Y1 spellings are really difficult

[itsaparty]

I’ve tried to help my five year old by using games and making it fun but it really isn’t going in, and every week he’s getting one or two right (out of twelve!)

Just wondering if there’s anything else I can be doing.

I have an iPad. I might try Squeebles - screen time might make it more appealing!

Thanks @NT2018 . I just want to help him!

Those seem ahead of what the usual year 1 words are, especially in the first term.

I'd stick to the simpler ones and focus on getting 4 words right.

Yeah, those spellings are all over the place. Have they always been like that? What scheme are they using?

It seems to rely a lot on him already knowing some of these words.

That certainly seems a random list of words. Not really surprised his getting them wrong. As a PP said, it would be different if it was 12 words which followed one particular spelling pattern.

If he came to it cold, without you attempting to help him, would he even know where to start with spelling them? If not, it is a complete waste of time to try and help him rote learn them for a test as he will have forgotten by the time the test comes round.

Yeah 12 words per week seems excessive for year 1 when there's phonics and stuff to learn as well. My son is in year 1 and they have 15 words to learn to spell each half term and the test is in the last week of the half term. They're not based on phonics they've learned though, they're small words like 'the', 'do', 'my' etc that don't follow the phonics rules but are very common to find in sentences. At a meeting we had at the start of the year the teacher said the school scrapped weekly spelling tests because the kids would often learn them and be able to recite them in a test in a specific order and get them correct but then when they had to actually write them in sentences they would get unstuck so the spelling tests were pointless. So now they have the 15 simple words and the emphasis is on constantly writing them into sentences to give the words context and get them ingrained which I think works well. Some of the words on the sheet you posted seem quite long and based on phonics knowledge rather than commonly used words? I guess that also makes it harder as it relies on a solid knowledge of the phonics graphemes but obviously schools seem to have a different approach to these things.

Thank you. They follow Little Wandle for reading. I don’t think he’d know where to start although I’ll ask his teacher if he was close - ‘reed’ for read wouldn’t concern me but ‘bdjxid’ would for example!

I think focusing on a few spellings until those are solid is better than trying to keep up with the class.

My DD is pretty good at learning words to pass spelling tests in class, but she doesn't retain any of it, because the list is too long and as soon as she's done she gets another list to learn. She is now in Year 3 and we're in a situation where she will pass the end of week test on 'berry vs bury' and 'piece vs peace' but she can't reliably spell 'house' or 'where' as she forgot those the minute she ticked them off on a previous test.

We've now gone back to basics and ditched the weekly lists from the school as trying to keep up with was making her spelling get worse (but invisibly, since doing okay in the weekly tests means the teachers didn't realise how far behind she has got).

We are now doing Apples and Pears at home instead, which was recommended on here. It's brilliant and is finally getting her to retain spelling knowledge, and I also like the fact it's pen and paper.

DD is useless at spelling, we just focus on the ones she's most likely to get right. I'd rather she managed to get 4 right and be secure in those spellings than attempt all 12 and not get them right at all.

Ugg this has been the bane of my life. My eldest can learn spellings for a spelling test but can’t use them in context. I suspect she has dysgraphia as she can’t spell at all by using rules. She has to use mnemonics or visual learning methods. I’d also recommend Apples and Pears.

My youngest is much better at spelling- she can look at words and know if they look right or not. She still gets some stupid ones though- synonym was one she struggled with recently but is not going to be using it regularly.

That list seems odd, all through primary my DCs have had spellings that followed a rule each week, so week one would be all 'or' words, week 2 all 'oy' etc. This does have it's own problems if you get children like my DD who are very good a spotting patterns, as she's ace the weekly spelling test as she knew the rule for that week but then get it wrong otherwise. She is autistic and I suspect may have some mild dyslexia/dysgraphia too though.

It might help to separate ‘does he know the sounds’ from ‘can he memorise the word’. Try saying a word slowly and asking him to tell you each sound on his fingers (t-r-ea-t is four) and then write one sound at a time. If he can do that with you, the phonics is there and it’s mostly practice. ‘Treet’ for ‘treat’ is actually a good sign, because every sound is represented, just with a different spelling of ‘ee’. Praise that, then show him the ‘ea’ bit as the tricky part to remember. Group the words by their tricky bit (boy, joy, toy together) so he learns one idea rather than twelve things. Five minutes a day is plenty, and stopping while he still feels successful matters more than getting through the list.

Your last paragraph doesn't make any sense. They choose the spelling words because they're exception words. Surely that's obvious? Why would you send home spellings to learn which can be worked out using phonics? It's the ones that don't follow phonics rules that need to be learned separately.

I work with yr1 children and after looking at that list I’d say that the majority of our yr1 class would struggle with those words. Most may be confident with the graphemes, but after just working through the tricky words with them most would struggle with the words one and here. I can only think of maybe 5 or 6 children from the class (we have 26 in the class) that might be able to correctly spell all of the spellings.

Common exception words are not words that ‘don’t follow phonics rules’ - that’s a common misconception in itself. Mostly, they are words which are decodable but contain graphemes that have not been taught yet. (With one or two notable exceptions - ironically ‘one’ and ‘two’ being two of them.)

Many teachers also see them as words which are non-decodable, usually through lack of training. The advice has always been the same - decode the words from left to right, highlighting the tricky ‘bit’ - same for spelling.

There’s an excellent page here which explains how to teach those words grouped by spelling:

https://linguisticphonics.wordpress.com/2020/06/24/letters-and-sounds-first-100-high-frequency-words-words/

He’s actually really improved this week. I spent a lot of time helping him, doing one word a day which I know sounds obvious but the week does run away with us very easily! So hoping tomorrows test is an improvement!

My children always struggled with spellings. Then I read this book that explains how to help your children learn anything. One chapter is actually devoted to spellings and it worked wonders for my two.

I just ordered this book after you recommended it on my thread. If it lives up to the blurb and the sample I read on Amazon it will be worth its weight in gold. I will let you know!

Last week included "penknife", literally the only word in the English language i can think of, that has a silent K that's not at the beginning of the word

Unusual but not completely unknown

That is a better example tbf, you could argue it's a word she's likely to use in a sentence. (I've also got unknitted and knickknacks. Less useful and you could argue it's a sounded double K.)

Some pp on this thread argued that "common exception words" are taught as spellings but I think my dd could go all the way to A level without having to include last week's rhinoceros (I hesitated spelling that myself) and this week's gnat in her creative writing.

Get the lists online and then get the kids to write them around the house, maybe with jokes/cheeky riddles etc.

Yes, especially as ‘rhino’ is fine.

I feel like my DD had these spellings. Are they from a scheme? Used to drive me mad as there’s no pattern etc.

omg does it teach simultaneous equations??