[-pixie]

Originally Posted by Margaret Pilkington

As for spelling......I think that damage was done when they started messing about with the different methods of teaching kids to read. I know that my daughter was learning to read using something that was called the Initial Teaching Alphabet.....I was glad when they ditched it because she had to re-learn all the proper ways to spell words. I used to sit and go through 20 spellings with her 3 nights a week.
She thought it was a pain at the time but it paid off in the end.

I remember when I was doing my degree we looked into real books vs phonics. I forget the majority of it (it was that interesting!), but the gist of one side was that it didn't matter if the child had spelled the word correctly as long as they had used it in context and tried. To me that just plain daft. If a word isn't spelled correctly its wrong.