Outline• What we know about teaching

spellings?• Spellings at St Swithun Wells• How to support your child at home

How would you pronounce this word?

 they train station straight

brake duvet fête gaol

great rein reign play

What we know about teaching spellings?

/ae/

What we know about teaching spellings?

Focus needs to be on teaching spelling strategies and not lists of words

What’s wrong with spelling lists?• Children get frustrated by the repetitive process• memorisation can be difficult or boring  • the words memorised are easily forgotten

The problem is that spelling lists do not teach spelling strategies.

“The emphasis of a spelling programme should be on developing independent spellers who have the necessary skills to use resources to locate the correct spelling of words they are not familiar with.”

What we know about teaching spellings?

Spelling needs to be taught in context

• Spellings need to be meaningful

“It is important that teaching always focuses on words in texts, not words in isolation”

What we know about teaching spellings?

Spelling is developmentalWhat we know about teaching spellings?

How SSW’s tackles spelling…

Through teaching spelling strategies:

Investigate / Practise / Explore

Let’s investigate what happens when we make a word plural!

citiesparties

lunches dishescarrots

churchesbunches daisies

Integrate spelling into other curriculum areas and provide varied ways of learning to spell

Spellings at St Swithun Wells

• Continuous connected writing• Newly learned words in context• Mastery of a spelling pattern or rule• Review old spelling words in a

meaningful way

Spellings at St Swithun Wells

• Find patterns across words and try to group words together.

• Point out new and interesting words and discuss with your child.

Strategies to use at home

• Spell out words or break them down

Separate, ‘sep / a / rat / e’

• Think of smaller words and add the extra letters.

hear balloon their

friends every where

Strategies to use at home

• Respecting "good mistakes" - "purpose":

For example, spelling it "purpus“ - like "focus"

…but also explain the bad ones - "prupose”

• Word web: –

Strategies to use at home

Strategies to use at home

• Associate words with a word they can already spell.

“to broach…”

• Play spelling games with your child, e.g. Boggle, Scrabble, hangman.

• Write a story, intentionally misspelling words. Have your child be the teacher and correct your work.

Marie always wanted to rite her life’s story. She did knot no if she was going to tell awl of it but weather she told the hole story or not, it wood bee very interesting.

We use all of these different ways, we do not just concentrate on one. 

Strategies to use at home