Can anyone tell me if this is 'normal' spelling for a year 6?

[berylbainbridge]

Lisining
diddn't
Creid (cried)
Tiket (ticket)
Streched
Comeing, likeing etc

But then spelling things like sauntered OK. Teacher doesn't seem to think there's a huge issue but dd is upset about her spelling ability and it's dragging her confidence down. She is a brilliant imaginative writer. To my eyes (and I don't say it to her at all) she should be able to spell some of these words. Thanks in advance for any views!

Well said, titchy!

Even at a C grade it can be important. The requirements for the semi-skilled job we advertise for are C in English and maths. With 100+ applicants per job a quick sweep through for spelling and grammar are how we make the first cut to the list to get to a short enough list to go through in detail to narrow it down to a final short list.

Rafa
U could save yourself a lot of trouble by stating in the job advert
'good spelling ability essential' or 'poor spellers need not apply', if u think it's important.

Technically it isn't essential though. It's just that it is an employers' market out there at the moment. Stuff that got overlooked when there were 10-20 applicants doesn't now.

Apart from that, I strongly disagree with the idea that basic skills are less important than a love of learning. And I suspect that the idea accepting that children aren't good at something and focusing on their strengths rather than working on their weaknesses is a probably a significant cause of failure. You need to do both.

It's far more likely that the OP's DD hasn't been taught well enough than she has any inbuilt spelling issue.

Its increasingly common for prospective employers to ask for handwritten covering letters and poor spelling/grammar/handwriting used to decide between applicant with similar qualifications/experience when shortlisting for interview.

Some children's natural abilities enable them to cope with the insanities of English spelling far better than others, although naturally gifted spellers often pretend otherwise.

Having raised 2 children who both ended up going to Oxbridge i have no doubts about it whatsoever. My daughter learnt without having to try, my son is still not the hottest speller, although he always worked at it. My 4 grandchildren vary in their ability to learn to spell too.

I witnessed the same over and over again during my 20 years of secondary English teaching.

We are doing the children who are not naturally gifted spellers a huge disservice by failing to modernise English spelling - by continuing to put up with all the foibles inflicted on it by thoughtless prats centuries ago.

Pretending that, with a bit of effort, everyone can learn to spell is cruel.

I was in this position at start of year 5 with DD1.

Years of concerns being dismissed by the school - and them not correcting words.

She tested mid book 1 with apple and pears placement tests. Which is very low.

12 months later we've worked through book A, book B and book C and are on midway through Book D.

Her improved spelling shows up in her actual written work - though it's still something her current teacher says she'll have to be aware of.

It's been a hard slog - and it's still a hard slog TBH. She still makes mistakes though less frequently and still doesn't always apply what she knows but she is much better than she was.

Partly I think it's plain practise writing the words correctly and partly being told a few rules/usual guidelines adding suffixes and prefixes and when to double and practising phonics hearing sound and listening to the sound in words.

It's proven harder with her than her younger siblings to correct some of the problems - I think that's because she had years and years of wrong spelling to unlearn. There has been improvement though.

There are other spelling programs out there - this one has a lot or repetition and writing in which we think has helped.

Masha, give it a rest! Bitching on MN will NOT change the English language, some people genuinely find spelling difficult no matter what and banging on about EMdnE/ME doesn't change that. And no, no one in the history of the English language ever sat down and said, "you know what? I'm going to make up some new random spellings just to annoy people four hundred years from now!"! A solid grounding in phonetics and understanding how things like contractions work is far better than trying to write "you", "you" and "ewe" as the letter "u".
OP, I really do think you need to find out what gaps there are n your DD's knowledge of spellings, you said she was amused at "didn't" only having the one "d", did you ask why? Is she aware that it is a contraction of "did not"? If so, why does she think she should be adding letters? Maybe have a look at other contractions and see what similarities she can find. And again as other's have mentioned go over the "-ing" ending with her again.

Oops not sure why people are getting inflamed! Seryph she did know it was a contraction and knows that with all other contractions it's about taking letters away and not adding but for some reason thought you added an extra 'd' to didn't and couldn't really explain why. I did also explain that 'ing' endings always have the E taken out of the word. I'm starting to think her phonetics have just gone badly wrong somewhere. My dh is also a horrendous speller (which hasn't stopped him getting a really good job I have to say ) so I'm wondering if there's a genetic component to whether people are naturally good at spelling?!

maybe, my dh is a bad speller (and similarly has a fantastic job, but he often gets me to proof read for him!)
i am naturally a very good speller, as is dd1

i think dd2 got dh's spelling gene. but she also got his dancing gene

Oh and that's not to cop out of trying to improve her spelling BTW. I think it has to improved if possible. I'm just feeling a bit overwhelmed with the how!
Venus - ideally I can strike a balance between celebrating what dd is good at and helping her improve! Believe me, I am all for improving her self esteem. The fact is that her school actually haven't been making enough of a 'thing' about her spelling ability rather than being over-focussed on it and dh and I have naively thought everything was fine as we were repeatedly told. Dd herself is aware her spelling is not good as she is repeatedly making many mistakes in the weekly tests (3/20 being the worst in a recent SATS type test).

the one thing that has improved dd's spelling is making her a mini dictionary of words she commonly uses. start getting those right and then the proportion of mistakes is much lower.
won't help in the SATS test but in her daily writing it won't be so alarming.

Yes I will do that Tedd thanks. And I will print out the high frequency words list you posted earlier.

so I'm wondering if there's a genetic component to whether people are naturally good at spelling

There is a genetic component to dyslexia - which I have and with me it's affects could be seen clearer in spelling. Though DH isn't a great speller and none of our family members are either. We both have got and held good jobs over the years.

