DD spellings way too hard - Y2

[drspouse]

DD is in Y2 and has mild SEN, she's just moved onto Orange band reading books, passed her phonics check (bear in mind it was in Nov not June) and the Maths app school uses is really hard to manage and doesn't work on a tablet so we pay for Doodle Maths and she's behind Y2 expectations but making progress.
She has a list of spellings from school every week and a spelling test and the week before half term it included effect/affect, and a couple of others.
She doesn't have a clue what either of those mean and we've had words before that she would NEVER use in her spoken language and would struggle with if she saw them written.
I am aware that these might be on the NC Y2 list but I assume they are supposed to differentiate work for her.
We have decided to get her a subscription to Doodle Spelling and did a baseline assessment for her, she was struggling with -ue and -ew and similar which are Y1 spellings so it gave her them to learn and she's done very well over half term so far.
How would you put this to school? They have put her in an extra spelling group at the end of the day and told her to keep asking Mummy and Daddy to practice her school spellings but she just didn't get them and/or wouldn't remember them because she'd never use them (We have been trying to practice them but we have to explain what many of them mean, and they just make no sense to her, so we get tears. We haven't been completely ignoring the school spelling lists, just so you know).
DH suggested saying "we noticed she's struggling with spellings so we're using an app that takes her back to basics a bit" but I'm worried they will still try to emotionally blackmail her to "tell mummy and daddy that you MUST do the school spellings".
What else could we say?
I'm not sure why they think it's OK to give her reading books that are at her level but not spellings!

(PS an academic friend told me she'd marked a student essay that didn't know the difference between effect/affect...)

@bettycat81

I'm a new TA and have recently been given training in spelling interventions and one of the things I was told was to never remove a child from a spelling session in school because you just don't know what might stick and may miss something clicking for her. So by not exposing her to the spellings/new words she is given she stands less chance in closing the gap. While she may not understand the words effect and affect, and you can help her here, you can emphasise the different sounds which will help train her ears to the different sounds.

By all means reiterate to the school that she finds these words challenging and may not do well in a test and also anything else that you notice as it will help them personalise her learning.

That's the "teach to the top" guffle that's trendy at the moment!! I'm not actually a fan to put it mildly children need to be given work that meet their actual ability level, not the level you wish they were. I think this approach is going to prove extremely damaging to a lot of children and will quickly drop out of fashion again. Op as others have said, the school really need to be putting thought into how they can support your child in this. Please organise a meeting or phone call with the expectation that they will put more in place to support her.

@bettycat81 to use the example given above would you put a child who didn't know their 2x tables in a group learning 7x or would you teach them 2xm

I see you have an app for dd's maths - how about this... My dd also found spellings incredibly difficult so we used the Lexia app. Due to various circumstances we were stuck sitting in the car for 20 minutes each morning before school and dd just got on with each Lexia lesson. It was unrelated to her weekly spellings but actually gave her a really good grounding in spellings- to the extent that she overtook all her peers because she actually understood the words and the root and meaning were explained. It was very slow progress but effective.

This plus a huge amount of audio books put her where she needed to be academically.

Hope this helps and good luck

We tried Apples and Pears over one summer. It had some benefits, but wasn't sustainable to continue at home in school time.

No I would keep her in the group doing 2x tables but naturally as part of being in the classroom during class teaching she would be exposed to the 7x tables if that was what they were learning.

I was simply saying that exposing your daughter to new words/vocabulary is a positive thing even if the correct spelling is never achieved. She may not be able to read Harry Potter but you can read it to her.

In the interventions I give we spell in lots of different ways; moveable letters, write the word as many times in 10 seconds, different writing styles, using different media, vocalised spelling in different voices and if they don't/can't get it they can check the spelling as frequently as they like... and I have seen a positive difference in the majority of those who I also work with in class as a result.

They are given as many different opportunities to learn as possible.

It is totally irrelevant how we are helping her learn them if she can't work out which out of "affect" and "effect" goes in the sentence the teacher reads out, is it?

And she's not able to learn the meanings of the words when you talk about them so she can? In which case, why focus on the spellings? If her receptive vocabulary is too low to even understand the spelling words, surely that needs to be addressed before learning how to spell any words at all?

Exactly what I was trying to say. Try learning them in different ways. Even if thr school give different or fewer words she still needs ways to try and learn them.

I was simply saying that exposing your daughter to new words/vocabulary is a positive thing even if the correct spelling is never achieved.

That's not strictly true though is it @bettycat81?

Because if "exposing" her to the spellings IE expecting her to learn them and testing her on them every week, has a significant impact on her self-esteem because she sees herself as "failing" then that's not a positive.

Now learning new vocabulary, that's great but it's not what the op is talking about.

Thanks for the Lexia app tip, Blue - I'll try putting that on my phone and forbidding DD to use it!

Now learning new vocabulary, that's great but it's not what the op is talking about

Well it kind of it isn't it? The OP said that her dd was struggling to learn spellings as she had no understanding of the meaning of the words and hadn't encountered them in normal life.