What's your Y1 child's spelling like?

[imaginaryfriend]

Dd (just turned 6) is in Y1 and is doing really well I think in most things. I saw some work from her group pinned up on the display board and was really shocked as to how well some of her peers are spelling at this stage, including words like 'could' and 'nice' which I know they haven't covered in class. Does that mean they're super-brilliant naturally or that their parents have been doing a lot of work with them at home?

Dd had to write a poem about fireworks at school today. This is her spelling word for word:

the fiwurks are sparkling
as the sky is darkning
the fighy wurks are bright
they dazl in the daylight

I love the two ways she tried to work out spelling fireworks. And I think the poem itself is fabulous. Is this about where she should be at for her year spelling-wise?

and said is Save Animals In Danger. I think I learnt that from here but it has helped dd.

I tried that with dd, Clary, but she didn't have a clue what I meant about 'question' words.

Funnily enough 'said' is one of her regularly correctly spelt words. Funny how some of them stick. She's very good with 'some' and 'come' too.

But she always spells 'very' as 'fery'. And words that end in 'ed' she ends with a 't' for instance 'opent' for 'opened'. That must be to do with her pronunciation as much as anything, no?

DS2 does that with "ed" - I workt hard etc.

He has a tendency to say th as f or v (eg wiv) which also sometimes shows itself in spelling.

I think the question words thing is maybe a year 2 thing actually.

if you want to do something - find a list of the 'most common words' for reception/year 1/year 2 (forget how old your dd is) and go through those - that would be a good start to spellings works that crop up again and again. Loads of ways to make that fun - do a search here. It's not enough to be able to read them, but to use them in writing (with correct spellings)

It makes sense, Clary, I mean it's a good idea to point out the 5 words that being wh but it proved too tricky for dd when i tried it out today!

She's got her first ever spelling test next week.

That's a lovely poem, I'd be very proud if I were you. Emergent spelling is soooo cute I'm almost reluctant to tell ds what the approved letters are.

Me too edam. I've only really started thinking about it now she has spellings home and she's in a group with such amazingly good spellers, she's started asking me more if things are spelt correctly.

IF - how do you know so much about how the other kids in her class are doing. i wouldnt have a clue nor want to either.

There was a large class display of writing along one of the main corridors outside the Y1 / YR classrooms. All the pieces had the children's names on them. I didn't know until that moment how the others were doing. Parents were invited to look and it would be a bit weird if one weren't interested to know.

wasn't interested to know.