English Help at Home
Part 3 – Spelling
The New National Curriculum places a great emphasis on Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar. It can be a
difficult thing for children to get excited about so here are some ideas to try to help your children enjoy
learning their spellings!
Spelling Ideas:
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Look at the English Curriculum Guide for your child’s year group to see the genre of writing and
spelling, punctuation and grammar focuses for the term. Click here.
There are lots of good iPad apps to help with spellings e.g. Spelling City, ABC Spellings and
Squeebles.
Try playing hangman using the words from the weekly spelling list.
Help your child to think of mnemonics to remember how to spell tricky words e.g. PEOPLE – People
Eat Oranges People Lick Eggs
Mix up the letters of the target words to create anagrams e.g. ‘glens lips’ for ‘spellings’ and then
ask your child to figure out the target word.
Try getting creative with how your child writes spellings:
Ask children to write them using chalk on the patio or wall;
Use a water pistol or an empty washing up liquid bottle filled with water to write them on
the wall or patio;
Write them using glue and glitter;
Write them in a sandpit;
Collect pebbles and write letters on them using a sharpie, ask children to arrange the letters
to create target words;
Write letters on clothes pegs and ask children to clip them to something to spell out target
words.
Create word cards using the spellings list for the week. Make two of each word. You can then play
‘matching pairs’ with all of the cards laid out face down trying to find pairs of words. If a pair is
found then the player keeps the cards and gets another go. The word cards could also be used for
playing snap.
Try rainbow writing where children can write the letters in different colours. They could also
choose their favourite colour to write the target spelling pattern in e.g. breakthrough where ‘ough’
is the spelling pattern.
Try writing target words using pyramid writing:
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Ask children to give you a spelling test. Get some of them wrong on purpose and then ask your
child to mark and correct your work.
Give children a general knowledge quiz where all of the answers are the target spelling words.
Children can ‘hunt’ for their spelling words in their reading books.
Children create nonsense words that fit into a certain spelling pattern. They could then have fun
thinking of definitions for the words.
Look, Say, Cover, Write, Check. Ask children to look at the target word, say the word, cover it up,
write it and then check it. If they have spelt it incorrectly then they should correct it.
It is important that children understand what the word means and how to use them correctly. So,
children can look up the meaning in a dictionary and then make up sentences with them in.
A variation on the above is to give the children sentences with the target word missing and ask
them to fill in the gaps.
Play some spelling games on the internet:
http://resources.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/interactive/literacy.html
http://www.topmarks.co.uk/english-games/7-11-years/spelling-and-grammar
http://www.learninggamesforkids.com/spelling_games.html
http://www.spellingcity.com/spelling-games-vocabulary-games.html
https://www.spellzone.com/games/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/ks2/english/spelling_grammar/