Year 6 Spellings

[House2020]

DD is in year 6 and so far she is only being given spellings from the year 3/4 list. She is being tested on 5 each week. I am worried that she is not going to get the opportunity to learn any of the words from the year 5/6 list. Her teacher decided to do this because of a spelling assessment at the start of year 6 following lockdown. Her reading age is vastly different. She had had a recent assessment via accelerated reader which came out at 15 years.

It might be worth raising with the teacher, but there isn't anything stopping you/her getting hold of the Y5/6 list and learning them at home.

My DS is in year 6, they have been learning the y5/y6 list since the start of y5, having 10 spellings a week. They have done them all now, and had a test on Friday on all 103 words.
Are the whole class doing the y3/4 list, or just your DD?
I don't see there being a problem asking for the y5/6 list from the teacher.

You can download the list from the national curriculum website. Do five or ten a week with your daughter.

Thank you for your replies. I have a list and will try to teach her some at home when I get home from work. I thought because it was part of the curriculum that schools had to teach them.

All because she can read well doesn’t necessarily mean she can spell well

I have a daughter in y6 reading age similar to yours but she still struggles with her spellings!
Her school do mini assessment and she was doing mix of yr 3/4 & y5/6 spellings till half term regularly getting them all right. Now back doing the year 5/6 and struggling a little (knocked her confidence a bit)
Email the teacher quietly asking for advice and what’s the plans to ‘catch up’ with the spellings?

The SPAG paper for KS2 SATS has been cancelled for this year.

Although of course your DD still needs to be able to spell well

We have learned all the Y3/Y4 spellings at home as DD's school doesn't bother trying to teach them. We are now doing Y5/Y6. Don't rely on the school, if you want your child taught something, teach it yourself.

@SillyOldMummy does the teacher ask you to learn the spellings at home together? Most schools ask you to go through them at home

@ineedaholidaynow, not "asked" in any way I recognise. I did eventually discover the statutory spellings buried in a sub-folder on the school's internet site during lockdown when I was sent a link to about 75 websites so I could try and piece together some work for my DD to do. But we were not asked to learn the statutory spellings at home so there was no testing or guidance from school how to approach them. We learned all the Y3/4 ones during lockdown and so we are tackling the Y5/6 ones now. Chatting to mums of friends at school, they are still not learning these spellings as assumed school have it in hand. Our school had a no-homework policy until this term, it was only reading and times tables to be done at home. Since lockdown caused a certain amount of shock at how little seems to get done, all years now have homework including spellings. This week's spellings to learn did have a few from the statutory list, interestingly my DD had no clue what those words meant so my first step was to try to explain them. It's depressing, as the school is generally ok, they just have a blind spot when it comes to spelling.

If your DD is now finding the Y3-4 spellings easy, I'd test her on all of them at home, and if she's secure on them, ask your DD to let the teacher know that she knows them and is happy to be tested on any/all of them, and can she move up to the Y5-6 list.

Hopefully she'll be moved up, but you can support her to learn the Y5-6 list at home anyway.

They also need to be able to use the words correctly not just be able to spell them

My DD has a visual processing which has lead to a disconnect between her phonics ( which are excellent) and phonemes ( rubbish). So her reading has always been ahead of her age and spelling at least two years behind. If she does standardised spelling tests she will be able to spell something one time, but not the next.
In year 5 I was given an excellent piece of advice by a very experience Primary English Specialist. If she reads widely the spelling will come and long term she only needs to get the first three to four letters the spell check will sort it for her.
This wise sage was correct, but it took a while to come right SATS Spag she scraped and three, but got a five in comprehension. But by year 9/10 the spelling was much better, it was definitely reading widely, but also the less pressure on spellings in senior school meant she was not anxious about them.