Y1 spellings - feeling a bit rubbish

[JohnnyMcGrathSaysFuckOff]

Just looking for a bit of reassurance.

Y1 DD is (I think) fairly bright but very underconfident. She is very verbal for her age but doesn't read fluently yet. Her maths are reasonable. I think both will come in time.

But I am feeling a bit stressed about her spellings. They started at quite a reasonable level in Sept with words like tie and time - but before half term they ramped up and had words like value and pew . We worked hard on them and she has consistently got 9 or 10 out of 10.

But last week, her test included cylinder , circle and cycle as well as some others. She got really over-faced by them and got only 6 right on the test. We have been as positive and low key as possible but she was quite upset.

Do those words sound hard for Y1? And how can I help her revise better? We currently do flashcards, cloze exercises and a mock spelling test where she gets chocolate buttons for every word she gets right.

Just really don't want her to feel behind the others.

[JohnnyMcGrathSaysFuckOff]

Mediocre yes, it is our local village primary. It is a good school but just standard state primary. I am also not aware of her being in "top stream", in fact she told me a few weeks back that she was in "the catch-up group"!

[FusionChefGeoff]

Bloody hell!!!

YR1 got 'by, my, so, there and here this week.

We spent 10 minutes at dinner talking about them and then she wrote them on her magnetic drawing pad thingy.

My YR4 had circle on his list this week!

They are both 'exceeding' according to last year's report.

You are doing waaaaay to much work for that age I would be asking to talk to the teacher about realistic expectations and massively reducing the focus on it at home.

[minipie]

Er wow!

DD is in a private prep, quite an academic one, and gets one English worksheet (something like “underline the describing words”) and one maths worksheet per week. 10 min reading per night and 5 spelling words to learn per week. Spelling lists are something like “Spell, bell, swell, that, what”. The way they learn is simply writing out the words each night using look, cover, write, check .

Your DD’s level of homework, and the input you are having to do to teach her those spellings, sounds crazy!

[theonlywayisup33]

I would ask the teacher where they get the words from as the ones you have are not on any standard year 1 and 2 list

[lilmishap]

Cylinder, Cycle and Circle seem random but not if they've been 'doing' those sounds in the week.

Do you think you might be making her anxious by pretending to be low key but with flash cards? I admire the effort but she is the one learning and you are the one getting stressed on her behalf if she doesn't do well, be careful you don't add well-meant pressure by caring so much

My Y1 wouldn't be that stressed even notice getting some spellings wrong especially if they were tricky spellings. Honestly if there's a window he can look out of he forgets how to spell his own name.

I don't think anyone's been expelled from Y1 or had their life altered in any meaningful way after getting 6/10 on a Y1 spelling test.

[NoSquirrels]

My very best advice to you - with one instinctive speller, and one hopeless speller - is to not worry in the slightest about spelling tests. Honestly.

Read lots with her, and to her. Maybe - if you MUST, for your own sake not hers - get the 'tricky words' list, or whatever it's called now - and practise some of those.

But don't put any pressure on the weekly spelling test. It will totally all pan out, I promise.