Sight/tricky words - do we actually ‘know’ the best way to teach them?

[TheDuchessOfKidderminster]

I stumbled across this blog post recently, where the comments underneath are actually more interesting than the blog itself, so well worth looking at the whole thing. It’s something I have a professional interest in (I’m not a teacher though) as well as personal (my DS is in Y1 and learning to read following the Letters and Sounds guidelines). It strikes me reading this that we really don’t know yet what is the best method, although it is very clear that phonics teaching should predominate, it’s debatable whether that should be to the exclusion of other methods.

I’ve read a few debates about this recently on Mumsnet (there’s one in AIBU that sparked quite a long discussion about it), so I thought some people might find this interesting. Or maybe just me

readoxford.org/guest-blog-are-sight-words-unjustly-slighted

“But for spelling, is it that people good at phonics read better so get more used to seeing the words so learn the correct graphemes to write them via exposure? I'm just interested because although we do spell phonetically, it isn't always the 'easiest' phonics that are correct.” Not quite If that we’re true good readers would be good spellers but that often isn’t the case. In good phonic instruction decoding for reading and encoding for spelling are taught together (two sides of the same coin) so children learn how to encode the sounds. The problem as we know is that English is complex with many alternative ways to represent the same sound and that’s where exposure helps. As you say many of our spelling are borrowed from other languages (and our own history) so knowing word origins also helps.

PolkadotsAndMoonbeams, spelling and reading are often taught together, but it's very common for spelling ability to lag behind reading ability. Consider that reading is passive and writing is active. With a foreign language for example, it's easier to read a text than it is to produce the language to write it. Similarly, a child passively recalling how to read a word is easier than actively calling up the skills to spell it properly.

In general, exposure to the written language improves spelling, so the more a child reads and writes, the better their spelling. Memory is indeed important, but no one is destined to be a bad speller unless learning difficulties are involved.

My oldest has done phonetic spelling at school (highly encouraged) and has found the transition to proper spelling challenging because he's used to just writing what he hears. He now has to develop strategies for remembering how to spell words with letters and combinations that he can't just hear.

I think it's complicated by the fact that the teaching of spelling lags behind the teaching of phonics for reading. Lots of schools are using letters and sounds and it isn't covered at all well there. The focus is mostly on reading and the spelling sort of stops at sound it out and use a phonically correct spelling rather than moving onto teaching children to choose the correct phonic spelling.

And then there are schools where they stop teaching phonics after yr 1/ children have passed the PSC and move onto look,copy, cover, write, check type strategies.

My oldest has done phonetic spelling at school

Just want to point out that this has always been the case, well before introduction of synthetic phonics. This is because what is known as "emergent writing" has been an important part of early literacy strategies for probably 50 years. Some would argue that it should not be, and they don't do it in some other countries, I believe, but it's what we've done here, and so children have always produced mis-spelled words based on their ideas about the sounds involved.

“My oldest has done phonetic spelling at school (highly encouraged) and has found the transition to proper spelling challenging because he's used to just writing what he hears”

I think there’s a lot of confusion amongst teachers about spelling words phonetically. Yes we need to encourage children to think about the sounds they can hear in words (and praise them when they can tell you the correct sounds) but we also need to teach them the correct alternative spelling for each sound in the word they want to write. The longer a child writes and sees the incorrect spelling the more ingrained it becomes and the harder to correct. Spelling phonetically doesn’t mean spelling wrongly. Correct from the start!

I don't think y ds ever had phonetically correct spelling phase. Always encouraged to spell correctly from start of reception.

Yes, agreed that correct from the start is ideal. Still, I don't know a reception teacher who wouldn't be happy with a spelling like "bair" or "hows."

These things got ironed out in Year 1 at our school, but the Year 2 spelling lists I've seen with vibrated/supplied/could are challenging for my kid. The long I and long A are phonetically correct open syllables, but either my son hasn't learned it or he has forgotten. The double P due to the short vowel is the same.

I'll add that my boy's spelling is a relative weakness, along with handwriting, both of which likely require more attention and care than he prefers to give.

“I don't know a reception teacher who wouldn't be happy with a spelling like "bair" or "hows." “ I’d be happy with it and give lots of praise and help the child correct the spelling “That’s good work, you really listened to the sounds but this is the spelling for /air/ in bear. Can you put it right. Fantastic! Well done.”