Over the summer I found IL telling our DC that it didn't matter that they weren't good spellers as none the family were. It seemed to massively demotivate the children with getting on with the spelling tasks.

It stalled progress for a while as well which was frustrating - both DH and I pointed out situations where poor spelling has negatively impacted on us. There are a large number of people who associate spelling with intelligence . Plus you lose marks in exams.

Found similar idea with maths - either your naturally good at it or your just not. That it's not a skill you can work at and improve.

I remember when I was finally given extra spelling lessons in secondary, few years delay as people in top set weren't supposed to have spelling problems. It was taken by an English teacher a naturally good speller I think. I asked why you drop e with ing but not ly - seemed to flummox her. She claimed not to know then decide it was because ly was two letters and ing was 3.

Wasn't until I was doing apples and pears with my own children that I came across the reason : - when a word ends with an e and next morpheme begins with a vowel you must drop the e hence hope + ing is hoping while hope + less = hopless and brave + ly = bravely while brave + er = braver.

It a rule my 6 year old has grasped and now applies that I hadn't worked out and hadn't been told. Maybe knowing what is going on and why is better than just getting it longer term ?

That's weird Lost, my dd asked me the same question. And I didn't know . I will be able to tell her that now - thanks!

Both DD1 and I were encouraged to keep track of words that we spelt wrong - idea being there would be patterns and we could just learn the words.

Didn't really help as we were very inconstant with the words which were spelt wrong - we seemed to pick up bad spellings very quickly from words seen spelt wrong or even in same piece of work spell same words differently.

I now think it was a sign that we hadn't fully grasped and weren't always applying the more complex phonics code.

DD1 is certainly now showing more consistent spelling. She gets more right but ones she does get wrong are often more the same ones - and it more the usual bits that she isn't remembering.

However DS has shown more consistency with wrong words so it's an approach that works for him - though he struggled much more with reading initially and had much more support generally with phonics at home with us at earlier age.

Book 2 of apple and pears covers it a lot - lots of putting words together and taking them apart with that rule in mind. The later books go over it as well.

DD1 will still sometime forget but go back and take e out unprompted while younger two don't add the e at all.

The doubling rule is useful as well - you double the last letter in a doubling word when the next morpheme begins with a vowel loads of practise at picking our doubling words

I can't remember if it's book b or c that covers contractions like don't - and aren't and your're and how it differs from your.

Stuff I didn't get and couldn't pass on but mainly loads and loads of practise.

Seryph
make up some new random spellings is exactly what court clerks did when they had to switch from French to English in the 15th C, at the end of the 100 years war with France.
They substituted, for example, leave, sleeve, believe for Chaucer's regular leve, sleve, beleve and wrecked many other earlier more regular spellings (e.g. erly, erth) similarly.

But what gets me going is when people claim that poor spellers just haven't been taught well enough.

It's much more the case, as LostintheWash surmised, that there's a genetic component to whether people are naturally good at spelling. Those who aren't have a much harder time throughout their education.

Mercifully, with speech recognition getting better and more widespread, this will matter much less in a few decades. Until then, let's be a bit more sympathetic to poor spellers.

In OPs case, i recommend again what i said earlier:
Pick out a few of the words which break regular patterns (ticket, comeing, likeing) and ask her if she can see where she went wrong. - Her dd may well do so when her attention is drawn to them.
If not, remind her what the rule is.
But do it gently and in small doses.

Comeing and likeing have regular rules.

I think OP's child actually needs to be secure in the regular stuff before moving on to stuff that masha says is irregular.

And whether we like it or not marks are awarded for SPAG in exams.

Oh dear can you tell me what SPAG means please ?

spelling, punctuation and grammar

one of the yr6 SATS

And GCSEs

But what gets me going is when people claim that poor spellers just haven't been taught well enough.

My DC were always more likely to struggle than other children but their last school didn't really teach spelling - it was sort of supposed to emerge.

Phonics focused on reading only - and they used mixed methods which didn't suit my DC.

Better teaching I feel would have minimised their problems and perhaps have avoided them all together.

After all working through patterns of spellings and how words are put together is correcting many of their problems.

Yes English isn't as consistence as other languages due to complex history and evolution of both language and it's written form plus a Borg like tendency to assimilate new words from other languages. However there are patterns and more logic than many people claim and I don't get why that isn't taught is some schools.

berylbainbridge, I think you are lucky that you realised it now. If you work with her spelling little by little regularly, it will make huge difference in the long run.
My DS was really bad with comprehension, and we worked on it about 5~10 minutes everyday, now it seems to be a lot better.
MN is really full of experienced people with good ideas and advice. Listen to them and your dd will be fine.

Doubling:

You usually only double a consonant in multi-syllable words if it comes after the single vowel letter a, e, i, o, or u when the vowel isn't spelling its 'name' sound. (I'd say 'long' sound but mrz would tell me off)
So, 'hopping'/'hoping' 'batting'/'bating, 'sitting'/'siting' etc.

If the vowel letter already has two consonants after it you don't need to double; so 'sacking', 'belting' 'locking' etc.

This is not a hard and fast rule, but it is a strong probability.

It also serves to give a clue as to how the vowel sound should be pronounced when reading unfamiliar words.

It's a very useful thing to know.

The Americans have such a poor understanding of phonics and the alphabetic code that they are busily trying to do away with doubling - which makes some words look very strange to me and I have to think twice about how to pronounce them!