Introduction
Welcome to spellings bees – a multitask approach to learning
and applying spellings for the new 2014 curriculum. The new
curriculum demands more than ever that the learning of
spellings is crucial. This set of YR and KS1 spellings follows the
Letters and Sounds programme and is designed to be
followed at home at your child’s own pace. Teachers will be
teaching spellings through phonics and writing lessons; this is
designed for you to work through at home.
The use of dictionaries – either physical, online or through other devices, is an
essential tool for the spellings bees. It encourages children to see root words,
word classes, understand homonyms and also opens their mind to the wide
range of vocabulary available. The activity ideas in this letter give you ways
you can engage with the word lists with your child/ren.
As you open the Phase you are working in, you simply note down the next
group of spellings to work on. For some children this will be 1 list a week, for
some 1 list for 2 weeks. You will work out what is best for your child.
There are also “tricky word lists” to work through. Because spelling
development is wide ranging during infant education, you choose where to
start. Phase 5 is the average achievement level for the end of Y2, Phase 6 is a
cross over phase to KS2. Phase 1 is covered in Reception. It involves rhyming
and listening for sounds to “tune” children in to letter-sound
(grapheme/phoneme) connections.
Spelling Bee List
Phonic Phase Level
2
3
4
5
B
C
D
E
6
F
We hope you find these lists supportive and can have some fun supporting
your child’s spelling development! As usual just ask if you need any help!
Happy Spelling!
The Cross Farm Team
Activities you could choose to do with the words in your list:
Word Lists
Put your list for the week up around the house and in the car.
Sentences
Understanding the context in which a word is placed can support memory. To enable
this, encourage your child to write their own sentences for each word. You may wish to
encourage children to start sentences with a range of words to get past “I” and “my”
which are always favourite openers… push them to think bigger than that!
Alphabetical order
Sort all the words on the list into alphabetical order.
Wordsearches
See if someone in the family can put the words into a word search!
Crack the codes
Use number codes for the children to translate into the spellings.
Definfitions
Children can be encouraged to look up the meaning of a new word with your help
using a dictionary. Maybe they could then place them in a sentence.
Look, Say, Cover, Write, Check
The child looks at the word, tries to remember it, covers it, writes the word and then
checks it.
Word Jumbles
You scamble the letters of each spelling word. The child tries to decode and
reorganise the spelling.