Spelling
Getting it write, wright, right!
Aims
• To know the implications for spelling within the
new primary curriculum
• To understand how spelling is being taught in
school
• To give you some ideas about how to make
learning spelling fun for your child (yes, really!)
2014 Curriculum Expectations
• Significant increase in expectations across all
year groups
• Greater focus on spelling rules and
conventions
• Greater focus on word roots and origins
• Word lists are particularly demanding
• Skills need to be embedded
2014 Curriculum Expectations
KS1 SATs Paper 1
KS2 SATs Paper 2
Pack
Sky
Shell
Baby
Phone
Eyes
Flying
Plank
Money
Talk
Rides
Pair
Disorder
Knock
Polishing
Washable
Offering
Vision
Misplaced
Distance
Brilliant
Thoughtless
Prey
Previous
Glove
Lazy
Match
Office
Ladder
Bounces
Gentle
Stories
Cousin
Passion
Facial
Lightweight
Nationality
Ceiling
Variation
Ferociously
2014 Curriculum
• Clearly sets out a programme
of study for spelling
(transcription) which states:Writing down ideas fluently
depends on effective
transcription: that is, on
spelling quickly and accurately
through knowing the
relationship between sounds
and letters (phonics) and
understanding the morphology
(word structure) and orthology
(spelling structure) of words
• Each Year group has its own
specific, detailed and
systematic programme of
study
• There are word lists for Year
2, Years 3 and 4, and Years 5
and 6
What Does The Research Say?
• Teaching children strategies for correcting spelling is
far more important than giving them the correct
spelling of a word
• If children learn spellings for tests and don’t apply
them (use those words in their own writing) they will
forget them within days
• Children often get key rules wrong. The top 12
misspelt words were the same for the 7-10 age group
as for children aged 11-14
• The best spellers have an excellent visual memory
(which can be developed – Kim’s game)
What Does The Research Say?
• Learning high frequency ‘sight words’ to mastery level
improves both reading and writing – the more deeply and
thoroughly a child knows a word, the more likely they are to
recognise it, spell it, define it and use it appropriately in
speech and writing
Joshi R.,Treiman R.,Carreker S., & Moats L (the real magic of spelling: Improving reading and
writing)
• We often wrongly assume that if children read widely they
will be good spellers. This presupposes they are
understanding and processing every word
• Children need to be taught why words are spelt as they are.
e.g. ‘ghost’ has an ‘h’ because the Flemish typesetters who
introduced the word to the UK used the Flemish word, which
was ‘gheest.’
• To understand spelling structures and systems it is important
for children to have a context for spelling – application in
reading and writing, not just word learning in isolation
(dictation)
What we do at IFS
• In Reception, children focus on reading before spelling – if you can’t
read it, how can you spell it?
• In KS1 and KS2, we follow the National Curriculum guidance on
teaching the spelling rules and spellings associated with those rules.
We have identified a selection of spellings for each rule and these
will be taught in school and sent home for revision as part of the
homework tasks in each Year group.
• In addition to this rule based teaching in lesson time, teachers in
KS1 will be testing the children on 88 high frequency words, devised
from the old HF spelling list and in LKS2, the children will learn and
be tested on the statutory Year 3/4 Spelling List from the National
Curriculum.
• We use a variety of strategies in our teaching that suit all learners,
from visual and auditory (singing) to kinaesthetic and even
mathematical (Scrabble)
We need your help!
• Whether it’s learning mnemonics for beautiful (bears eat
apples under trees in france using ladders) singing
rhymes to identify vowels and consonants, using spelling
apps or playing with alphabet pasta at teatime - we are
sure that you will find some great new ideas that will
enable you to support your child with their learning in a
fun and exciting way!
Final Thought…
I take it you already know
A moth is not a moth in mother,
Of rough and bough and cough and dough? Nor both in bother, broth in brother,
Others may stumble, but not you,
And here is not a match for there
On hiccough, thorough, tough and through.
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
And then there’s dose and rose and lose –
To learn of less familiar traps?
Just look them up – and goose and choose,
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
And cork and work and card and ward,
That looks like beard and sounds like bird,
And font and front and word and sword,
And dead: it’s said like bed, not bead –
And do and go and thwart and cart –
For goodness sake don’t call it deed!
Come, come, I’ve hardly made a start!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
A dreadful language? Man alive!
(They rhyme with suite and straight and
I’d mastered it when I was five!
debt).