Spelling

This year we introduced the Spelling Programme from Year 2 to 6 for the following reasons-:

• To enable to allow us meet the spelling expectations of the National Curriculum 2014
• To raise standards in spelling
• To provide consistency and progression in the teaching of spelling
• To help support children to enable them to be more confident at spelling.

How does this programme support your child in learning to spell?

RWInc Spelling is an interactive programme which teaches spellings in a fun and engaging way. Each unit is introduced with a short video. It helps children to learn spellings with common patterns and uses rules in order to help them recall spellings as well as teaching exceptions to these rules.

Individual workbooks allow children to practise their spellings and the teaching naturally follows on from the Spell Review part of the RWInc phonics programme taught as soon as the children enter Nursery.  Therefore the children are already proficient at using dots (for individual sounds) and dashes (for digraphs) and prefixes and suffixes can be added to root words to help them to spell with greater accuracy, understanding and confidence.  Home spelling practice folders (HSP) give children ownership of their spellings and further consolidation at home.

How the home spelling practice folders support your child to spell

All children now have LSCWC folders and these are important in helping them to practise the spellings they need to learn from each unit. Each unit explains the rules and gives handy tips and rhymes for remembering these. At the start of the unit the children receive the new spelling rule spellings for their folders. At the beginning of the next unit they will do speed spell which will assess their ability to spell words with the previous weeks spelling pattern correctly.

Handy Tips for supporting your child with spelling

• Make sure that the LSCWC folders is used to practise the tricky spellings regularly. To download a copy of the Set 2 and 3 sounds and rhymes click here. 
• Revisit spellings from previous weeks.
• Ask your child to explain the rule for the week and get them to give you example words so that you can build up a word bank that can be referred to frequently.
• When your child is writing in their HSP folder remind them to use their dots and dashes and ‘Fred Fingers’ to spell.
• Encourage your child to edit their own writing for misspelt words using ‘tick and fix’.
• Play homophone games where you give them a word like right/write and they write you both spellings and show you on the sounds chart which graphemes they would choose to spell them right! Make sure they know which one is which!
• Play hold a sentence dictation where you give the child a short sentence with one of their spellings in which will help them to understand the meaning of the word and spell and punctuate correctly
• Always ensure that your child has their HSP folder in school every day.

Building independence

Giving children weekly spellings to be tested (even when they do score 10/10!) does not mean that they will apply these in their own written work. With this new approach to the teaching of spellings we hope to support and encourage your child to become both more confident and independent spellers which will help them become better writers.  Revisiting spelling patterns and rules regularly is key to them becoming successful spellers.

Remember that the Spelling Programme is there to help them to become better at spelling with positive praise and encouragement and that, like everything, this will take practice.

Supporting Your Child’s Spelling at Home 

To help you to support your children at home with their spellings on a weekly basis, the children will be given 6 spellings from the unit they are currently on. They will be tested on these the following week. In addition to these your child will also be given 6 red or orange words to learn from the National Curriculum word lists which are words the children are expected to know for their age range. Use the HSP folder to practice the spelling and discuss any parts they are finding tricky or getting stuck. Try to come up with ways to help the children remember the parts they are finding tricky.