How to encourage good spelling in Yr 2?

[Bramshott]

DD1 is in Yr 2 and reads well. However, her spelling is still very phonetic and leaves a lot to be desired (!) Her teacher mentioned the other day that "she really needs to work on her spelling", but didn't give any more guidance on how to do it. I am wary of constantly correcting DD because she enjoys writing, and is always scribbling little stories / in her diary etc.

Does anyone have any good ideas for ways to work on spelling with this age group (7 yrs), without constantly picking her up on it, or making it seem like chore or turning her off writing? We have been playing a game called Upwords - a bit like Scrabble but easier as you can change words on the board as well as adding new ones - which is good I think, but I'd love some other ideas!

Why not just pick a word a day and give her a small treat at the end of the week if she can still remember them. Doesn't have to be a big deal, but seven words a week would soon make a huge difference.

do spelling tests at home, children love them

doesn't have to be linked to criticism of her work

start with easy words so she gets them all right and gets to like the idea

introduce harder words one at a time and introduce "getting it wrong" with humour

rewards can be completely microscopically tiny, like drawing hearts on her hand or something

I remember feeling the same way about dd2 when she was that age. I tended to pick up on one spelling per story but she never remembered it for the next time! She's 15 now and generally gets it right.

Apart from spelling games on the computer I can't think of anything, especially if she reads a lot.

I have noticed that dd3(12) has improved through no input from me. One word still drives me up the wall though and that is 'cloths' for 'clothes'. Today she wrote to her aunt - 'Thank you for the birthday money, I'm going to put it towards some new cloths'

actually with spelling tests at home a really good idea after she's got used to the idea is to throw in a nightmare word which she can get wrong with impunity and have a giggle about

I don't know, what's hard for that age group, something like
"excellent"? can't remember

anyway, eventually she'll get it right and be made up about it

not if she's sensitive though

I used to high five a lot for good answers and you have fun laughing at hands hurting

My Mum is a literacy expert. My Y2 dd1 always gets 10/10 in spelling tests but in her written work there is barely a correct word. My Mum says that this is very common and I shouldn't worry about it as the spelling will follow. At the moment its getting her to write that is important. The teacher however, has the SATs coming up and is more concerned about her results. High SAT scores are good for the child, but not necessarily for the child.

However, having said that, my Mum says it's not a bad thing to work on spelling. But, keep it fun. I heard an advert for this
www.timesspellingbee.co.uk at the weekend on the radio. I think I'll get dd1 to have a go on it.

Thanks for all your advice. I must admit that the idea of "spelling tests" at home fills me with dismay (!), but maybe we can incorporate it in a slightly less formal way.

Very interesting feedback from your mum Belo - I think maybe that's what's making me feel quite hesitant about working on it in a formal way.

I had a look at the Mini-bees section of the Times Spelling Bee site, and definitely think I'll try that with her - especially as she has got the internet 'bug' recently! Mind you - even the words in the 5-7 section are quite tricky!!

imo, it is more important for children to have good content (imaginative stories/characters, connectives etc) and plausible phonetic spellings of words other than high frequency words, which should be spelt correctly.

focussing on spelling too much stifles creative writing.

show her one or two spellings for a piece of writing to learn.

i'd rather have a page of writing with spelling mistakes, than two sentences with perfect spelling.

bram, don't worry, you will not be a control freaky pushy mum if you do it

you can do it and have a laugh at the same time -- tis really true

good spelling helps children be more articulate and creative

There are very few good, natural spellers amongst children - and, dare I say it, there are very few great spelling programmes and schools teaching spelling rigorously.

It's not true that children will just pick it up over time. Some do, some do in part, and many never do.

I agree that it's great to encourage wonderful creative writing, but the 'infant' stage also needs infant teachers to work hard at teaching spelling, and some of their writing opportunities should be based on structured writing so that the couple of sentences correctly spelt is a regular feature of 'writing opportunities' - not just all 'creative writing'.

The trouble is that teachers are trained to really value independent creative writing at the expense of more structured writing with a systematic approach to teaching spelling (and reading).

So, there are many myths around the teaching and learning of spelling in the same way that there are around teaching reading.

We worry about making children worried about their spelling - but actually there are ways to engage children in their spelling and to explain to them that our English writing code is very complex and it can take many years before people are really good spellers - and some never are. But I would suggest that parents can go a long way to supporting the understanding of spelling to make up for the shortfall of rigorous teaching in school if necessary - and to increase the likelihood of good spelling over time.

To this end, I provide quite a few different versions of Alphabetic Code Overview Charts for free so that adults and children alike can begin to feel more organised in what they know and understand about our spelling system.

The language then becomes, "It that word, we spell that sound as in the word 'catalogue' (or whatever) and then point to the exemplar word on the chart.

It might not be as good as your chosen wallpaper, but it wouldn't hurt to find a place to put one of these charts on the wall, or door, or wardrobe, and to start to work actively on understanding our spelling system and building up WORD BANKS of words spelt in the same way: for example, the 'ir' word bank - girl, skirt, shirt, dirt, fir tree, squirt, third, birthday - and so on.

If you are a parent interested in supporting your child with spelling, please look at the alphabetic code charts via the free 'unit 1' page at www.phonicsinternational.com .

Well she liked the Times Spelling Bee site with the little robot that talks to you - thanks Belo! However, she only got 6 out of 15 right in the 5-7 test we did (she's 7), which I think was quite a surprise for her. So we'll be going back to that site when we can.

