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!

devilsadvocaat lol I was just using the as bullet points to emphasise the quotes... sorry I'm still a newbie I don't know the protocol

The reason both quotes made me is because it doesn't seem like there's enough room for creative writing, as many PPs said learning to write good content is so important. I also have a major about having to copy - my DSDs seem to always have to do this, it's no wonder they can't research/paraphrase for toffee!

violetbloom in the book I linked to above, Wyse points out that the kind of misspelling (did I spell that right? ) your DD is doing is actually pretty clever! It shows she knows the phoneme rules, even though she's using the wrong one. Remember the oft-quoted spelling of fish as ghoti - gh as in 'cough', o as in 'women', ti as in 'station'.

aha! there is absolutely NO value in copying

I wish you had been my dd's yr1/yr2 teacher . . .

I might take a look at that book.

Yes, dd is almost always phonetically correct. I'm quite impressed by her phonetic inventiveness sometimes. She recently spelled unusual as: unnyoushoeell unn-you-shoe-ell!

DD doesn't do it so much (largely because, as I've mentioned, she doesn't write!), but what always makes me smile is her friend who used to write english spelt phonetically in welsh (eg book as bwc).

We should just all give up speaking English, & talk something else instead, it would be soooo much easier. . .

I totally agree. English is bizarre. I remember telling a German friend once how the word Leicester was spelled and he was in hysterics! It makes no phonetic sense whatsoever. It's absurd.

Yesterday actually dd was talking about words with 'silent' letters like the 'w' in write and the 'g' in gnaw and she said 'but why are they there? why don't we all just stop using them?'

I had no answer ...

liyf wud bee soa much eezeeer.

Mie dorter wud be fighn if ownly yoo wur rite.