is spelling taught in Reception or not?

[imaginaryfriend]

I've heard quite a few conflicting views on this and have been very much of the opinion that dd hasn't been taught spelling per se - she has been taught phonetic sounds and the letters to make them etc. But last week she came home and told me they'd learnt to spell 'all' 'are' and 'they'. She went on to say that they frequently do spellings in the class and the teacher 'tests' them on them. But we've never had anything home.

So ... is the idea that they should be able to phonetically correctly spell any word given to them by the end of Reception right or not? Or do they just learn and memorise words?

I am never sre about the reading v spelling link. DD can read almost any word now, but can't spell many of them.

VERY BAD early years practise to give spelling tests in reception, and unusual in my exerinece.

Foundation stage should be being delivered through a mainly play based approach with lots of observation and planning by the teacher and minimum of intervention.

Phonics, sight words and emergent writing are introduced but should not be in an overly formsl context or forced ninappropriately.

My DS1 is in reception in a very high acheiving school and thank God has no spelling tests, and I'd create an almighty fuss if there was. It goes against all current guidance, evidence and good practise.

Lavenders I am surprised at your comments and really do not understand why there are all these rules and regulations. My DD is in reception, she has picked up reading very well, in fact the phonics teaching has not kept pace with her progress. Presumably this is because it is bad practice to teach anything other than the 44 sounds. Just because someone somewhere says it is bad practice does not mean this applies to every child. Perhaps this is why so many children are failing because they are not given the opportunity to develop in line with their ability from the start.

But doesn't evidence suggest that spelling tests dont actually have any bearing on a child's ability to spell overall?

I don't think dd gets spelling tests in the way other people have described, it's more that the teacher tells them words to write and they write them down in their small groups. Then she checks them to see if they've got them right.

Please don't take offense but how do they learn to spell then?

IF, I think this is more common practise and I don't know why they don't do this at my DDs school. It does seem a waste of a TAs time to take children individually and 'test' them, I would rather it be much less formal and much more fun than this.

hi anmhi I think the idea is that they learn the phonetic sounds that make up words in Reception then in Y1 they begin to work out why cow is not written cou as both 'ow' and 'ou' make an ow sound. If you see what I mean? I think it's too much for them to work out those things at Reception stage.

However some of the basic words which can be sounded out like those your dd had to learn are perhaps not necessary to give as 'spellings' as the child would probably be able to work them out as they're all phonetic. I imagine teachers get them to practise those kinds of spellings in their classwork and projects?

crossed posts with you. I agree. writing words in little sentences for fun is better. It also practises sentence structure rather than individual words. My dd's little 'buttflie' book I copied out below shows some very good spelling in between the ones she's 'approximated' such as 'now' and 'are'. there's no sign of a teacher correcting any of it btw.

The 'children who are failing' are not ones who could read in reception and then weren't given enough spelling tests, believe me.

The guidelines and good practise are based on reseach and studies into how children learn at a young age. Yes, some are bound to be ready for something more formal and there shouldn't be a ban, but it should definitely be the exception and not the rule.

Even with children who seem 'ready' there is no need to rush, there is no advantage, research demonstrates, you do not necessarily 'get further' by starting earlier, in fact often the opposite.

This is why most other countries start formal teaching much leter than us. They base it on the research.

The foundation is trying to rebalnec our too formal early education slighly, but is battling against some teachers, and many parents, who are stil too eager to do us much as possible as early as possible.

belive me, it damages many and has advantages for very few, it is really not necessary.

And therefore BAD PRACTISE.

Yes I can see there is no rush and to be honest whilst I am happy to have some spellings for fun the ones my DD has had home and the way they are 'testing' is really very silly. As you say IF most children who know their sounds would be able to do these without thinking and I am wondering why they even started it. Infact I think I might just ask them to stop.

anmhe maybe they did it because they felt pressure from some parents who think this should be being done at this stage? Are you happier now with your dd's reading books by the way?

I don't think there was pressure from parents. The teacher mentioned it at parents evening, I was quite happy for her to get some, although as I have said I have struggled to see the point of them really and the way they are doing it seems so formal and old fashioned.

The reading books are much better although all of a sudden they have become much harder. We have gone from Chip and Biff stuff to Snapdragons at level 5 which have many many more words and are longer. I was frustrated by the fact that they have this process of them reading every single book and it seems so pointless especially when those old ORT books use the same words and phrases over and over and don't support phonics. But I must shut up as I go on and on about that!

