Spelling
Our leading expert, who ensures English strategies are linked across the school-age groups is Mrs Hawkshaw.
Overview
Help your child to become a Spelling Champion! Moving on from phonics, we teach two separate branches of spelling. ‘Spelling Shed’ lessons follow a scheme, focussing on spelling patterns and rules to support children with their everyday spelling. Children also have a login to Spelling Shed which they can access online to complete games and challenges.
National Curriculum ‘Most commonly misspelt words’ are also specifically taught to each phase. Pupils are screened to assess ability and then sets of words are worked on in weekly sessions and taken home to practice. To access the National Curriculum year group spelling lists please see the attached document below.
Top tips to help your child learn their spellings:
- Identify root words e.g. photograph, photosynthesis.)
- Look for word families (e.g. rhyming words that are spelt the same – came/lame/same)
- Break words into syllables (e.g. re-mem-ber) and affixes (e.g. dis + satisfy)
- Use a mnemonic (e.g. necessary has one collar and two sleeves) and make up your own mnemonics!
- Give lots of praise for good guesses.
- Have fun together!
Course Outline
Children have been introduced to our new online spelling scheme “Spelling Shed.” Feedback from the children has been great and we can already see lots of improvement as well as enthusiasm for the competitive element to the scheme with our Top Ten Spellers and Classes displays. It really is making a difference!
Alongside the online programme, weekly spelling lessons are taught and children learn spelling patterns with targeted words to practise individually or with a spelling partner. Please ask your child about the particular words that they are working on.
Due to the success of Spelling Shed, we will no longer send Spelling Bee words home in order to focus on new weekly words that are generated. For their home learning, children have a username and a password for Spelling Shed stored in their planner. Thank you for your continued support with home learning. Opportunities to practise a little outside school really do make a big difference!