KS1 Activity: Spelling Rules
An introduction to rule based algorithms
Recommended Year Group: Year 1 or 2 (although can be adapted for other years)
Activity Duration: 20 minutes (or 30 minutes with group work activity)
Concepts and approaches
Curriculum links:
Computing:
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understand what algorithms are
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use logical reasoning to predict the behaviour of simple programs
(algorithms as earlier stepping stone)
English
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Year 1: apply phonic knowledge and skills as the route to decode words;
spell: words containing each of the 40+ phonemes already taught
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Year 2: spell by: segmenting spoken words into phonemes and
representing these by graphemes, spelling many correctly; learning new
ways of spelling phonemes for which one or more spellings are already
known, and learn some words with each spelling, including a few common
homophones learning to spell common exception words
Introduction
An algorithm is a precisely defined sequence of instruction or a set of rules for
performing a specific task. Spelling rules can be thought of as algorithms. This is
an ‘unplugged’ activity, which means you do not need a computer.
By teaching this short unplugged spelling activity, your pupils will explore the
graphemes for a particular phoneme (its spelling rules), as chosen by you. They
start to understand what algorithms are, and use logical reasoning to predict the
behaviour of simple algorithms. You will learn about and apply ideas involving
patterns, algorithms, and logical reasoning.
Pupil objectives
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I know what an algorithm is.
I understand that spelling rules can be thought of as algorithms.
I can predict what a simple algorithm will do by using a spelling rule.
I can use the ‘or’ phoneme (or other phoneme you are learning).
KS1 Activity: Spelling Rules
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Resources
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Pupils’ small whiteboards and pens
Teacher’s IWB or paper flipchart (to record classes spelling algorithms/rules)
IWB, large piece of card or flipchart for word sort activity
A set of words for a phoneme word sort as a class e.g. shore, floor, door,
claw, August, thought etc. (Or phonics software that you already use for
word sorts.)
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Optional group work: sets of word cards for pupils to sort at their tables.
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Read the “Teaching Notes”:Computational thinking concepts and
approaches
Introduction (5mins)
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Bring children to carpet with a whiteboard and pen each.
Remind children of any carpet rules that you have. Say that rules are
important as they help us to know what to do and how to make things
happen.
Explain the phonics lesson is going to be about rules and spelling.
You might like to say “King and Queen Algorithm tell us the rules, follow a
spelling rule and you’ll be cool”. Did they notice a new word. Can they listen
out for that word?
Show Learning Intention slide, if that is your normal practice.
Main task (10 mins)
Introduce the phoneme
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Say your phoneme e.g. ‘or’
Ask children to write down what the sound was. They might write any grapheme for the phoneme, some may list a number of alternatives. Ask them to
show you their ideas (assessment opportunity).
Ask children to work with their carpet partner for a minute (or how ever long
you think / pair / share normally) to work out a rule for spelling the sound.
This might be just a list of graphemes, or it might also involve the position of
graphemes in a word. Work at the level your class requires based on their
current phase of phonic understanding.
Share ideas to enable you to address any misconceptions, and tailor the
next steps based on their feedback.
Class word sort
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Say some example words that use your phoneme and organise them as a
whole class into lists based on the grapheme (spelling). For example, door,
prawn, floor, lawn, shore, claw,more, August, autumn and organise by spelling patterns au, aw, oor, ore etc. When doing this, pupils are using pattern to
spot similarities and differences. Use an IWB, large piece of card or flipchart.
You may already have phonics software that you use to do this word sort
activity.
KS1 Activity: Spelling Rules
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Group word sort (optional extra 10 mins)
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Extension opportunity: You can extend this lesson to include a group activity
where pupils can categorise sets of word cards with alternate spellings for
your phoneme at their tables.
Build your algorithm
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Share children’s ideas and build a class spelling rule (algorithm) for the phoneme. Look at each word list for a particular grapheme and see if there are
any patterns. You might look at the position of the grapheme in the words.
Is the grapheme always always at the start, middle or end of a word? For
example ‘au’ is never at the end of a word. You might look to see if there are
common adjacent letters, e.g. aw is often after an l or before an n. You might
then look across the word lists to see which is the most common spelling
(best bet) or which are rare spellings or exceptions.
You can make a list of rules or try a diagram as below. As you add more rules
it is much easier to add to this kind of diagram. This is an informal diagram.
Why not make it into a class display? Add examples, you could add pictures
to make it specific to your class, such as photos of children whose name has
that spelling e.g. Laura, Norman. Perhaps add a recordable speech bubble
saying the word, or add actual items e.g. a Numicon four.
