How does this writing look for age.

[BergamotMouse]

I was wondering how this writing looks for a 6 year old girl (Summer born, year 2).
Parents evening says spelling is the main thing to work on but she can learn spellings one week and they'll have been forgotten the day after her spelling test.
Is it normal to spell most words incorrectly at this age?

They are Matilda lyrics.

To add, it's not a pushy parent type of post, I have some ADHD concerns, her mind is always drifting.

My DD is the same age (very late summer born Y2) and she spells better than that but far from perfectly. She gets the 'harder' set of spelling words for the class though so there are definitely a substantial number in her class who find spelling more difficult.

Thanks, that's helpful. She doesn't seem to have emerged from the phonetic spelling stage.
She's ok at reading (where she's supposed to be - purple book band) so I'm hoping that it might just all line up and click one day.

Oh, it reads right page first to left page. She started at the back of her homemade book.

Definitely below age expectations for this point in the year- but in a class of 30 you’ll have about 5-6 children at this level. But she has great stamina clearly and likes to write about her own interests- which is wonderful.

I’m less worried about the spelling, and more concerned with the fact that she can’t form letters properly. There is no concept of letter sizing and reversals. The school should really stop with the precursive that she has been taught. She back to basics with a simple print and ensure she can form
letters or the correct orientation. The Handwriting Association has some good ways you can support her. People will say ‘fine motor skills!!’ which of course are in important, but still lots of tracing and actual practice of the letters without the silly lead ins and outs.

Phonics hasn’t been engrained in some areas. She isn’t applying the /er/ sound (never, water). I would hope she was in a phonics intervention group. Countless spelling tests aren’t going to help if she can’t apply spelling rules and her sounds.

I’m not an expert but my dd’s handwriting was dreadful and her spelling worse at this age. Last to get her pen licence in her class (after SATS in y6!).My dd is More Able (all SATS scores ultimately above 116 with several perfect scores in “mocks”) and she is NT but found the noisy disruptive classroom setting awful for her, she daydreamed from boredom waiting for the class to catch up.

Every single parents evening the comment was “her spelling and handwriting really lets her down”.

so how did that come about? My fault.

i didn’t realise school did nothing to support these skills beyond the basics - at start of ks2 her teacher gave her 10 spellings extra homework a week to try and help recover and only then I realised FAR too late that learning spelling and handwriting was MY job not theirs. School will likely expect you to be doing the hard work at home, so ask the teacher what to do. You might have to push your dd a bit!

I found spelling games online are good fun. Also try spelling tins where words are on chopped up bits of paper with each word written twice - once wrong and once right eg “said” and “sed” and dc has to sort them into right and wrong piles. Analyse her written work - ask to look at her schoolbooks - and make a list of words that are frequently wrong and target those. Learning words at home for school tests - yes they will be forgotten. So you need to be testing them over and over at home, every single morning at breakfast in writing, aloud on the school run, with a bath-crayon on the tiles at nighttime - whatever works.

you keep as spelling book and build a list of words dc gets wrong a lot, or has been asked to learn in past weeks so you can focus on problem words and recap to secure past victories.

it doesn’t need to be military but if it is routine and regular it will work. Only mark it as a score if dc finds its motivating. Always show them the correction in handwriting yourself not just spelled aloud and ask them to write out the word spelled correctly two or three times. It’s about repetition to internalise the spellings and visualise it on the page with an instinct for “that looks right”.

is your photo of school work? Get her a book with ruled paper, ideally with a faded line midway so she can aim for the right length of tops and bottoms of letters. So hard to write nicely on blank paper.

And more practice for pencil control helps - wipe clean books where you write over the letters, or join-the-dots, practice silly things like “can you draw a perfect circle” (you and dp try with her too - virtually impossible!), can she draw a wiggly/zigzag/box evenly.

Talk to school about how they teach spelling. They might not be teaching what you expect. Teaching phonics is a pain when it comes to spelling because very little useful spelling is actually driven by phonics - I remember my daughter scrawling “sosij” once and the teacher didn’t correct it. Teachers don’t IME point out wrong spelling at this age, unless it is on the list of core words for KS age-related target. Teachers have very little time to mark, and can appear v inconsistent marking wrong spellings. They might say “oh the point of this work was to be creative” and so doesn’t matter. So the message has to come from you: spelling DOES matter,

in the end I realised this “one size fits all”, “they’ll figure it out eventually” approach didn’t work at all for my dd.

when your dc gets older, take spelling really seriously at home. Learn spellings together every week and test at home. I started way too late, and had to drill dd daily to drum correct spellings into her. She hated it.

you can do loads to help before you get to the dire situation we were in!

