Y1 spelling test - days of the week?!

[BigGlassOfWine]

My DS is in year 1, and until now his spelling tests have followed a pattern of two "tricky words" (i.e. things like "you" or "little" and then the other words following a pattern, mean/bean/lean/clean, etc), and even then he won't get them all right (I think that's fine, though, it is Y1 after all, and it's more the practice of it, as long as he is getting more than 50% right, I am OK, although I would love him to get 100% one week, just to see his proud face! He was gutted just before Easter as he would have had his first 10/10 except that he swopped a "b" for a "d"...)
But anyway, I was flabbergasted when this week's test was going to be on the days of the week . We have practised, but Tuesday and Wednesday are pretty much definite no-hopers, and frankly if he comes home and only got Monday and Sunday right, but has made an attempt at the others, I will be happy.
Can anyone out there tell me if it is normal to expect them to spell the days of the week in Y1, even if it is the summer term?

I really resent grouping spellings into similar sounds unless it's at a very basic level. Or yes, you end up teaching monk and ton to a Y1 child! Ds1's Y3 spellings were, at times, ridiculous. Words I would never use in speech, rarely read and certainly never write.

You wouldn't have to teach monk and ton.

Monkey, other, some, come, brother, glove, mother, love, cover, Monday. 10 words all easily within the vocab of most year one children, some of them written very regularly.

Well my Y1s need to know "monk" as the RE syllabus states teach about St Cuthbert so it's a useful word ??

When my DD was in Y1 she also had to put the spellings into sentences. It could be one word or more in a sentence but she had to use all the spellings so in a list of twenty she often ended up with eight to ten sentences. It helped with ensuring the children really understood the words and their context, not just the spelling. They continued with that in Y2 but by Y3 she changed schools and approach changed to story writing. In Y1 they had different levels of spelling so some got five hfw to build confidence, some got twenty more challenging words or were given a task to find some new words with the same pattern to stretch and extend.

Wouldn't Monday be better with son, won, ton? Or monk, monkey, month?
The main spelling for the short /u/ sound is u, as in must, mum, mumble (in 308 words out of the 7,000 most used ones), with 68 exceptions.

They happen to be mostly next to m, n, v, won, because early scribes did not like having a series of short strokes next to each other (minim stroke avoidance) and often used o instead.

But u can't teach that as a rule: nothing but nuts, and a lot of bother for the other brother. So it keeps coming down to:
in this word we spell... rather than applying phonic rules. Even if children know that /u/ can be spelt u or o, what counts is knowing which words are spelt with which.

Because learning to spell English even just moderately well takes at least 10 years, adults end up unable to see how crazy English spelling is. They become used to it and end up seeing it as perfectly normal, but for young children without a very good visual memory it's a nightmare.

I honestly thought this was going to be a complaint that the words were too easy!

Days of the week would be hard if they were new words, but they will have been reading and writing the days of the week for a few years now, so really not difficult with a bit of practise.

This week's words for ds1 in Y4. Misebehave, miscalculate, misinform, misread, misplace, misfire, misfortune. All to be put into sentences. Half of them are actually quite hard to use in the present tense (most often used in the past such as misplaced and miscalculated). And the vast majority you would hardly ever READ let alone need to write - misfire and misinform. The only fairly common one is misbehave.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrr to irrelevant spellings in 'groups' and thumbs up to useful things like days of the week!

'English is tough stuff'
Coffee break time? Print this off and test your work mates, see who can read it correctly all the way through...

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Feoffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.

Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.

Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.

Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough --
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

Harry's tips - " 'terpsichore' is pronounced terpsickery, 'lichen'is pronounced liken, 'melpomene' is pronounced melpominy, 'Feoffer 'is pronounced feffer, 'victual' is pronounced vittle, 'gunwale' is pronounced gunnell, 'groats' is pronounced grits."

Masha Monday isn't spelt with the letter ??

Perhaps they are attempting to broaden vocabulary alongside teaching prefixes MM

Monday isn't spelt with the letter
I never said is was. That's what makes it tricky.
It has the same short /u/ sound as 'must, munch, mumble'.

Masha associating Monday with words like munch, must and mumble will lead to incorrect spelling ... it's basic stuff!

hmmmm...or perhaps it was a list plucked from the internet somewhere. I applaud broadening vocab, but perhaps that could be more unusual words in the book they are reading in school, or related to the topic they are studying (Fantasy and the building of the docks in London - plenty of scope for words there). And if it's not about spelling, what's the point of making it a spelling test?

You're right they are straight out of the Y4 statutory spelling lists

Wow! Who thought them up?

www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/239784/English_Appendix_1_-_Spelling.pdf

Thanks Mrz. It makes sense, but if it were me I would have maybe had half of the words of that suffix and half of another suffix and make them more commonly used words. It's a shame they didn't include mislead and misspell because these are at least a bit more useful than misinform or misfire. I also wouldn't have put mistake in there, but I am not a teacher!

Mrz: associating Monday with words like munch, must and mumble will lead to incorrect spelling although they all start with m, followed by short /u/ or /mu/.

Which means simply that phonics is of limited use when it comes to learning to spell English vowels, like the days of the week.

I mean prefix!

that phonics is of limited use

I'm not a phonics expert, Masha. But I think the point is that the same sound can be made with different letters so

mum, must, munch, mumble follow one rule for a short 'u'
monk, monday, ton, month, monkey. money follow another rule for the same sound. It may be less common but it is still a rule which a fair number of common words follow.

Of course you also need to know monster, moth etc. make an 'o' sound so it is 'just remembering' as well.

I definitely believe a photographic memory is a HUGE advantage in reading, and especially spelling (I have a Y1 DC like this who is spelling his Y4 brother's work for him and another Y1 DC who is spelling phonically with the more frequent phonic sounds - eg. using 'ee' instead of 'y' to make an ee sound - and needs a lot more repetition to learn the less common rules).

MerryM
Memory is definitely a HUGE advantage in reading, and especially learning to spell English.
Like yours, one of my children could spell without ever having to work at it, while the other (who was excellent at maths) had huge problems with it.

This wouldn't matter if reading and writing weren't so crucial for other learning. - Not being able to progress beyond chopsticks on the piano is no great disadvantage in life or learning as a whole, but illiteracy is. Worse still, literacy problems often turn children off learning altogether.

I know. My ds1 has struggled with literacy AND numeracy! (And yes, he does not enjoy school learning). I think good phonics teaching is a huge advantage (although it can actually mask the likelihood of dyslexia) as you are not having to remember EVERYTHING photographically - just a large number of rules and what words go with the rule! It is a massive reduction on what you need to remember compared to learning each word individually. I think it's difficult to be illiterate beyond y2 in this day and age though. It's all a progression and I have seen this in ds1 even if he is not at the levels his brother is.

Ds1's big advantage is that he has a great imagination and lovely ideas, which my other son struggles with. Ds2 can spell many of the words on this planet, and knows what they all mean - but he could not write a poem using them or even use those words in regular speech in the way ds1 does. Very different brains.

My Y3 DS often has spellings linked to topic words. A few weeks ago his words included igneous, basalt, metamorphic and archaeology. I had to find out what some of those meant!! when we practice spellings I usually get him to use them in a sentence, but I let that slide that week!

No Masha it means no one with any concept of how to teach spelling would use must, munch or mumble but would use won, son, non, monkey, money, month

MM if you have never seen the word written down it's difficult (but not impossible) to choose the correct alternative representation for a sound but the more times you see it written correctly the more likely it us you will develop automatic recall.