Are reception children meant to just learn to read tricky words or spell them too?

[thegrammerpolicesic]

I suspect it varies by school but if there is a right answer let me know please as I've no clue. They seem a bit young to be learning to spell formally?

In our school the children learn to read all the tricky words for the phase they are on and spell the tricky words for the phase they have just finished- simply because some words become less tricky as you learn more phonemes ( although not all!)

My dss didn't start spelling tests till Y1, in Reception the emphasis was on reading the sight words.

At our school, the children are taught to read phonetically. I'm not entirely sure how they do it but it's not by learning words but by learning the mechanics of how to read IYSWIM. Formal spelling comes in Y1, after this half term IIRC, and they are usually words relating to the topic they are learning about (and thus useful to their learning! )

They do nothing like this whatsoever in reception.

I'm a primary teacher. It's mainly reading based at the moment. In year one they will start to consolidate their phonetic spelling (c-a-t etc) and high frequency words (not all of which are phonetic) then in year two move on to learning to spell more difficult words non-phonetic words (dd had beautiful a few weeks ago, that was a bugger - technical teaching term) HTH

lol - when I see "beautiful" written, through my mind runs B-E-A-utiful. I'm guessing that's how I was taught how to remember the spelling many moons ago

this is a good website if you want to print of stuff to practice at home. I wouldn't push it though unless your child is very keen!

I won't worry about spelling too much then but will ask the teacher anyway as it seems schools vary. I think the way ds seems to learn he will probably pick it up anyway just from reading the words more and more through the year.

At our school it was just as LordVet said. Children took reading books home in reception, but were never given formal written homework or spellings. In class they did some spelling of phonic words such as c-a-t as part of their phonics lessons, but more towards the summer term, not at this point in the year.

Formal spellings started in Y1 with phonic words, working to high frequency words by the summer. Now we are in the beginning of Y2, we are getting slightly harder high frequency words.

If the school is following 'Letters and Sounds', which is the government produced phonics programme, then they will do as primarymum said. Once they have learned to read the tricky words in each phase, then in the next phase they learn to spell them. It's certainly what my ds (Y1) is doing. He also gets spellings to practise each week which are phonetically regular, but that's just to consolidate writing words using the phonemes he can already read IYSWIM.

They're not following L&S.

How many would most children be expected to learn a week typically? (Assuming just reading them not spelling).

I introduce a "tricky" word a week to begin with in reception usually starting with "I" then teach words such as "he" "she" "me" "we" "be" together.
All words are phonetic if you know the rules but sometimes it's easier to just learn.
SoupDragon I teach - B E A utiful and P E ople too ... remnants of how I was taught.

Sounds wise in Jolly Phonics it is a sound day but the children I am with would never keep up with that, we teach 2 or three tricky words a week but sometime more ie the words me she we and be are taught together with us as they are similar sounds.

If you do want to try to help your child to learn the spelling of the words at the same time as reading them I have just discovered this great website which I'm going to see if my daughter would like to try: www.spellanywhere.co.uk/spellings.php?view=1&id=261 If you scroll down there is a specific section for reception.

DD (Yr 1) has to be encouraged to relax about spellings. She likes to be 'right' all the time, so she is very slow writing (worrying and self-correcting). Her teacher would like her to concentrate on communicating her information/story, by writing faster and using phonetic spellings - as the teacher said, so long as I can read the word I'm not too worried about how it is spelt at the moment. I don't think that spelling is going to be cropping up for another term yet.

Learning spelling too soon can really stifle kids' writing.they need to be confident at writing phonetically independently before you burden them with spelling irregular words.

I would be very surprised if a reception child was reading a book with formally in it.