I'm a year 2 teacher and agree with the post above. She is behind where I would expect a year 2 child to be at this point of the year and the biggest concern is the letter formation. I would worry less about the spellings in spelling tests and more about applying phonics to help with spellings and practising a few common exception words each week as this will help her more.

Thanks all, fits in with what I think.

This was something she made at after school club so probably a bit rushed.

I found some of her end of Y1 work which is much neater and probably what the teacher sees. Maybe it's that she doesn't put any effort in outside of the classroom.

I will buy some of that double lined paper and make spellings and letter formation a priority.

The school work looks goody for year one, seems like she just takes less care at home. What makes you suspect ADHD?

I would not worry about this at all OP.

She's making a book by choice, for fun, at after school club and writing out lyrics of songs that she enjoys. This shows enthusiasm and confidence and that's the main thing. I think the most important thing is to encourage her enjoyment and pleasure that she's clearly getting. The rest will follow.

Don't make it about being right and wrong and better.

If it's relevant- I'm a literacy specialist phonics trained and 15 years teaching experience in literacy and English, and a parent of reception age child.

I’m not a teacher, but my DD is the same age as yours and I notice the same pattern i.e. she doesn’t pay much attention to letter formation, spelling etc when she’s just playing around at home but her school work is better.

I’d say her end of Y1 writing was quite similar to your DD’s actually and was told she was meeting expectations. It has improved a bit since then but still not perfect.

I often flit between thinking possible ADHD and NT very energetic 6yo.
Extremely active, can't sit still, will fall off chair at mealtimes from wriggling. It's like she's always bursting for the toilet.
If needing to stay still eg for toothbrushing she will need to randomly clap and stamp feet.
Very sensory seeking, likes to spin.
Has had constipation issues since about 4 which I think might be related to sensory reasons.
If asked to go and get dressed (all clothes laid out) she will go upstairs with the intention and immediately forget. This applies to most instructions.
I say she needs to be run like a sheepdog - hours outside everyday.

None of this is seen at school - she is a model pupil!

That looks exactly how my daughter wrote - she is dyslexic

These "symptoms" may also relate to dyslexia ( there is a cross over in dyslexia and ADHD symptoms) especially being distracted and forgetting instructions. I'm also interested in the fact that she started her home made book at the back as dyslexic students can also have lots of problems with directionality ( left, right forwards, backwards etc). Is she left handed? This might also explain some of the directionality issues.

Very similar to my 6 yo summer born DD.

I also suspect ADHD (I have it) and maybe dyslexia although her writing has improved exponentially in the last few months with a new teacher in Y2.

She's a typical dolly day dream and clumsy and fidgety.

Just keep supporting her and keep an eye that her self esteem doesn't get knocked if she becomes aware that she's 'below standard' for writing etc 😞

Thanks for all replies. I hadn't considered dyslexia because her reading is ok. She did well on her phonics screening test (only a couple wrong I think)
Can you have dyslexia with ok reading skills?

Looking back at that Y1 work I think she must have had either done it in rough and had it corrected or had some keywords spellings provided as lots of that is not how she would spell first time around.
But gives an idea of letter formation.

Yes, you can have dyslexia with ok reading skills though it is less likely to be flagged up in school.

My son is in the same year but his birthday is February and this is his writing. I think he writes quite neatly though so I'm not sure if that's the norm.

My son is summer born/ year one and these are some of his free drawing writing things he does on his own for fun. I feel his handwriting etc looks similar to your daughters and he gets words spelt wrong a lot but not as much as that. It does feel like something perhaps isn’t clicking with your daughter on spelling/ phonics. We’ve not formally taught any spellings.

My daughter was exactly the same, things click for children at different ages. As long as she is doing her best what more can you ask for? One day in year 3 she suddenly started writing in a much neater style. It all looks perfectly normal to me.

If the school had any concerns, they would suggest extra help and things you could do at home to help. My daughter is an awful fidget and distracted at home but brilliant behaviour wise at school.

my daughter also gets 10/10 in her spellings most weeks yet when she is writing a piece of work she is desperate to get her ideas down on paper quickly and spelling goes out the window even for some basic words.

The best thing you can do is speak to the teacher and have an open an honest conversation, if there are any worries they will tell you. You should be aware that the difference between what some 6 year olds can do compared to others is dramatic but by KS2 it usually evens out.

It’s lovely that you are involved and clearly a kind compassionate mum, comparisons to other kids can only worry you. Focus on making sure she is doing the best she can. You’re doing great.