Dd's Spelling Session

After dinner last night, my 7 year old dd wanted to spell some words, so while I cleaned up the table and dh washed the dishes, we gave her some words to spell. I started with words that I thought were difficult.
Me :"How do you spell delicious? "
Dd:"D-E- L-I -C-I-O-S"
Me:"you forgot the letter U. D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S"
Me: "Spell spacious."
Dd: "What's spacious?"
Me: "When you have lots of space"
Dd:"S-P-A-C-I-O-U-S"
Me:"Very good."
She obviously could see the similarity between the 2 words delicious and spacious.
Me: "Spell competition"
Dd: C-O-M-P-E-T-I-O-N"
Me: "T-I-T-I-O-N"
The TV was switched on so dd was complaining she couldn't hear properly so I switched it off.
Me: "Spell petition"
Dd:"What's petition?"
I had to explained to her that it is when we get people's signatures on paper so that we could do something about it .
Dd: "Is petition spelled like competition but without the com?"
Me:"Yes"
Dd: "P-E-T-I-T-I-O-N"
Dh: "Spell development."
Me:"Spell television."
dd:"That's easy." So she went and spelled the words. It looks like she is quite an intelligent girl, masha Allah. The school's counsellor who is a qualified Phd holder, told us that she is well ahead of her peers in many subjects. Next year insha Allah, the coordinator cum the Principal will start dd on a better integrated acceleration program. She said that dd's standard of comprehension is on par with Grade 6/7 but since she is going to be in Grade 3 next year , she will probably work with the Grade 4/5 pupils as they are closer her age. The school in their 50 years of history had never had gifted pupils there before but this year they have two, ie dd in Grade 2 and another girl in Grade 1. I am happy that they are doing something to enhance her learning curve for the better.
When I was studying in Standard 1 briefly in the northern state of M'sia before my father was posted overseas again, I remember the teacher telling all the pupils in the class to stand on the chairs. Then she asked us to spell the words such as biru (blue), merah (red) etc. Easy I thought. We had to put our hand up and spell the words and then sit down. However, only a handful of us managed to do this because there were only a limited number of words to spell as opposed to the shower of hands that were raised up. Then guess what? The rest of us had to line up to the teacher and have our hand spanked with a ruler at the end of the period because we were not able to answer and spell the words.. Duh! I hope this teacher had improved her teaching technique since then, for her pupils sake please. What a contrast to the teaching methods that schools are currently using!