Y1 Spelling

[BeccaBean]

My DD’s teacher has told me that she’d expect my daughter to be able to spell more words correctly by now. DD is a good reader and only very recently (last few weeks) started to write for fun. It’s quite easy to understand her writing as she uses phonetic spelling quite well (but often uses the wrong spelling where there is one sound spelled in different ways, eg she’ll write snayl instead of snail. Since she’s only just started to enjoy writing, I’m reluctant to start correcting her spelling as I don’t want to put her off. Does your child’s Y1 teacher expect your DC to start spelling correctly this early in the school year? For those with older children, when did your child start to spell words correctly? Thanks!

My Dd is in year 2. We were told by her teacher last year that they would be making logical attempts at spelling, using their phonics knowledge. To not worry too much about correcting them. But perhaps start to explain a few rules, such as it's usually 'er' at the end of a word. My Dd was home schooled in lockdown last Yr and I did put her off writing by correcting her letter formation and spelling too much. So I agree with you!

I agree with you and did the same at that age.
I wonder if she said that because your DD's reading is further on ? Iirc a lot of year 1 phonics work is about practicing stuff like whether to use "ar" or "er", "a_e or air"

My Y1 DD is a strong reader and very good at spelling tests etc, if you ask her how to spell a random word (that she’s likely to have come across) she’ll say it correctly. But in her own writing it’s all entirely phonetic with almost no accurate spellings. No one’s raised it as an issue and I’m assuming it will catch up eventually. I definitely wouldn’t put her off

Ps her older sister started to spell better in her own writing at some point during year 1. Not this early though. She’s now y3 and spells lots of things correctly but still plenty of errors.

I'm a year 1 tea her and phonetic spelling is fine and very much expected.
We are working on the correct spelling of tricky/red words - words that can't be sounded out when read, such as me, was, are, my, they...

Not sure what a tea her is... teacher!!

Also meant to say, my own child was a great reader in year 1 but he mainly spelled words phonetically at this stage of year 1. He was a reluctant writer so, like you say, didn't want to put him off by correcting all spellings.

My year 1 child is ahead in many ways but spelling is not one of them. There are some words that she can spell and others that take a bit of deciphering.

Eg she wrote some letters to Santa today at school and she could seemingly spell things like unicorn perfectly but Santa was Sunta, girl was gel, please was plees so she seems to recognise and spell some words right but others are phonetic and others are a bit random and not really phonetically plausible.

Yep, my DS is in Y1 and we had parents evening recently when we could look at some of his work. He’s ahead in reading but definitely not in his writing, however his teacher said his spelling was fine for this age, phonetically plausible is what they’re looking for.

@BeccaBean

My DD’s teacher has told me that she’d expect my daughter to be able to spell more words correctly by now. DD is a good reader and only very recently (last few weeks) started to write for fun. It’s quite easy to understand her writing as she uses phonetic spelling quite well (but often uses the wrong spelling where there is one sound spelled in different ways, eg she’ll write snayl instead of snail. Since she’s only just started to enjoy writing, I’m reluctant to start correcting her spelling as I don’t want to put her off. Does your child’s Y1 teacher expect your DC to start spelling correctly this early in the school year? For those with older children, when did your child start to spell words correctly? Thanks!

Unfortunately a consequence of not correcting spelling errors means the incorrect spelling becomes embedded in the child's memory which can be difficult to correct later.

Praise her for her attempt and say well done you've listened carefully to the sounds in snail but in that word we spell the sound /ae/ differently can you think of another way to spell the sound? If she can help her to find the the correct spelling if not simply tell her we spell the /ae/ sound in snail and let her correct the word so she sees the word written correctly.

It used to be thought correcting spellings would put children off writing but this is no longer the case.

Spelling is more difficult than reading so it does lag behind reading ability and being a good reader does not mean you will be a good speller.

We had parents evening before half term and DD’s teacher said her next steps was to consider if a word need a different spelling of a sound but she said it’s entirely normal to make those kinds of errors at this stage.

Thanks for comments - really appreciated. Am not too worried, but am going to find some ways to help her develop. Yesterday after school I wrote ay/ai/a-e on the top of a page and she was happy to spend 10 minutes spelling different words (short ones like cake, rain, hay) etc thinking about which spelling of the sound to use (and she got them all right). We also practised some tricky words.