Please talk to me about spellings in Year 1

[rainbowinthesky]

DD is doing well in Yr 1 - stage 10 ort. She has just been given her first spellings sheet for Y1 but she was able to spell them all in reception. I have written a note saying this for the teacher and asking if we could have the next ones up. I am a little why we got them in the first place.
I have tried to find Y2 spelling list on the net but can't. Anyone help with a link?

DS's class all get the same spellings every week. DS (who is above average but not the brightest by any stretch of the imagination) has normally found them easy so far.

Teacher suggests that if the child can already spell the words they write sentences using each word - maybe something you could try?

If she knows them already, think "Brilliant - we don't have to bother with that!" and use the time to do something more interesting.

A lot of schools have stopped giving spellings to learn at all because many children (like my dd) could pass spelling tests with flying colours but couldn"t spell the same word in her writing to save her life!

How about entering her for that spelling game show? Might make a mint.

welltellme, ORT = Oxford Reading Tree (the reading scheme many schools use)

i agree with RedSky, get her to make up a sentence including the word. that is what i do with DD1 and that does challenge her a bit.

interesting what you say about not spelling them correctly in a sentence, DD wrote a card for me yesterday telling me how "speshul" i am. (much!) later i said, spell "special" and she did, correctly. weird.

Read, read, read - with her, to her, give her a rich selection of books and do plenty of other things.

If she's naturally good at spelling she'll pick up far more from learning to play the recorder, piano, singing, dancing, drama than in sterile exercises/tests.

It will be frustrating for her to have to do 'easy' tests but handling a little bit of frustration is no bad thing if other areas of school are fulfilling.

Spelling tests have little academic value anyway. They have not been shown to improve long term spelling ability. Many children can get 100% if every single spelling test they do, yet find spelling in normal day to day writting more difficult.

I am sure many schools only bother with spelling tests to appease parents desire to see them happen. Seriously.

The infant school I work at doesn't do the tests at all. Yet, the Y1's I work with are all manageing to spell well regardless.

My DD has had spelliung tests since Y1. Now in Y3. She rarely drops a mark in spelling tests. Yet finds her spelling normally harder - she has dyslexic tendancies in this area (been assessed). The memorised ones don't always transfer across.

Also am not sure there is such a thing as a list of spellings for each year is there?

I assume they do the Letters and Sounds stuff at school, all the various phases.

They do have words attached to them.
And there are a few tricky ones to learn (phase 3 - the, I, he, we, etc) But the others ae just certain sound patters they are expected to be able to use, rather than specific words.

I will google.