Spelling
At the Manor Field Schools, we recognise the importence of the children becomeing good spelers. We also recognise the dificultys that peple can have whith speling.
Already, in the first two sentences of this page, there are 7 mistakes! Have you spotted them? And do you know why they are wrong and how to correct them?
Did you know...?
The second edition of the 20-volume Oxford English dictionary contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use, and 47,156 obsolete words (meaning words that are no longer in use). Added to this, the average novel is between 70,000 and 120,000 words. The average adult knows between 20,000 and 30,000 words... but how many of them could they correctly spell?
What is most important is that the children see themselves as spellers, and that they develop the confidence and the skills to tackle words - and to have a go at spelling them with accuracy. What they also need to do is to be able to recognise when words aren't spelt correctly, and to have the skills, e.g. dictionary skills, to be able to correct them.
We don't want to teach the children how to learn their spellings; we want to teach them how to spell instead.
In Foundation Stage and Years 1 and 2, we use our phonic scheme ELS to teach the sounds within words to read and to spell words which are phonically correct. We also teach the children the 'Harder to Read and Spell' words which are not phonically decodable.
From years 3 - 6, we teach the children using a programme called 'No Nonsense Spelling.' In addition, we teach the children their high frequency words.
At the junior school, one of the main strategies that we use with the children in school is syllabification - where they are encouraged to break trickier words down into syl/la/bles when spelling them. This often allows the children to notice where they have gone wrong when spelling a word, as well as being able to identify which 'part' they have spelt correctly. Ultimately, our aim is for children to see themselves as 'spellers', who are willing to have a go at spelling words correctly, even if they appear to be challenging.
We have broken down the spellings into terms and, on a termly basis, will test the children on their spellings.
You can find out which words we will test during which term by clicking below:
Year 3 and 4 termly spellings:
Year 5 and 6 termly spellings:
Regularly practising spelling at home can really help support the children. For some ideas about how to best support spelling at home, you might like to view some of these activities: