When do they *need* to start learning spellings - and how?

[Smithagain]

DD1 is in year 1. She brings home 6 spelling words a week, which she is rather disinterested in learning and her teacher has said not to push it. They don't have spelling tests (or not any that DD1 has noticed) and her reading is absolutely fine. She loves books and uses phonetically plausible (if somewhat eccentric) spelling when she writes.

So - I'm wondering. At what point should she actually start learning to spell words properly? Does it just come with lots of reading and writing? Or does a point arrive when you do need to sit down and learn them?

Am quite happy with our laid back approach for now, but I do have pedantic tendencies when it comes to spelling and grammar and I don't want her to lead her down the path towards being irritatingly dreadful at spelling when she's older!

Don't really know the answer to this one but there is a school of thought that says teaching spellings at all is a waste of time. My DS is an example of this as he gets great spelling test marks but forgets them all when it comes to written work. The trick is to learn them whilst writing I think. I think he has picked up things through reading.

He has been tested on his spelling since Yr 1 though so never had the option of not pushing it.

This is how we learn our spellings:

www.amblesideprimary.com/ambleweb/lookcover/lookcover.html

If he does it twice then he tends to get them all/nearly all right. He is in year 2.

My dd2 is in year 2 and they have started bringing spelling home - however her teacher has said that they don't get 'marked' on their spelling when they are being assessed for literacy - it seems to be more how they construct the story - use of punctuation etc

As someone else has said, getting children to learn lists of words for a test is now not supposed to be terribly useful. My personal (and I'm not a teacher)opinion is that the best way is for a child to have 2-3 spelling mistakes identified per piece of work (no more) and the correct spelling shown. At least then you are correcting words that the child is actively using.

My boys both get spelling tests but it doesn't seem to have any impact on their independent spelling. DS2 (6) is an excellent speller anyway and DS1 (9) doesn't use the words 'autopsy' or 'machinist' much in his writing.

My children have to write them in the context of a sentence rather than just writing them out several times. Seems to work.

I think children need to be taught strageries to spell words, for example listening to the sounds in words and different phonics variations.

My son does not get spellings yet and his spelling is strange to put it mildly.

Spelling tests never helped ds. Because each week the tests were based on a sound ie ough words, he new that the words had to have ough in them and he used to get most of them right. But when it comes to writing, his spelling is really awful.

They've stopped doing spelling tests or learning spellings at our school - apparantly they have been proved not to help at all. Children can learn to spell a word for a test, bu t be completely unable to spell it when asked to put it into context. Ds in year 2 appears to be learing to spell very will - but I have no idea how!

"apparently" is particularly tricky..........

LOL seeker!

SOme schools give dictations rather than tests.

God I have such problems with ely/ly words (dunce emoticon)

DD2 who is an appalling speller, is very good at learning her spellings for tests. But as for applying those spellings to her written work - it doesn't seem to work that way.