How to help a yr 6 improve spelling?

[cumfyxtine]

My DD is in yr6 and working at high level 4 and expected to get level 5 in her SATS. She seems to have a reasonable grasp of what is expected of her in literacy, but her spelling is atrocious. My DS 2yrs below her can spell much better.

It appears to me that the phonics method she has learned just doesn't work for her, probably due to her appalling Milton Keynes accent. Its difficult for me to help her with this as I am Scottish so my pronunciation is no better.

Last week she struggled with 'royal' - it was written as rawl.. and she used 'wear' instead of 'were' in a sentence.

She can rote learn spellings for the weekly test, so her scores on this are high and she is reading about 2yrs above her age.

I think her inability to spell when writing (especially when writing under time pressure) will undermine her SATS which the secondary school use for streaming.

Does anyone have any ideas how to improve her general everyday spelling?

I've always worried she might be slightly dyslexic, and she does seem to have problems with pattern matching (e.g. she has never been able to do jigsaws)

Any ideas how best to help her?

Xtine

a friend of mine recommended this book. I have just bought it because I think it will help my 7 and 8 year olds.

It is designed for dyslexia but seems great for everyone.

Alpha to Omega - the a-z of teaching reading writing and spelling. Beve Hornsby, Frula Shear and Julie Pool

I got it from Amazon and think looks very useful.

You could try Word Shark for the PC

DS was about 2 years behind in his spelling at yr6 due to dyslexic type problems. He had a lot of one to one using Stareway to Spelling

He just scraped a 4c for writing in the end but got a 5b in comprehension/reading and only just failed an overall 5 by one point, but he made top set for most subjects and the 2nd class for english and maths. He still can't spell but his targets for the end of ks3 are all high 7's

imho you should be speaking to her teacher and poss the senco at her school, the inability to do jigsaws is a marker for dyslexia. much better to try to sort things out for her now, it will mean less of the time pressures that give her the problems you mention - plus some resources to help as well if she has a dx after screening. there are a good few online dyslexia tests, take a look at the dyslexia assoc website and take it from there>?

And just t say, spelling is assessed separately in the KS2 SATs. Children have two writing tasks and a separate speling task.

Do speak to the \SENCo about a dx screen but don't stress yourself that her spelling, in itself, will prevent your DD being streamed 'correctly'

Is it true that teachers no longer correct spellings? You know, "sp" written in the margin in red ink.

Yes they still correct spellings, but not every spelling mistake.