Overall the problem is the school, we are just not happy with it. We are moving DD to a new school from September although I am dreading telling her but it will be ok.

Are you happy overall? I expect in any event you're happy that your DD will be with a new teacher for year 1.

My dd is Reception and has had spellings home for a good few months now (its a state school).

This weeks spellings are:
Like, come, going, playing, seeing, standing and saying.

She likes learning her spellings, strange child

I'm not sure how much use it is to her, but she isn't suffering because of it, quite the opposite as i say, she likes it

DS1 (5) has started bringing home flashcards to practise reading and spelling. He can do this by spelling them out or arranging letters on the floor (card squares). Every couple of weeks they are changed for some new ones if he has got the hang of them. Examples are: said, get, cat, she, like

Much better than spelling tests I think as such as there is no pressure of a group "test".

anmhe, that's so strange that your school is giving out Snapdragons as they're the least phonics-based of all the ORT schemes from what I can gather.

I'm ok with dd's school really. It's not the best in the world for sure but we're in inner city London and it's the nicest one we could find. I think dd's teacher is very efficient in lots of ways but she lacks warmth so the kids don't get much encouragement. We don't bring home any ORT books, they just do them in guided reading in class. We have a really big range of different books, I like the Storyworlds ones as they are definitely readable (all the words 'fit' with what's been learnt so you don't suddenly get a word like 'thought' like you do with ORT).

How's your dd getting on with reading / writing in general? Does she bring things home that you can see?

We only get a reading book home. However, dd2 has told me that they do spelling at school during phonics time. They are expected to be able to spell consonant-vowel-consonant words eg dog, tin. I do not think they are expected to spell irregular words such as all or was.

In our school, the children in the older years rarely get spellings home. I wish they did, although not in reception.

Spelling tests really don't work. My dd did them regularly all through primary school and always scored 19 or 20 out of 20. She's in year 7 now at a high performing selective secondary school scoring 6as for English and her work has recently included such gems as "textials" "servunts" and (my particular favourite) "The Pardoner is a charactar from the Canterbery Tales. In the story, Chaucer portraid him as a freud"

I think overall I wish schools were more consistent there seems to be such different practices and opinions. For example they don't do guided reading at DDs school, the teacher reads to them and asks them what is going to happen however reading wise they ead 1-1 twice a week and get books sent home (we get 6 a week). My DD is doing very well I think, I do find it hard as I don't know what her writing should be like for example. BUT I am happy that she is happy and writes funny little sentences and notes all the time. All I think most parents want is to feel that the dcs needs are being met - even a little bit.

anmhe, it is puzzling the amount of inconsistency from school to school and yet they all seem to leave Reception with roughly the same mix of abilities don't they? Dd only brings home 2 reading books a week and does 1-1 reading with the teacher once a week, then guided reading once a week. She does group activities with the TA which is when they do 'spelling' and writing, I think that's about 3 times a week. Then there are more general group activities where they fill in worksheets to do with numbers, make little books, etc. The majority of the time is 'choosing time' when they choose what they want to do. Or free play when they can go inside or outside and do whatever they want.

Yes, ultimately, you don't want them pushed too hard or too little. I guess that's a tall order for a class teacher with 27 in her group to assess.

Spelling tests prove nothing beyond the child's ability to spell a list of words they have memorised at one point in time. Children rarely remember how to spell the words when they have to use them in their own writing.

cat64 the 45 High frequency words from the NLS were never intended to be used in the way many schools adopted and are apparently still using them. If you check out the NLS the 45 words were HFW were for reading and never intended to be used as spelling tests. "Teachers should teach pupils to recognise the words in context when reading, particularly during shared text work with the whole class, but the words will also need to be reinforced through other practice and exploration activities so that they can be easily read out of context as well."

In the new Literacy framework the HFW lists changed in response to a review of words needed for children to be successful readers. There are now approx 100 HFW for reception (many of them easily decodable using phonics). The new framework makes it clear that there is no need to teach words that are decodable and to concentrate on those tricky words which is precisely what good teachers have been doing for years.

Absolutely. As my post of 10.14 this morning clearly illustrates!

So, just out of interest, if spelling tests are not effective (which I can well believe) what is the best way of teaching a child to spell the tricky words well?