Introduction
Parents often ask how best to support children at home with spelling. The aim of this booklet is to explain the strategies used in school for the teaching of spelling and to provide some ideas on how parents can support at home.

Learning to spell is a highly complex business. Some children learn to spell effortlessly – most get there in the end, but too many find the process of learning to spell extremely hard work. Most children learn spellings for the traditional weekly test and get most spellings right on the day, but forget them when coming to use them in future work; some children just struggle to learn them and just get them wrong.

Studies have shown that sending home a list of words to learn in preparation for a weekly test is not the most effective way for most children to learn and many children (although they may have performed well), have forgotten these words just a few hours after the test.
Consequently, it is necessary to have an approach which meets the needs of all children and allows them to develop their skills at an appropriate rate, in order that they can confidently spell common words accurately and develop a range of strategies to tackle more complex words with confidence.

How do we teach spelling in school?
There are distinct stages through which children progress in spelling and a range of different strategies will be employed throughout school to support the stages.

The teaching of spelling begins in early years with the introduction of phonics through the Read Write Inc programme. As children move through school, their phonic knowledge is developed along side learning different spelling patterns, rules and exceptions. The aim is that all children will become confident to use a range of strategies to support accurate spelling in all areas of the curriculum.

Whilst a spelling focus may be part of home-learning, weekly lists of spelling words to learn for a test will not be sent home; spelling will be taught in class throughout the week and children will explore and investigate the patterns and rules whilst learning how to apply these strategies in their own writing and also to check for errors. Parents will be provided with high frequency spelling lists to practice at home with their child instead. These are words that are developmentally appropriate and will help the fluency and accuracy of your child's written work.

The aim of this page is to provide parents with ideas to support spelling at home. Please do help your child with their spelling both when they are writing (in any subject) as well as to practise the high frequency words (also available on this page below)

Foundation Learning (Nursery, Reception, Y1 and Y2)
In the Foundation Learning Department, the children are exploring sounds, words and spelling. The letter sounds and shapes are introduced through Read Write Inc and the children are shown how these are linked together to create words. Children are encouraged to “have a go” at writing the words they want to say. Initially their writing is often unreadable to the adult eye (and may resemble “scribble‟) although the child will know what he/she means. At this stage it is vital to value and praise their efforts and to resist correcting spelling or writing words for them to copy or write over the top of. The danger here is that children learn that only correctly spelt words are acceptable, become reliant on adult support and limit their writing to include only words that they know they can spell accurately. As children’s awareness of letter sounds increases, more recognisable words will appear in their writing.

Helping at Home

Writing for a purpose
Help your child become aware of the writing that surrounds them e.g. signs in the environment, and ensure that children see you writing. Daily activities can all be a stimulus for writing:

• Shopping lists
• Invitations
• Cards
• Letters
• Notes
• Signs and messages
• Dates on a calendar

Sea Phase (Nursery and Reception)

Emergent Writing

• Always praise attempts at writing, and respond positively to your child’s mark making (even if it looks like what adults call “scribble”).
• Show interest and ask them what they have written. Encourage them to point at the marks as they talk.
• As they begin to learn their letter sounds, encourage them to use their sounds in their writing.
• Give lots of praise and celebrate attempts to spell words

Land Phase (Years 1 and 2)

The children continue to learn and apply the phonic rules through Read, Write, Inc and also focus on learning to spell “high frequency” words – i.e the most common words the children need in their writing. At this stage, the children are also taught to use their knowledge of the sounds that letters make to help them with more tricky words.

Helping at Home
Parents can help by continuing to encourage children to use the phonic sounds they are taught in Read Write Inc as well as supporting children to learn a few high frequency words at a time.
Please see the below for the list of high frequency words.

Remember that writing words time and time again is often only successful in the short term and fun, meaningful activities are more likely to lead to correct spelling being stored in the long term memory.

Some possible activities include:
Instead of writing a list of words on paper with a pencil, explore writing the words using different tools or tracing over the letters.

Water Words
Try a pot of water and large paintbrush to write the word two or three times, on the ground outside.

Pipe Cleaner Words
In advance write a few words on individual pieces of card or paper.
Ask your child to listen carefully while you say a word. Challenge your child to use the pipe cleaners to form all of the letters they hear. Show your child the word card and support them to use their pipe cleaners to add or change the letters they need to spell the word correctly.

Shape Words
In advance, write several words on paper and cut the words following the shape of each letter. Trace around the shapes and cut out a second set without the words. Practise saying the words with your child. Ask your child to match a word with its shape by writing the correct word in its shape.

Guess Who?
Write some words on paper. Read the words with your child. Ask them to tape a word to your back. You have to ask a question e.g. does it begin with “th‟? Can I sound it out? 
Now your child takes a turn to answers your questions. Tape a word to their back.

Mountain and Sky Phase (Years 3 – 6)
The focus is on developing accuracy as well as a range of strategies for spelling.
Although teachers will highlight spelling errors to children, it is important children recognise for themselves when they have made an error and know a range of strategies for correcting inaccuracies. By this stage children will have a range of spelling strategies that they will have been taught, to draw on. Children will use the strategy which best suits their learning style and works best for them.

Helping at Home
Parents can support children by practising any spelling patterns or spelling investigations which are sent home as part of home learning and also by helping children to read and spell the Y3/4 and Y5/6 word lists.
Please see below for a list of words which children are expected to spell in each year group.

Remember to make practising the words enjoyable and not a chore. The suggestions below may help.

Look, say, cover, write, check
This is probably the most common strategy used to learn spellings
Look: first look at the whole word carefully and if there is one part of the word that is difficult, look at that part in more detail.
Say: say the word as you look at it, using different ways of pronouncing it if that will make it more memorable.
Cover: cover the word.
Write: write the word from memory, saying the word as you do so.
Check: Have you got it right? If yes, try writing it again! If not, start again – look, say, cover, write, check.

Spelling Rainbows
Choose your 3 favourite crayons to rainbow write your spelling words. Write each word first in pencil then trace over each word three times. Each time you trace, you must use a different colour crayon.

ABC Order
Write your spelling words in alphabetical order. Be sure to look at the first letter of each word. If the first letter is the same, look at the second letter.

Spelling Paragraph
Write a paragraph using ALL of your spelling words. Be sure to underline your spelling words in your paragraph.
Don’t forget a topic sentence and a concluding sentence.

Rhyming Words
Choose eight of your spelling words.
First write each spelling neatly. Think of a rhyming word for each spelling word. Write the new rhyming word next to your spelling word.
*Example: cries, tries

Spelling Sort
Think of a way to sort your spelling words. Write your word sort neatly. You may want to sort your words by: syllables, beginning sounds, part of speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives, other), vowel sounds
The possibilities are endless! Have fun!

Fancy Letters
Write each of your spelling words neatly using fancy letters. Your letters can have curly-q’s or dots, for example. Have fun and be creative!

Syllables Spelling
Classify your spelling words accordingly to syllables. Clap each spelling word quietly to yourself to see how many syllables you hear. Write a chart like the one below.

Parts of Speech
Sort your spelling words according to their part of speech:
Noun, adjective, verb, other

Word Shapes
Draw around the words making a clear distinction in size where there are ascenders and descenders. Look carefully at the shape of the word and the letters in each box. Now try to write the word making sure that you get the same shape.