Diagram showing a few of the informal spelling rules for the or phoneme. As pupils knowledge
increases so this will become a more complete rule and a more complete algorithm. Images from
pixabay Public Domain CC0
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Explain that a set of rules for working something out is an algorithm. It’s
worth mentioning that in English there are many exceptions to general rules
and that a complete algorithm would need to take all these into account. You
should tailor your rules to your class’s phonics knowledge and further develop your spelling algorithms as this increases.
Can they remember your chant if you used one? ‘“King and Queen Algorithm
tell us the rules, follow this spelling rule and you’ll be cool.” KS1 Activity: Spelling Rules
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Plenary (5 minutes)
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Ask children in pairs to think of one or two good words to test the rules
(evaluation) (assessment opportunity) ask them to use the class spelling
rule (algorithm) to predict the spelling of their words and write them on their
whiteboard. Share some of the words they used and ask children to explain how they
used the algorithm to work out the spelling.
In being able to use the algorithm on their words they may uncover words
that are not met by the class rules and so show that the rules (algorithm) is
not complete and needs to be changed (debugged) e.g. ‘we used the algorithm on the word ‘‘small’’ but the rule did not work - we need to change the
rules.’
In testing the rules they are applying the algorithm.
Differentiation
Differentiation for the phonics aspects of these activities should be in accordance
with your current phonics planning. You might also find it helpful to differentiate the
computing elements of this activity.
Support:
Pupils who find predicting and working out rules difficult may benefit from being
given extra examples or more time to give answers; they could be paired with another pupil so that they can talk about their ideas, or adult support might be useful.
Stretch and challenge:
When working out spelling rules, encourage more able pupils to spot patterns
across phonemes to work out a template of how to record rules. For example they
may ignore the rare spellings first. They may spot that there is usually a most common spelling and often a different spelling if it is an end sound.
Assessment opportunities
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Phonics - Pupils’ answers to specific questions, spellings on whiteboards.
Algorithms/Predicting/Rules - Pupils’ answers to specific questions and
jottings on whiteboards related to rules. Have children used spelling rules
to work out the spelling for a word? Can they say a spelling rule is an algorithm?
KS1 Activity: Spelling Rules
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Teaching Notes
Before you start
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Choose your phoneme/graphemes to teach; it is best to choose a correspondence with alternate spellings and some rules e.g. long a, long i, oi/oy.
Concepts and approaches
Pattern
Pattern spotting is used as pupils look for similarities and differences and sort
words according to spelling patterns.
A
simple table showing the spelling patterns of some long a words.
For example they see that the ‘ay’ spelling is almost always at the end of a word
and ‘ai’ is in the middle and start to formulate a set of rules. The rule being if I hear
the ‘ai’ sound (phoneme) at the end of a word it is likely to be spelt ‘ay’ but if it is in
the middle of a word it is likely to be ‘ai’.
Algorithms
The spelling rules which children learn can be thought of as algorithms.
For example rules for the long a sounds might include (this is not exhaustive)
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If the word has a long a sound in the middle it is probably an ‘ai’ spelling;
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If the word ends in a long a sound it is probably an ‘ay’ spelling;
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If the word is they it has an ‘ey’ spelling for the long a as its an exception;
● If the word has a t or k sound following the long a then it is probably a ‘split e’
spelling;
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It’s rare to have an ‘a’, ‘eigh’, ‘ei’ spelling - I just have to learn these.
A set of spelling rules like this is an algorithm.
Logic
Logical reasoning is used as pupils assemble the rules based on the patterns they
spot. Using this they predict what will happen when combinations of graphemes
are blended together. They will reason based on what they already know from their
own understanding of synthetic phonics, and their reasoning will improve as they
gain more knowledge to build up their spelling rules and have more opportunities
to predict and review their conclusions.
KS1 Activity: Spelling Rules
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A pupil who predicts that the word spelt ‘safe’ will sound the same as ‘saif’ has
perhaps reasoned logically as the graphemes ‘a_e’ and ‘ai’ correspond to the
same phoneme, however a pupil who reasons that they will be different has not
reasoned logically unless there is an exception.
Speech Software. In speech to text software incredibly complex algorithms are
used to work out the spelling of words.These programs use huge banks of
pre-recorded sounds and complex statistical formula and rules. They use
information about grammar, context and other aspects of language to help match
speech to text. Often dictation/speech software is ‘trained’ to a particular person’s
accent and inflection. The main user of the program says certain words, as
instructed by the program, to build up a bank of words to be matched against.
Taking this further:
The CS4fun website, Queen Mary, University of London has a range of related
unplugged activities such as the create a face activity.
Further learning
Articulation of Phonemes
Phoneme Rules in Phoneme Detective Powerpoints
Further examples of spelling rules
Oxford dictionaries on English spelling rules
Speech recognition
Related activities
Crazy Character Algorithms Activity
Sharing Sweets Algorithms Activity
KS1 Activity: Spelling Rules
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