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Does anyone know if there is a general rule teachers have for the target percentage of spelling words that are misspelled on the pretest?
Is the goal to have most kids miss all the words? Or most kids to already know half or more?
DD6 in 3rd grade is getting 8 or 9 of 10 right on the pretests, which I think indicates that she should be getting harder words. But I wanted to check whether it is the normal for teachers to give easier words the first few months before I ask for a change.

Different teachers approach things differently. In general at our school, if you spell more than 80% of the words correctly, you get an "alternate" list, onto which are tacked any words you misspelled (so you get 20 alternate words, plus the two that you missed from the regular list). If you get under 80% correct, you keep the regular list. Some teachers, however, start giving a standard type after 3 or 4 weeks - you're either always on the regular or always on the alternate.
I do know some parents who have requested that their kids use an alternate list all the time, and others who have their kids do alternate homework. For example, the kids can write a sentence and diagram it, write synonyms and antonyms or research word origin, instead of doing an ABC list or using in a sentence.
I think that even if they want her to keep the same list, you can challenge her.
Of all my kids, ds10 is the best speller. He rarely if ever misses a word on the pretest or the final test. I don't mind though, because this year his teacher doesn't make the kids do any homework if they do well (above 90?) on the pretest. If the only time waste for him is to spend the ten minutes in class writing it, I don't care. It's when he had super easy words AND had a lot of silly busy-homework that I was frustrated!

Hi, great question, I seem to recall our ds' 3rd grade teacher shooting for around 60% right first time trying to spell the words. It gives them something to learn but doesn't make them feel like it's completely uphill. I thought this was a nice amount.
In fact when I brought it up to her, she said this was a good question and immediately moved ds up to harder words, and sent out a general note asking parents to let her know if there were others who weren't coming in around that range so she could adjust their lists as well.
In a lot of other ways she was the BEST.TEACHER.EVER, too.

This year ds is getting a spelling list that is somewhat vocab-focused, which is nice, but so far the words are for sure 'babyish' according to him. Since the teacher seems to have a 'system' for her words with week-long premade packets I am worried it might be more of an issue to move him up...which reminds me, I have an email to send her!

I think you are right, if she is getting most or all words right without having to study at all, then she definitely needs harder words! And probably some focus on vocab wouldn't hurt either, the more formal grammar stuff like diagramming might make the teacher faint away, but you could ask....

DS in 3rd grade has to get 19 out of 20 right before he gets the harder words. My sons biggest problem is, he goes too fast and will leave out a letter. When he gets home I will ask him to spell the word and he does it correctly.

We get the harder words list as vocabulary and I have him learn to spell them all.

When the test happens I have him do the harder words as well as the regular words. So he ends up doing 30 words every week. It's not perfect, but it works for now.

Not sure about others, but at our school, the spelling lists come from the reading story for the week. DC was grade skipped and still has easier words some weeks than other weeks but it's all based on the stories for reading. We get 25 words per week with 5 of those being bonus words (if you get them right, they are extra credit).

My kids knew 95% of their spelling words on the 1st day last year. The teacher let the 1st graders pretest for spelling. If the kids got 100% they could skip the final test.

My kids used spelling city to type their list each week and play word games. At least they were working on typing skills.

http://www.spellingcity.com/

DD8's teacher gives a pretest and the words she gets wrong are on her spelling test for the week. The words she gets right are replaced with more challenging words. Any words she misses on the end of week test become part of next week's list. Each child ends up with a custom list and I think it's a good system.

How does the teacher manage to give 20 separate pretests and end of week tests each week? I would love to offer this solution to DD's teacher, but want to show how it works in practice.

I think the pretests are all the same. For the end of week tests, the children have partners and one reads the word list to the other taking the test. It's an accelerated cluster program so it would be tricky in a typical classroom where some of the children would have a hard time reading the difficult words.
P.S. To get around this you might offer to volunteer on a regular basis and help administer the spelling tests.

My DD6, also doing 3rd grade spelling, got 15/16 on her first test and 13/16 on the most recent one. Her three mistakes were simple ones like leaving out a letter or writing a "z" backwards. Her teacher is talking about giving her harder words.

Now that I ponder the idea, I think that kids who can spell like this would benefit from doing something different than classical spelling.

I would vote for vocabulary and writing exercises, with spelling corrections made in text.

Val