At what age/year would you expect a child to be able to spell

[rainbowinthesky]

well, identify and spell words out that end in "ight".

Tia

[zippy539]

Depends on the child. DD can do this easily and has done since she was 5. DS still can't do it and he's now 8. Why do you ask?

[rainbowinthesky]

A friend's ds has been asked to do this as part of h/w for year 1 and she thought it was unreasonable. Wanted to know it is.

[SingleMum01]

In reception DS was given words to learn and therefore spell. Now in year 2 - spelling doesn't seem too important by school, although i will tell him correct spelling when necessary.

[RacingSnake]

I teach that in year 3!

[MumNWLondon]

DD (year 1) has never been given any spelling words, and is frustrated that she wants to write things and can't spell...

I don't think this is unreasonable year 1 homework.

[LeightonCourtDiscoQueen]

It does sound a bit pushy, but there may be children in the class who can cope with those spellings - perhaps the teacher is just giving them to everyone regardless?

[daytoday]

Would expect spellings like this in year 2 and Year 3 (state school).

[rainbowinthesky]

It's not spelling but to identify what words end in "ight" and then spell them themselves if that makes sense.

[mrz]

Depending on the phonics programme used by the school I would expect "igh" to be taught in reception or year1.
I have always taught igh in reception.
In year 2 children should be able to use most common ways of representing sounds in words and using suffixes and prefixes.

[LunarSea]

Ds1 had those for spelling in year 2 (along with other words with the same long i type sounds but different spelling - rely, dried, dynamite, etc). Earlier than that in terms of reading them though.

[shushpenfold]

Hmm - yr 2 yes, perhaps not yr 1. Having said that, ds would have been dumbfounded by that in y1, dd1 probably OK ish and dd2 is currently checking the spellings which she asks ME to spell for her (IYSWIM)and she's in reception. I suspect it's very individual to the child!!

[nancydrewrocks]

DD is learning this in reception - seems to be part of a a quite regimented phonics course.

[rabbitstew]

nancydrewrocks - is your DD really having to learn to spell these words from memory and write them out in reception?! If so, I seriously doubt this is the case with the rest of her class, as she will have started reception with a fair number of children who can't write at all, yet. Or do you mean she is being required to learn how to read them?

[ScottishBoris]

Dd1 (4) has learnt to read words ending in -ight, she started receiption in Sept. I wouldn't expect her to spell words like light or night correctly, but I would (and do) expect her to be able to spell them out phonetically. She is a real bookworm though and enjoys reading.

[mrz]

rabbitstew it is usual practice to teach all reception children how to read and spell words containing the "igh" representation of the sound /ie/

[asdx2]

Dd at her first school had weekly spelling tests and in y1 did have a list of words containing -igh-.
Now in y2 at a different school the weekly spelling tests contain the words she learnt in reception so there seems a huge variation in individual schools around here anyway.

[pedaltothemetal]

At ds's school we had no spellings to be learnt on a weekly basis till the beginning of spring term of Y1, before that I thhink they allowed the kids to write freely spelling phonically so I suppose they would have been happy with "night" or "nite" or "lov" rather than "love". Think we encountered igh words in the summer term of year 1. Kids got the same spellings apart from those on the Early Literacy Programme.

Mrz - I thought Reception was meant to be more play based now, so I'm surprised the kids are doing spelling tests in Reception - or is the learning of spelling more informal than that.

[TRL]

DS1 definitely had -igh as one of his spelling lists in Yr 1. The school follows the Alpha to Omega spellings, I think they said, so maybe your friend's DS's school does too?

[mrz]

pedaltothemetal we don't do spelling tests in any year group especially not reception. The OP didn't say the "igh" homework was for a spelling test although lots of posters seem to assume it was. Having said that I would/do expect my reception children to be able to spell "igh" words because they have been taught phonics which is very much a part of the EYFS curriculum.
www.letters-and-sounds.com/phase-3.html which is taught in reception

[nancydrewrocks]

rabbit no I mean spelling them out from memory. I am pretty sure she is not the only child in her class doing this although they are "streamed" into 4 groups for reading/writing so I expect some are not.

The school are quite relaxed about it (although as I said the impetus seems to come from quite a formal phonics scheme) and don't send the spellings home regularly, maybe 5 words one week and then none for a few weeks.

[brimfull]

I just asked ds(yr 2 ) to spell light and he was correct

[rabbitstew]

Well, I guess I'm out of touch with what most children are learning at this age. My ds1 (year 1) gets the most eccentric words to learn to spell each week - eg "desperately", "suspicious," and "sorcerer." I would be interested to know if this is a normal approach for advanced readers who can work out how to spell most words phonetically (which is NOT the same as always spelling them the way they should be spelt, as there is more than one way to make a sound - -ight and -ite being an example). I have to admit, I find it a little bit peculiar that he is learning to spell words like this each week at a stage when he is still not required to write more than one or two sentences at any one time, but don't know if I want him to be cementing more everyday words in his mind each week, or if I'm expecting them to start asking him to write lengthy stories for them!!!

[mrz]

rabbitstew "igh" is usually taught first (gov recommendation) or sometime "ie".
I would say the spellings your son is learning are unusual.

[DavidTennantAteMyHeart]

DS1 in Year One has definitely dealt with "ight". That doesn't mean he's got it all right yet, though!