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?

Hello irvine101 waves I jumped on this thread as DS is quite ahead in his reception class. He and another girl have started doing spelling (what exactly I am sure). But as he knows all the tricky words and then some, presumably they can't just let them run riot while the other children are trying to learn?

Hello mrsvilliers. In reception, he was tested on high frequency words(300?) first, then teacher started testing things like days of the week, month of the year, name of the country, animals, etc. quite systematically.
Then year 1 was a bit crazy, they gave him random words from topic. In yr2, he was given words from YR3 &4, to spell and write sentence with it. From his experience, I think using words to write sentence with it was a lot better than learning to spell really difficult words. I wish they done it since reception, using easy high frequency words. This year(yr3), everybody gets same spelling words and no writing sentence(which seems a bit pointless, not using the words they are learning), every year it's so different, depending on teacher!

Spelling should be taught from the beginning of reception in every phonics lesson starting with simple cvc words and progressing to more complex words. Even polysyllabic words are included (think bat / man, tip/toe, foo the/ball etc) tricky words should be taught the same way and not as lists to memorise.

Thanks Mrz I think I'll ask what they're spelling, as DS well beyond cvc words. I taught TEFL many years ago and find myself becoming reinterested!