Spellings.

[chickengrandma-2008]

What sort of words would you think an eight year old would have to learn to spell for their homework.  My son has just seen in his daughter's school book the words to learn today.  There is Tamarisk, not difficult but not a common word, defeatist, not bad at all, eucalyptus, a little more tricky and excruciatingly!!  For an eight year old??  My other eight year old granddaughter has trouble spelling a word such as mother.  

[**towery**]

maybe the words given are words covered by other school work

if they are reading a 'class book' then having the words to learn will  help those who have difficulty

[ilove2patch]

Not sure CG but Amy could spell Mother with no problems at seven.  She works her words out if you encourage her to do it. They all have different levels of spelling though.

[stan3502]

Think Alesha would struggle with a couple of those and she is 9 and near the top of the class for spelling and reading.

[millielilac]

Quite frankly some adults would not be able to spell those particular words.........

They do seem rather challenging for some eight year olds.....

[chickengrandma-2008]

It's a long time since I was at school but i thought they were a bit tough.  She had excruciatingly, excruciated, and excruciate.  I don't think children would even know what a tamarisk is and I would have thought they would learn to spell words they know and use first.

[cookiecookuk]

i think schools in general and getting harder as i lady i work with said her son started school this september and after about 3 weeks the teacher told her that she needs to work at home with him on his puncuation as he was not good enought.bless him at 5 years he knew what they were as after everything he wrote he put .,?'  but i think puncuation at 5 is way to hard

[cookiecookuk]

what is tamarisk????

[chickengrandma-2008]

It's some sort of shrub.  I don't know if they grow in this country but they do in warmer climates.

[ilove2patch]

They do grow here but it is an odd word for a young child to have to spell.

[duck_a_lorange]

They should be having things like "there, their, they're", "your, you're", "affect, effect", "accept, except" hammered into them at that age, they will remember things from that age. 

They should also be taught the meaning of the words they learn.   A teacher friend once told me that many secondary school children will read (out loud) absolutely beautifully, but don't actually understand a word they are saying.  I didn't think that was possible, but it is.

Tamarisk is a mediterranean shrub, it'll be from one of their reading books. It does grow here - you could probably grow some CG - it likes a dry soil.

[chickengrandma-2008]

Son and granddaughter have a 600 mile drive every other weekend (unless he flies) and so they have a lot of one to one time.  On the way down this time he taught her to spell (and which is which) threw and through, and right and write  cough and dough and laugh and all the strange words.   

[guardpig]

Just be grateful - son in year 3 had a teacher who really couldn't spell, taught american spellings if there was a choice and as to her mental arithmetic - hmm!!!!!!!!!!!!

[cee-dee]

Teaching today is lunacy.

They try to teach far too many things far too soon.

On news websites you see far too many basic spelling mistakes and on forums such as this, the appalling spelling, shocking grammar and lack of punctuation are all indicative of poor teaching.

Essential early learning should go back to the old reading, writing and arithmatic and forget about trendy fads in teaching.

I'd like to make some of the teachers climb a ladder with many of the rungs missing because that's what they're trying to make the kids do with basic learning.

[bitsnknots]

Our hairdresser said that when her younger son started school, he was learning how to tell the time more or less straight away.  I only learned to tell the time in the last year of the infants school.  Punctuation at 5 is pushing it though.  Those spellings are hard for any youngster.

[ed_blackadder_1]

My Gran used to say let children be children, they have 16 years to be children and 60 years to be adults.

[bitsnknots]

I couldn't agree more ed.  Just let them enjoy growing up and have fun whilst they do.

[mustard-tree]

I could tell the time before I even started school.

Mum told me that from the age of about 3, I kept looking at the clock, and kept asking what it meant

Mum explained it simply and I soon cottoned on.

[chickengrandma-2008]

They do say that young children are capable of learning so much more than we think.  I suppose it depends on what you decide to teach them.  They learn all the names of characters in Peppa pig or The night garden, so they are just as able to learn the names of composers or artists or something.  A child under 3 or 4 doesn't realise the latter two are supposed to be 'boring' and the others not.  My son knew what all the letters of the alphabet said and colours and shapes etc before he was two because there was only one 15mn. TV programme suitable for him then, so rather than learn tv characters we talked about other things.  The son of a friend of my son can read anything  fluently and he's only four.

[duck_a_lorange]

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@bitsnknots wrote:

  Punctuation at 5 is pushing it though.  Those spellings are hard for any youngster.

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It isn't pushing it, you know - providing their reading books have proper sentences and punctuation right from the start.

The teacher doesn't need to spend hours explaining full-stops., all the children need to be told is "that's how it's done, it is easier to read and understand that way".

The cat sat on the mat.

One perfectly good sentence, starts with a capital letter, ends with a full stop - most kids just pick it up as they go along.  And if they miss out or misplace a capital letter or a full stop the teacher  must correct it. That's all it takes.

The reason people these days are so bad at it is precisely because somebody thought it was "too hard" (it isn't) and "mustn't correct anything, the poor child will be so upset" - yes, now they can't get a job they're upset alright.