers ??

Just to be clear we don't use Letters &Sòunds so aren't tied by those stupid phases.

I'm wondering how many Y1s are desperate to spell 'queue'... (or even know what one is...)

It actually came up when we did /yoo/ and we talked about the difference between cue and queue.

For vowels, learning to spell English 'correctly' rather than merely phonically is largely a matter of learning to recognise the 'right look' of words. Pupils with a good visual memory therefore have an enormous advantage.

But 'muscle memory' which comes from repeatedly writing the correct spelling (from lots of practice) helps too.

Learning the different ways that a sound can be spelt is helpful too, especially for sounds that are not often spelt irregularly. Short /a/, for example is irregular only in 'plait, plaid, meringue' and 'have'.

For sounds which don't have a strongly dominant pattern, like /ee/ (speak, speech, shriek, weird, even, people, police....) or /air/ (hair, care, bear, there, their, aerial ...) it comes down to brute word by word memorisation of the right alternative.

I'm not sure I entirely agree that it is not poor teaching, although that isn't the fault of the teachers. Teachers should reasonably have been able to expect that a government produced phonics scheme that was sent into schools was good enough. Instead what they got was letters and sounds, which has some very important gaps and very odd pacing. Given it was mostly being used by teachers who may not have had enough subject knowledge at the time it's had the effect of lowering the expectations of average, compared to phonics schemes that pre-date it.

I think the government assumed that teachers didn't need phonics training a mistake IMHO

That too, but if L&S had been a bit more thorough that would have mattered less. A bit about the importance of incidental teaching, how to differentiate and moving some of phase 5 into yr R would have improved it hugely. It wouldn't have taken too much.

Phases 2-4 are meant to be taught over 24 weeks yet some kids are left on phase 3 for years ...why?

It's poor teaching if the needs of the children are not met and they consequently make less progress than they should. I don't think you're a poor teacher purely because your children do not know ALL alternative spellings by this point in year 1. Of course you would be a poor teacher if all your children came to you working well above national expectations and you failed to meet their needs, again it's purely about making progress and meeting needs. Oh and then proving that you have met their needs to the powers that be.

Again I'll point out that the new NC states that in year 1 writing needs to be phonically plausible which suggests the expectation is that children do not need to know ALL alternative spellings by February. I was speaking in very general terms as how can I speak for all children, I do not know their starting points. Clearly some do need to know them as their starting points are higher.

so mrz, if you're suggesting ALL your children know ALL alternative spellings AND apply them in writing by February in year 1 you are suggesting that they are working above what the government sets out for year 1 for spelling. Government expectation states that spelling can be phonically plausible within year 1, this takes us to July. Of course you may just think the government has low expectations of children which is an entirely different conversation.

It actually says they will spell some words correctly and others will be phonetically plausible.

I can tell you the starting point for my class beebee they didn't know any sounds when they started in reception

Pérhaps if you read what I posted you wouldn't need to ask

From the English programme of study for Y1
Pupils should revise and consolidate the GPCs and the common exception words taught in Reception. As soon as they can read words comprising the year 1 GPCs accurately and speedily, they should move on to the year 2 programme of study for word reading.

The number, order and choice of exception words taught will vary according to the phonics programme being used. Ensuring that pupils are aware of the GPCs they contain, however unusual these are, supports spelling later.

"Misspellings of words that pupils gave been taught to spell should be corrected, other misspelt words should be used to teach pupils about alternative ways to represent those sounds."

Phonetically plausible spelling still happens when children know all the alternative spellings. They still have to figure out which alternative to use in any given word. All it means is that children represent every sound in an unknown word, using a plausible spelling for each sound. It happens not just in year 1 but all the way through their education, with those words getting fewer and fewer as they get older. It's more like the spelling equivalent of decoding unknown words using phonics as the prime approach rather than a distinct phase of spelling.

Not sure I explained myself properly in my first post. What I meant was that L&S has skewed our expectations of what the average child achieves in phonics. Partly because for many teachers it is the only scheme they have experience of. So what you see as above average on entry to year 1 might be average in another school even though those children might have had the same attainment on entry to reception.

I have 2 in Y1 who are at very different levels. I am glad they are not doing cursive, although ds2 is ready and has been trying to teach himself. He has a photographic memory and can spell pretty much everything. However, Dd does spell things how she thinks they should be spellt phonically and will be called up on the more frequent ones/ high frequency words which are wrong but should be right by now eg. 'we' (not wee) or 'going' not 'gowing' etc.

I am so glad ds1 did not do cursive in Y1 as I think it's really damaging for kids who struggle with motor skills to 'save' it until this has developed more. He has cracked it in Y4 and does it all correctly, but his printed letters are more than 50% wrong. If he'd had to do cursive it would have held him back even more and he would probably still be doing it wrong as no chance to 'start again'. Please, please, please do not teach cursive so young.

I agree Rafa Letters &Sounds has screwed perceptions (hate those stupid phases) but if people read it carefully phases 2-4 should be completed in just 24 weeks in reception (in theory giving 15 weeks to begin phase 5 -alternatives).
Previously we used Jolly Phonics in reception and aimed to cover equivalent of phases 2 & 3 (in 9 weeks) by November!
We now use Sounds-Write and work at the children's pace, which is often beyond all our expectations.

RafaIsTheKingOfClay: Phonetically plausible spelling still happens when children know all the alternative spellings. They still have to figure out which alternative to use in any given word.

It happens right up to university level, although by then mainly with

1. heterographs like 'there/their' for which phonics is of no help at all,
2. inconsistent consonant doubling which in words of more than syllable is completely random (very merry, bilious billion)
3. inconsistent use of schwa in endings (e.g. flatten, abandon, dungeon) and
4. variant spellings for /ee/ (seize, siege...protein, machine).

Most spelling mistakes, from YR to up to university, are not due to poor teaching but the messiness of English spelling.
Hardly any children would ever misspell words like 'many, once, Wednesday' if it wasn't for their illogical, non-phonic spellings.

I think the problem is schools aren't doing that even if they are teaching phases 2-4 in 24 weeks. Looking at it, L&S covers 125 correspondences over 2 years, 44 in reception and the rest in yr 1. Jolly phonics teaches about 80 in yr R, PI between about 75 and 85 depending on how much of the early years package you teach. That put the children in some schools at a disadvantage in terms of reading and spelling by the time they start year 1. Not because they were below average, average or above average but because our expectations are too low.

It's not totally inconceivable that average children in some schools would have been taught almost all of the phase 5 graphemes by this point in the year.

Do schools not differentiate with phonics? If a child can't grasp phase 3 yet what is the point of moving on to phase 4, don't they just end up even more confused? OTOH a few children in DS class knew all the phase 5 ones and some by the end of reception. Should the strong students be left to work it out for themselves and not taught properly at a faster speed?

Catkind if a child doesn't know d, b, p (phase 2) it doesn't mean they can't learn ch, sh, w (phase3) but they need to be given the opportunity. IME children often find some of the later sounds more memorable.

I wouldn't say getting confused between similar-looking letters means they haven't basically grasped the phase.