Weekly spellings question!!!

[kilmuir]

My friend has a son in year 2. Teacher has started weekly spellings. She insists they all need to have the same 15 words regardless of ability. She told my friend that this was normal in primary schools.
Back in the day when my DC were I primary the spelling lists varied according to ability.
Is this normal across primary schools. ?

Nope, that's not the case in our school. Different lists for different abilities.

Dcs school got the same list where the words were progressively harder. The lower ability only had to do say first 10 and higher ability did 15.

Our school have 3 different lists for different abilities.
I don't think there's much benefit in spelling tests anyway though. The easier and quicker they are the better as far as I'm concerned.

My friends little boy is trying hard to get all 15 correct. She wrote he needed to put in more effort and he would get a sticker!
They stopped weekly spellings when my longest was in KS1 as not thought to be beneficial

DD's school sends home 15 spellings but the idea is that they do the first 5 if they find them hard, first 10 if "middling" and all 15 if they want more of a challenge (they then suggest children write sentences using the words if they want something else to do).

I tend to agree that they are completely pointless though.

My DCs school send home 15 spellings but children with a lower ability only have to learn the first ten. The other 5 are more difficult.
They do it this way because they have a spelling test as a whole class on Friday where the teacher says the spellings out loud and the kids write them down.

Good practice would say different lists. National Curriculum gives set long lists for ages. Teachers are damned either way!

Differentiated lists here, and no weekly spelling test as such.

There are statutory lists for each year. The only way to get through them is to send all home with the same lists. We know they are pointless. We know they make no difference to spelling. But the government dictates that children are 'taught' them. I imagine it's because when they reminisce about their school days, it's what they remember.

We don't send them home we teach them in class.

Our school told us that the curriculum has changed for everyone and that there are set words that children need to know by the end of each year and by the end of school, so they are having to learn how to spell certain words and write a total of 30 words every evening! (Year 4).

Sorry but that's shocking! They need to actually teach the children how to spell the words not send home long lists to write out. 30 words each night!

We get 10 words every night and I thought that was a lot! 30!!!!!!
I wonder if it's even effective. I preferred the way they did in Yr2, write the sentence with each words.
It seems painfully pointless just try to remember all the words. It's ok for ds since he never struggle with spelling, but I wonder if it actually works with other children.

There are about 100 words in the Y3-4 list that's about two a week

My daughter class has different lists according to abilities. The lower abilities only have 6 words which are easier than the tops set - they have 10 much harder words.

I can rant a lot about DS' school on here - but he is now in Y2 and has yet to bring home a list of words to learn their spelling. I am very pleased, it redeems the school to some extent :)

Though some of his classmates' parents are complaining about the lack of spelling tests.

Seeing the progress in DS' spelling, I think they must actually teach him spelling at school. Which is great. Rather than TEST spellings, rather than outsourcing the teaching of spellings to parents, they use the time at school for TEACHING, which is exactly as it should be, IMO.

We get 12 words a week - all the same for everyone. Not sure if there is a test or not... DD has done 'nothing' at school for the last 3 years apparently.

We have to look at them, cover them, write them out (I read it out and she writes), check and then copy correctly three times and then write a sentence for each word.

I don't teach them to her at all and then teachers don't want us to, it more just a case of familiarising and practice.

It has been useful for picking up some of DD's problems - she can learn to spell correctly for the short amount of time that she is doing 'spellings' but will almost invariably get it wrong again when she writes the sentence 10 minutes later.

To clarify, it's 10 words that must be written 3 times each, so 30 words written a night. 3 of those words are the words that they MUST know. The words change each week. The Head Teacher stressed that it was a government requirement and that the school will do everything they can to ensure that the children know the words so that they can pass the SATS in year 6. I got the impression that it doesn't matter if they know the word or how to use it, they just have to be able to spell it!

Spelling tests have just started again here (juniors), DD also had them in infants - both differentiated lists.

However - she came home saying that she'd moved up a group in fact 'everyone had, except for x' so I thought that was a bit identifying for the child who didn't move up . Will wait and see what happens this week!

My son's primary didn't do any differentiation - same lists for all the class. We spoke to various teachers over several years about getting more difficult words for our son as he already knew the spellings before each week's list, but it fell on deaf ears as they were resolute in using the same (simple) spellings for all the class.

DDyr1 and DSyr6 both get 15.

DS has a new to the school teacher and she uses spellcity.com for spelling lists. You can enter your own list (as a parent) for free and it sounds the word (in a slightly american accent) puts it in a sentence and asks you to type it. You can click to resound the word or sentence. Check your list, get it marked and then practice any that are wrong. Other free bits include word searches using your list and a couple of games i haven't yet explored.

DD is getting on really well with it. Whilst shes a keen writer but its so much easier doing the spellings this way and i don't need to be nudging her along, its at her pace.

We split the children into groups and follow Letters and Sounds (phonic skills) and Support for Spellings. They are given a list each week (10) we have a lesson where they are taught for fifteen minutes then write the words and put them in sentences. They have a weekly test and we look at any difficulties and go over any mis-spelt words in this lesson. Homework is ten words and five sentences using at least five of the words. Occasionally we have a list of frequently mis-spelt words or topic words. I give lots of encouragement. Every so often I get the games out after the test which they love.