"imo, it is more important for children to have good content (imaginative stories/characters, connectives etc) and plausible phonetic spellings of words other than high frequency words, which should be spelt correctly."

Do you not find, though devilsadvocaat that not knowing how to spell things stifles creativity just as much. DD will sit and stare at a piece of paper, because she doesn't know how to write the things she wants to say . . . no matter how often everyone says that content is important, not spelling, she is stifled by not knowing where to start.

I'd also be delighted if someone asked her to write a creative story at school - maybe that would encourage her to say something - she's never (yr 3 now) AFAIK been asked to write something purely from her imagination. Its always retelling a story that's been told, factual information, or copying.

My dd is in Y2, age 7, and obviously very typical because she gets 10/10 every week in her spelling tests but regularly spells the same words in a variety of ways per piece of writing! She will spell the word light as both light and lite within the same sentence. She's almost always phonetically correct apart from when she's using very complex, new words, but her other spellings are all over the place.

I'll check out that bee spelling thing with her.

Tavker - I think all kids are probably different. DD writes endlessly - stories, 'secrets', her diary, letters to her friends etc. Getting her to write is not the problem (and she has a vivid imagination!) - the problem for her is anyone actually being able to understand what she's written !

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takvar - that is exactly the problem. children who are in classes where there are spelling tests often won't have a go at sounding out for fear of getting it wrong. they will just sit and stare at the paper. also, children learn the spellings for the test and still spell them incorrectly in their writing. they will have covered creative writing at some point as it is in the literacy strategy.

bramshott - great news on dd enthusiasm, i would focus on breaking down words to sound them out. try clapping word syllables 'cat-er-pill-ar' and writing out each clap iykwim.

i'm not saying learning spellings isn't important. however, learning random words has no meaning. they don't remember them when writing as they are in 'sounding out mode'.

they should learn high frequency words first. these can be found online. mostly because they come up the most (hence the name ) but also because many cannot be sounded out correctly e.g. one, because, school, where, once etc.

i am talking here mostly about younger children but, honestly, the content thing is so important at all ages.

apart from learning hfws, learning one or two (for older children) incorrectly spelt words per piece of writing is plenty. anymore than this and you damage their confidence. can you imagine writing a story which you are proud of, showing it to your friends and the thing they comment mostly on is the mistakes you have made? what was the point of writing the story? to tell a tale.

some kids do really enjoy spellings etc and that's great. however, children who lack confidence or ideas/creativity in writing, focussing on spelling is really detrimental to their progress.

sorry for mistakes, ttyping feeding and holding back toddler

I'm pretty certain they don't do spelling tests in dd's school at all - I know they do have cards on the table to refer to with the top 10 most frequent words, and they 'write' words out on the floor amongst other things.

Unluckily dd definitely doesn't write with enthusiasm - if she manages 3 sentences for a piece of writing, that is good going.

Last year she was getting some extra help with her spelling, working on a phonetic programme called POPAT which the school uses with those having trouble. It did definitely get her over a bit of a bump so that she can start to think how something might be written, but she seems to have stuck again now, particularly because they've started to write in English whereas before it was Welsh only (much easier to spell!)

she will need lots of speaking and listening before writing e.g. drama: acting out the story.

also, say the whole sentence before starting to write.

writing in welsh then swapping to english sounds tricky! i'm sure she'll get there in the end. just provide lots of opportunities to write (letters, cards, posters etc).

This is a really interesting thread - I'm glad I started it! Great to hear what tools others have used, and a range of views on whether spelling is 'taught' or develops naturally.

I've always assumed that if you read voraciously spelling will usually take care of itself (eventually) - works for me and DD, but it does mean that you spend a lot of time not noticing that you've spelled a word we wrong until you look at it and see that it looks wrong, so a) lots of crossings out and b) you'll never be any good at oral spelling bees.

Nope, absolutely definitely not always the case. DD reads well and a lot (really a lot), but she can't spell at all.

My mum's exactly the same - reads a lot and always has done, but can't spell at all in any way, not even phonetically.

I'm sure you're right Takver, I assumed that was how it worked from my limited experience, but it's probably a brain-wiring thing that varies from person to person - and it may or may not work for the OPs DD.

This morning dd was writing something and she spelled while as wighl. I asked her casually a few moments later, 'dd, how do you spell while' and she said: 'w-h-i-l-e' - so why doesn't she write it like that???

I think this is normal. DD is in the top spelling group. She had to do a book report this last weekend. She spelled quite a lot wrong. We corrected the easier ones but I left most of them.

I want her to become accustomed to be corrected because being corrected is a way of learning and not a criticism.

I say something like "Great story. You really made it interesting. But, we need to look at the spelling now."

Thanks for the link to the spelling bee site - I'll see if my DSDs want to have a go. They're DZ twins in yr7 - one flew ahead with literacy (although now tends to rush and gets spellings wrong) the other is still really struggling.

I've tried to find out a lot about this. I enjoyed this book - it rather goes against the grain in that it's not all about phonics, so it was quite refreshing - and reassuring, my mum had never heard of phonics and luckily I picked it all up naturally.

"I'd also be delighted if someone asked her to write a creative story at school - maybe that would encourage her to say something - she's never (yr 3 now) AFAIK been asked to write something purely from her imagination. Its always retelling a story that's been told, factual information, or copying"

"they will have covered creative writing at some point as it is in the literacy strategy"

That makes me feel a bit sad

violetbloom - she wrote wighl because that's 'phonetically' how she imagined it. it does make sense wigh like sigh.

MMM - why at what i said?