Year 2 child spelling phonetically, should I worry or relax?

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My daughter is in Year 2. She spells the words like they are pronounced. The recent example: "jesis craytid the wold. But som yvole men put Jesis on a cros".
We don't get spelling homework. I totally understand why she spells like this - t based on phonics.

I try to do spelling every evening, but it is quite stressful - she has no motivation to remember how the words are spelt, we do the rules (like -ed in the past tense) but it doesn't go beyond one evening. I also don't have lots of energy in the evening to gamify it and sometimes patience. We've been doing 1-10 spelling for almost two years now, occasionally it is still 'sevine'. It is more often than not a battle to do spellings.

We have been reading for 15 min every evening for the last year or so so she sees how the words are spelt. She is fine with reading and her reading level is where she should be. No SEN and I don't think it is dyslexia. School thinks that "it is fine and will take a bit of time to get there" but no more feedback or advice what to do at home.

Now I keep thinking whether I should pick my battles and get relaxed about spelling thinking that she will eventually get there with spellings.

Does anyone have experience with this situation?

As a teacher, I would be somewhat concerned. Some children take longer with spelling and there will certainly be a number of other children in her class with similar (or worse) spellings, but the majority of children at this stage in Y2 will be spelling with a higher level of accuracy than that. If you google 'Year 2 writing examples', you can see a range of what an average child's spellings would look like.

I don't have advice, as spelling is something I do personally find hard to teach when it doesn't come naturally, but I would ask her school/teacher for ideas.

My dd was like this. I remember her writing things like “i ait a sosij” and having absolutely no clue it was wrong.

She was a strong and keen reader and her primary school were very sure that she’d “pick up spelling” and not to worry.

This was dreadful advice.

In year 4 her lovely teacher told me that perhaps now it was time to start worrying a little bit as her spelling hadn’t improved at all. She told us just do a little bit, just practise some spellings each week from the KS1 and KS2 lists.

There was no specific homework or spelling tests at school and dd did NOT like doing “extra” homework. So she was extremely uncooperative By year 5 the school was saying she would not get a Working at Greater Depth grade, purely because of her spelling and “what a shame” she hadnt just absorbed it like they expected. We tried in earnest to do spellings practice at home at least four times a week. It was a slog.

Eventually dd left primary school and her spelling is still absolutely atrocious.

With my ds, from year 1 we have done spellings at home as a normal part of his process of learning to read and write.

Do NOT rely on school to teach your child to spell - make it a methodical part of your routine eg five mins after he finishes breakfast every day. The phonic approach is not helpful for spelling most words and they must learn by rote and repetition. It’s unfashionable and most primary teacher just ignore the problem!

As a Year 2 parent, I think I’d be quite concerned. To put it in context, my DS (also Year 2) is working at expected level and the spelling mistakes we get are things like ‘triped’ instead of ‘tripped’. Are the school actively doing anything to address this or just vaguely hoping for the best?

I am also a bit concerned.
The school says all fine, but I don’t rate our school particularly high. “Strive for mediocracy” could well be its motto, the bar for failure is quite high there.

I’m a Year 2 teacher. I agree that that level is concerning.

Some advice…

Good spelling starts with reading. Put the subtitles on the TV. Read to her lots and lots. Point to the words as you read them to her. Ask the school to do a Dyslexia screening with her. It’s not a diagnosis but will find out if there are particular barriers to her learning.

That’s how my dyslexic DD used to write and spell

I know you said that you don’t suspect dyslexia but I wondered about it too. My brother’s dyslexia mainly manifested itself in being a terrible speller.

What phonic scheme does she follow?

What will diagnosis of dyslexia give in practice? Particularly in a class with 30 kids in an average school. Will it give a different teaching approach to writing and spelling?

The reason I don’t think it is dyslexia is because she is fine with reading but this is all based on googling.

Read write inc

It will give understanding and guidance for the teacher to support her.

I’ll be honest with some of your examples I would query processing, retention or the quality of teaching as well.

As a year 2 teacher all my class (including those who are not as good as your dd at spelling) would know that -ed is a suffix. They know it makes the sounds t, id and d. They would know that when they want to write id at the end of the word created, it may sound like id but we write it ed.

Did she pass her phonic screening in y1? If so, what was her score?

She did, her score was 36(?). I did practice with her quite a bit though but then was telling myself that she is a summer born child. This year reading became much easier though.

@hopspot Would you raise it with the parents if a child has this level of spelling in your class?

This is her school writing from January, I was surprised it was not discussed at parents evening.

I would raise it with parents. As a teacher I recognise when children spell phonetically in Year 2 but are making plausible attempts using increasing knowledge of graphemes and when they are very random.

You gave the example of her spelling the word seven as sevine. If you pronounce it as it’s spelt, like sev-en rather than sev-un, can she hear the sounds that might help her spell?

My dd did this, she was diagnosed with dyslexia age 7. Phonics really did her a disservice, she struggled to then spell whereas both her sister and myself (we are both dyslexic too we found out afterwards) learned whole world spelling, I still don’t sound out things phonetically