teaching spellings

[Helen Dempster]

Hi all

I'm finding this really hard work! It's for my own DS mainly who is in Year 1 (he's 5). Some of the words he can spell without thinking about it, but I'm finding that because they use phonics, he's spelling words that way too...ie 'who' he will spell 'hoo'. I was just wondering if there's a sure-fire way that I can teach him in a way that he will remember the correct spelling. I've just had an argument with him about the word 'took', which he spelt with a 'c' rather than a 'k' on the end. He said it didn't matter which he used because it still said 'took'.

How do you all teach spellings? I'm finding it hard to explain to him, and I don't really want to get him to just sit and write them over and over again, I'd rather he learnt them properly, off by heart.

Help...please?

xx

[rosebud]

No easy way I'm afraid. Its just practise, practise practise (I hate it). My son always learnt them first time round and got them all right in every test, my daughter can't spell for toffee, she spells phonetically and learning them is really hard for her. She is in year 3 now and although can learn them for a test with lots of practise, when she writes a sentence just writes it phonetically again, I find it so frustrating.

[sillysausage]

Can't remember whether we started this in year 1 or 2 but we found monetary reward helped. 50p for getting all ten spellings correct, nothing if DS got any of them wrong. It certainly spurred him on to learning them! It was a rare occurance for him to not get 10/10. At his school they got a little pack with each word as a small flash card so they could learn to sight read them. We would play games with them, trying to make sentences using the words, find the word beginning with...., find the word ending with.....

[Christi]

There is a fairly general rule that can be used for k or ck endings ( k after a consonant, milk, disk and also in the middle of a long vowel sound, lAkE and ck after a short vowel sound, duck), annoyingly took/book etc doesn't fit it perfectly, but really that should be being explained in school before they bring them home.
Teaching them following rules, patterns and excceptions can quite often benefit most children, along with finding a million different ways to practise them!

[AliceK]

From my experience the current thinking about spellings has changed over the past couple of years and is that children are now taught the sounds and how a sound makes up a word rather than teaching the letters initially which is the way it was taught 3 / 4 yrs ago. It was explained to me a couple of weeks ago by the foundation head teacher that if a child spelt "kiss" as Ciss that would be acceptable as both K and C are c sounds. As your child is only 5 I'm guessing that this way is the way he would currently be taught. It is a real bug bear of mine that schools now don't seem too worried about childrens spelling. My DS is in Yr3 and he is only just getting spelling tests and the teachers becoming more strict about the childrens spelling. Up until now it has driven me mad how the teachers don't seem to correct childrens spelling.

xxx

[EmmaReed84]

My son is 6 (year 2) and he is behind, he speels things using phonics all the time. He chooses to sit and write loads making books and random sentences, rather than "correct" him and tell him he is wrong we praise him loads for trying. When it is quite we sit down and talk about words, and also read alot. If he spelt a word wrong and that word happens to be in a book and he can read it then we compare the words and talk about it, that usually helps.

[mama2three]

From my experience the current thinking about spellings has changed over the past couple of years and is that children are now taught the sounds and how a sound makes up a word rather than teaching the letters initially which is the way it was taught 3 / 4 yrs ago. It was explained to me a couple of weeks ago by the foundation head teacher that if a child spelt "kiss" as Ciss that would be acceptable as both K and C are c sounds. As your child is only 5 I'm guessing that this way is the way he would currently be taught. It is a real bug bear of mine that schools now don't seem too worried about childrens spelling. My DS is in Yr3 and he is only just getting spelling tests and the teachers becoming more strict about the childrens spelling. Up until now it has driven me mad how the teachers don't seem to correct childrens spelling.

xxx

it depends upon the purpose of the writing. In a creative piece where the teacher is trying to develop their imaginations and story telling then it doesnt matter whether the spelling is correct at all ..if they have enjoyed being creative without worrying about whether thay can spell the word ..
My favourite writing is emergent writing where children express themselves without the constraint of correct spelling , punctuation , grammar...that can all be added in later..

Alongside this children will be taught the 'rules' of spelling..much as Christi mentioned ..

I would ask in school which methods they are using ..there are several different 'schemes' out there , so you are cementing what he is learning at school ..and at 5 I wouldnt worry too much either as long as he is enjoying writing.

[nipper]

Why don't you make some big flash cards and stick them around the house in strategic places i.e. by the toilet so he can see it when he 'goes', next to the sink for when he cleans his teeth, by the front door, on the ceiling above his bed. That way, he'll get used to seeing them and you can hopefully avoid the confrontation of making him have to write them down. This is one tip I used to give to parents when I worked as a primary school teacher. Although having said that I always used to advocate writing the spellings down, rather than repeat them aloud. Do they use the LOOK, READ, COVER and CHECK method at his school?
As for the actual spelling rules, it might be worth having a chat to his teacher to find out how they do it at school so as to avoid confusing him. Generally by the end of reception they should be able to name all sounds (letters) of the alphabet phonetically ie ah, buh, cuh, duh, eh, fuh, guh etc etc and simple consonant blends such as th, ch, sh. By year two, your son will also encounter phonemes, which are the sounds made by one or more vowels or consonants.

