Spelling
Spelling is a crucial element of the curriculum and children are taught and tested on spellings weekly at Warwick Road School.
Spelling is important because it aids in reading. It helps cement the connection that is shared between sounds and letters. Learning high frequency sight words also has been shown to help with both reading and writing. This is why children learn sight words during their early years. Spelling and reading also have a common factor, proficiency with language. Children should be relaxed about spelling; if not, it will inhibit their writing. This is very unfortunate because writing is something that we do throughout our lifetimes.
USEFUL TIPS TO HELP WITH SPELLING
Spelling can be very difficult but there are many ways that can help children to improve.
1. Copy out the word and leave gaps for them to fill in the letters e.g. ahe_d.
2. Encourage your child to split words into syllables or phonemes e.g. to/mor/row. A phoneme is a sound segment of words or syllables.
3. Looking for words within words this is the compound word strategy and is very useful E.g. separate – a rat
4. Learn as many spelling rules as possible e.g. double the last letter before adding _ed. stopped.
5. Look out for changes in spelling when words turn into plurals e.g.baby- babies.
6. Have some fun with your child’s spelling try and play Scrabble, complete word searches, anagrams and crosswords.
7. Encourage the use of a dictionary.
8. Be careful and aware of silent letters such as knee, write.
9. Use the ‘look, cover, write, check’ method.
10. Keep your child reading everything they can: magazines of interest, books, cereal packets for competitions, children’s newspapers etc.
