Spellings - talk to me

[FernGullysWoollyPully]

DS and Dd1 had just finished year 2 and year 1 when their school decided to switch it up with spellings. So instead of getting say 10 spellings a week to learn they now get 'spelling rules'.

For example, my Ds, now in year 3 has a sheet that reads;
"The words that's the children will be learning this half term will not be new to them. They will be words that they have read or been introduced to in their phonics and spelling lessons so far this year. The idea of recapping some of the aspects is so that the children have a deeper understanding of what they've learned and are well prepared for year 4."

"Children will be tested in the last week of half term by a dictation of a passage that will have some words missing. The missing words will include some of the words that are in the example section above. The children will need to apply the rules they have practised. The test will be out of 20."

In the middle (as it says) are boxes with the 'rule' eg homophones, some 'example words' and 'support' that explains what a homophone is.

DD's is exactly the same except the 'rules' are different as she's in year 2.

My question is, is this normal?! They seem to be really struggling with this new system and have not had good results from the tests.

DS has told me that his class do phonics once a week. We read through the 'rules' at home but they just do not 'get it'.

Can I ask what kind of rules they are sending home? It very much sounds as if the school are pretty clueless about phonics - only rule is that there aren't any!

Yea no problem. One of DS's (year 3) says:

"Rule: Homophones. Example words: there, their, they're. Pear, pair. Bare, bear. Support: when a word sounds the same but is spelt in different ways."

One DD's (year 2) reads:
"Rule: the possessive apostrophe. Example: Simon's coat. The boy's toys.
Support: use a reading book, try to spot as many possessive apostrophes as possible."

I'm just flummoxed that this appears to be the 'new' way of teaching them spellings. DS says that there are not many children in his class that get a good result.

But that's grammar and punctuation not phonics

The possessive apostrophe IS a spelling rule, but homophones which have different spellings (which are heterographs) like 'there/their' are completely without any rules and sabotage phonic spelling patterns. - Children just have to learn which spelling to use for their different meanings. Most find this very difficult, and even adults regularly make mistakes with them.

They are especially hard, because their identical pronunciations never cause the slightest problems in speech, no more than words which have identical spellings for different meanings (mean, lean, sound...).

I'm shocked that they haven't been taught in KS1

Apostrophes are punctuation masha ...

Apostrophes | Punctuation Rules
www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/apostro.asp
The apostrophe is a punctuation mark used to mark omissions and possessives of nouns and pronouns.

They have been learning phonics, punctuation and grammar since reception. They used to get 10 spellings per week to learn at home for a test usually on Fridays as well as their phonics lessons at school. Now, this ^ is what we get and they're really struggling with it.

I just wondered if this way is 'the norm'? They get no actual words. Only these rules. If they ask for help with spellings they're asked to refer to 'the rules'!!

FernGully what you describe is grammar and punctuation not phonics ... What surprises me is that they haven't been taught homophones before Y3

It is very normal that the school will expect them to be able to select the correct homophone to use in sentences and to use possessive apostrophes. What isn't normal is to describe it as a spelling test.

Mrz - yes I am aware of that. They have been taught it. If you read what I wrote in the op, I quoted the sheet they came home with, it says they're re-capping, however now they have no actual spellings whatsoever. No new words. And they're struggling with this concept that 'the rules' will teach them everything.

The rule about homophones is one of many of the sheet, it's an A4 sheet. There are others, I just selected the top ones.

You can obviously see they aren't giving them a rule ... Why they are putting rule on the sheet is anyone's guess.

I can only comment on what you've posted Fern and they aren't spellings

That is what I mean. I know this is not spellings. I'm confused about the whole 'rule' thing just as much as you. They seem to have binned spellings for this and I was merely asking if it's normal. Has anyone elses school done this?

I would use dictation to check understanding of homophones but I wouldn't send anything home beforehand.

The idea of teaching English spelling just by rules is nuts.

The spellings of consonants can mostly be learned with rules or patterns, using quite simple words like 'bat, cat, fat, mat, pat, rat, sat, chip, chop, ship, shop...'. They have some exceptions too (sugar, centre), but not many.

Most of the hard work in learning to spell English consists of learning the irregular spellings for vowels (head, said, pretty, build, eight, straight...),
especially for the sounds that have no strongly dominant pattern, e.g.:
/ee/ speak, shriek, seek, people, police, even ....
/er/ her, bird, heard, hurt, word ...
/long oo/: blue, shoe, flew, through, too ...

Most of the hard work in learning to spell English consists of learning the irregular spellings for vowels (head, said, pretty, build, eight, straight...)

They are not 'irregular'. English is not a 'regular' language; i.e. it doesn't have one root language, it's a composite of lots of different languages, most of the words integrated keeping the the sound spelling 'code' of the originating language. In those circumstances it is absurd to try and apply any 'regularity' criteria to it. The sound spellings were 'regular' in the originating language and in English just provide 'alternative' sound spellings.

I absolutely agree that trying to teach Englaish spelling by 'rules' is nuts but to try and alter the spellings to conform to a notion of 'regularity' is equally nuts.