[Maza]

Quote:
Originally Posted by AliceK
From my experience the current thinking about spellings has changed over the past couple of years and is that children are now taught the sounds and how a sound makes up a word rather than teaching the letters initially which is the way it was taught 3 / 4 yrs ago. It was explained to me a couple of weeks ago by the foundation head teacher that if a child spelt "kiss" as Ciss that would be acceptable as both K and C are c sounds. As your child is only 5 I'm guessing that this way is the way he would currently be taught. It is a real bug bear of mine that schools now don't seem too worried about childrens spelling. My DS is in Yr3 and he is only just getting spelling tests and the teachers becoming more strict about the childrens spelling. Up until now it has driven me mad how the teachers don't seem to correct childrens spelling.

xxx

Teachers are worried about spellings! You don't need to correct every single spelling mistake in a child's book to show that you take spellings seriously! How demoralising would it be for a five year old child to get their piece of work back with the teacher's corrections all over it? When I taught reception and Year 1 I would make a note of words which we needed to work on after reading pieces of work. They would then be addressed later in the week in a follow up lesson. Also, if you correct it in their book, it doesn't mean that they are going to remember how to spell it from then on. You need to look at how the school addresses teaching/developing spellings as a whole and not just whether they are corrected in their books or not. They should obviously take their marking seriously too though and the comments at the end of a piece of work should relate to the lesson objective. (Hope I don't come across as grumpy, I'm not! x)

Have you tried using magnetic letters for teaching spellings? With words such as 'Who', you praise the child's efforts and say "I can see why you think it would be written like that, but it's a 'tricky' word and doesn't follow the rules! What a cheeky word! It's actually written like this..." etc. etc. Again, with words such as 'ciss' praise the child's efforts - he got three out of four letters right! You could make the words with playdough, on the computer etc. The 'look, cover, write, check' is a very good method. What about if DS occasionally gives you a spelling test and then gets to mark them? Write them in salt on a tray, in sand, in the mud, in flour...

[AliceK]

Quote:
Originally Posted by AliceK
From my experience the current thinking about spellings has changed over the past couple of years and is that children are now taught the sounds and how a sound makes up a word rather than teaching the letters initially which is the way it was taught 3 / 4 yrs ago. It was explained to me a couple of weeks ago by the foundation head teacher that if a child spelt "kiss" as Ciss that would be acceptable as both K and C are c sounds. As your child is only 5 I'm guessing that this way is the way he would currently be taught. It is a real bug bear of mine that schools now don't seem too worried about childrens spelling. My DS is in Yr3 and he is only just getting spelling tests and the teachers becoming more strict about the childrens spelling. Up until now it has driven me mad how the teachers don't seem to correct childrens spelling.

xxx

Teachers are worried about spellings! You don't need to correct every single spelling mistake in a child's book to show that you take spellings seriously! How demoralising would it be for a five year old child to get their piece of work back with the teacher's corrections all over it? When I taught reception and Year 1 I would make a note of words which we needed to work on after reading pieces of work. They would then be addressed later in the week in a follow up lesson. Also, if you correct it in their book, it doesn't mean that they are going to remember how to spell it from then on. You need to look at how the school addresses teaching/developing spellings as a whole and not just whether they are corrected in their books or not. They should obviously take their marking seriously too though and the comments at the end of a piece of work should relate to the lesson objective. (Hope I don't come across as grumpy, I'm not! x)

Have you tried using magnetic letters for teaching spellings? With words such as 'Who', you praise the child's efforts and say "I can see why you think it would be written like that, but it's a 'tricky' word and doesn't follow the rules! What a cheeky word! It's actually written like this..." etc. etc. Again, with words such as 'ciss' praise the child's efforts - he got three out of four letters right! You could make the words with playdough, on the computer etc. The 'look, cover, write, check' is a very good method. What about if DS occasionally gives you a spelling test and then gets to mark them? Write them in salt on a tray, in sand, in the mud, in flour...

You see I'm old and when i was at primary school we had spelling tests every week and if we got them all right we got a piece of fudge as a treat :).
I'm actually not concerned about my own DS's spelling, when i asked his teacher about it a couple of weeks ago I found out he has had a spelling work book since last September and every week they get given a spelling test and he consistently gets high marks even though until the meeting with his teacher I didn't know anything about this work book as he never bought it home. I was talking in general because in my day by the time I was 7 / 8yrs old we would not have got away with the incorrect spellings the children now a days do. My DD is 4 and there is no way on earth I would criticise anything she writes whether she spells it right or not.

xx

[Maza]

Alice K, sorry for putting your words in bold - my little brain hasn't worked out how to do a 'quote' in the proper way yet! Please don't think I was saying you would criticise your DS and DD, I must have come across like a right old 'so and so'!

Mmmm, now I'm dreaming of fudge...Might have to get some (on my way back from my weigh in at Slimmiing World that is!) x

[AliceK]

Alice K, sorry for putting your words in bold - my little brain hasn't worked out how to do a 'quote' in the proper way yet! Please don't think I was saying you would criticise your DS and DD, I must have come across like a right old 'so and so'!

Mmmm, now I'm dreaming of fudge...Might have to get some (on my way back from my weigh in at Slimmiing World that is!) x

:laughing: don't worry. Can you imagine the teachers now being able to reward children in that way. They were lovely little squares of fudge individually wrapped. I still remember that teacher :thumbsup:

xxx

[Helen Dempster]

There are some wonderful comments/suggestions etc here, thanks everyone. My DS is always writing, there's always paper around where he's gone off and written something. He drew 3 stick people last night and wrote above each one "run" "shac" (shake) and "smash", then at the bottom he's written "The Soopudoopu (Superduper) Crunch". I thought this was brilliant, and told him so.

I'm going to make up some big flashcards and also get some magnetic letters too, as I think they're the two things that would most benefit him....I might get some fudge too, for the part I play in his learning....!!!! :laughing: