How to support your child with spelling.

Below are the details of the spelling curriculum for children at Pilton Infants' School.  It starts with Year 2, then with Year 1 and Reception below that.

A word about tests.

Spelling tests rarely work for children as they learn the word in isolation and then use it in their writing and misspell it again.  

The most useful way to practise spelling is in the context of a sentence.  For example, when we teach children the word 'there' in phonics lessons, we might get them to write three sentences with this word in: Put it there.  There is a fly in my soup!  I want to go there for my holiday. 

However, we also know that repeatedly doing the same action helps children to learn it, so, alongside this, we also play games in phonics where we ask the children how many times they can write the word in one minute.  We ask them to say the word as they write it to help them remember it.  The combination of these two activities helps children learn the word.  

 

Useful websites

The following websites have some useful spelling games:

http://www.ictgames.com/literacy.html This has some great spelling games on which you can set for the appropriate level of challenge for your child.

 

What about the really tricky words?

When we teach 'tricky' words (we call them 'camera words' because you have to take a picture with your eyes and try to remember them), we ask children to identify the part of the word that is tricky.  This helps them remember what's unusual about them.  From time to time, when a word is particularly challenging, we might make up a mnemonic (a little poem to help remember the word).  The children sometimes make up their own.  Here are some examples below:

Year 1 and 2

Below is a list of the sounds and spelling rules that children are expected to know and use in their writing by the end of each year group.  The suggested words to practise are in the right-hand column.  Use the scroll function key on the right-hand side to go through the document and to find the Year 1 information.

 

Reception

The expectation in Reception is that by the end of the year children should be able to read and write the following words.  Scroll down for Phases 2 to 4.