1. Heavers Farm & Selsdon Primary Schools
CARING, LEARNING, ASPIRING, SUCCEEDING
Spelling Workshop

2. SPELLING IS DIFFECOLT CHALENGENG HARD.
When children struggle with spelling, they limit the language they use which then has an impact on the quality of their written work.

3. Our Aims
To look at the requirements of the National Curriculum (2014) for spelling.
To show how we teach spelling at Heavers Farm and Selsdon Primary Schools.
To offer practical suggestions and advice on how to help your child with spellings at home such as spelling games or online resources.
To answer any questions.
Our aims for this session are to give an idea of what is expected of the children and the NC requirements.

4. The National Curriculum

5. Spelling We want a school of excellent spellers! Why?
It is important to learn how to spell. It helps with children’s writing. Being confident with their spelling means that children will not limit the language they use to the words they know how to spell.
We need to raise standards.
New SPAG test (Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar Test) for Year 6.
End of year expectations from September 2014
It is an important life skill!

6. The National Curriculum
By the end of year 1, pupils should be able to read a large number of different words containing the GPCs that they have learnt, whether or not they have seen these words before. Spelling, however, is a very different matter. Many of the words listed as example words for years 1 and 2, including almost all those listed as exception words are used frequently in pupils’ writing, and therefore it is worth pupils learning the correct spelling. The word-lists for years 3 and 4 and years 5 and 6 are statutory. The lists are a mixture of words pupils frequently use in their writing and those which they often misspell. Some of the listed words may be thought of as quite challenging, but the 100 words in each list can easily be taught within the four years of key stage 2 alongside other words that teachers consider appropriate. Phonic knowledge should continue to underpin spelling after key stage 1; teachers should still draw pupils’ attention to GPCs that do and do not fit in with what has been taught so far. Increasingly, however, pupils also need to understand the role of morphology and etymology. Although particular GPCs in root words simply have to be learnt, teachers can help pupils to understand relationships between meaning and spelling where these are relevant.

7. Year 1 & 2 No statutory spellings
Year 1: The process of segmenting spoken words before choosing graphemes to represent those words.
Learn vowel digraphs and trigraphs.
EG: ai (rain), oi (coin), oo (book), igh (sigh).
Common exceptions like: the, a, come, one, our… and so on. The English language has many!
Year 2: Finding exceptions and learning rules
EG: a ‘j’ sound at the end of a word is usually spelt ‘dge’ (fudge, edge, wedge)
A ‘ee’ sound at the end of word is usually spelt ‘ey’ (monkey, valley)

8. Year 3 & 4

9. Year 5 & 6

10. Our Approach to Spelling

11. What makes a good speller?
A good speller is not a person who has successfully memorised the most words, but rather someone who knows ways to figure out the logic of words and can construct them as needed. Spelling is problem-solving with letters, sounds, patterns and meanings.
Phenix and Scott Dunne
Good spellers apply:
Phonic knowledge
Words within words
Grammatical knowledge
Memory and experience
Existing knowledge
Synonyms

12. Spelling We want a school of excellent spellers! How?
We aim to achieve this by building on excellent phonics teaching and raised standards in the Foundation Stage.
We have a reviewed timetable which allows for spelling teaching time.
We now set regular spelling homework and assess spellings regularly.
We use investigations as part of our teaching.
We are planning a spelling competition for the children to take part in!

13. Spelling The teaching of spelling:
Spellings will be explicitly taught;
Rules and patterns will be investigated - the spellings on weekly lists are rarely applied to independent writing unless they have been thoroughly taught and investigated.
Children are encouraged to use the words they have been taught in their work where appropriate.

14. Assessing Spelling Spelling Tests
 Your child receives a spelling list every week which is either:
 linked to a rule being investigated in class (i.e. Adding ‘ing’)
 A list of words which your child has spelt incorrectly in their independent writing (practise spelling strategies)
Please help your child to practise their spellings in fun and interesting ways:

15. Strategies

16. Children who struggle with spelling usually have no strategies up their sleeve when they get stuck on a word. Ask any weak spellers the question, ‘what do you do when you cannot spell a word’. They will have, at best, one strategy. But it is most likely that they guess. To help them become better spellers they need to acquire a range of different approaches to help them. Pie Corbett

17. Strategies and ways you can help at at home:
Roots
Look, Cover, Write, Check
Syllables and Phonemes
Analogy
Handwriting
Mnemonics
Booklet handouts.

18. Roots
To learn my word I can find the word root. I can see whether the root has been changed when new letters are added e.g. for a prefix, suffix or a tense change. e.g.
Smiling Smile + ing;
Woman Wo + man Signal Sign + al
Can you find the root words in these words?
Dislike
Happily
Hopelessness
Can you think of any other words with the same roots?

19. Look, Cover, Write, Check
To learn my word I can look carefully at it, read it out loud, cover it and then check it .I then repeat that several times! Always make sure the word is spelt correctly in the first place. Use a dictionary for this.
This is a 2 minute challenge!
Can you use look cover write check to try to memorise 2 of these words?
Arctic weird rhythm pharaoh millennium pronunciation

20. Syllables and Phonemes
To learn my word I can listen to how many syllables there are so I can break it into smaller bits to remember. Then I can identify the phonemes in each syllable. e.g. Sep-tem-ber.
How many syllables are there in this sentence?
What is the longest syllable?
What is the shortest syllable?
The students went to university to study area.

21. Analogy
To learn my word I can use words that I already know to help me. e.g. could, would, should
Can you think of some groups of words with the same spelling choice?
EG (book, look, cook)

22. Handwriting
To learn my word I can remember and practise the direction and movement of my pencil when I am writing it.
Handwriting practise fits with spelling quite neatly, especially when using memory techniques like look, cover, write check.

23. Mnemonics
To learn my word I can make up a sentence to help me remember it. e.g.
could – o u lucky duck;  people – people eat orange peel like elephants.
Broccoli – they eat broccoli in Morocco
Can you think of mnemonics for these words?
Hair hare raspberry opportunity

24. Reading
Reading really helps to broaden your child’s experience of language, spelling choices and how words are constructed and used. Children will pick up spellings unconsciously through reading them again and again, but we can help by making this process conscious, too.
If you come across a word that your child finds tricky, or that is a word that you would like your child to be able to write, make sure that they write it in their reading diary.
Ask them to spell the word a few times.
Ask them to find the meaning.
Ask them to put it in a sentence the next day.
Try to get them to use it in their homework.

25. Useful Websites
ing_grammar/
-game-wordsearch-ould
junior.kent.sch.uk/games/educational/literacy2. htm

26. Any Questions?