Spelling

At St Chad’s C.E. Primary School we want every child to know that they can spell and to enjoy spelling lessons and home learning tasks. We want to develop children who can spell and who have strategies to use when coming across a word they are unsure of.

Once children are secure in their phonics and have completed our ‘Little Wandle’ scheme, they transfer to ‘No Nonsense Spellings’. For the majority of our children, this begins in Year 2. From this point, spelling lessons are taught daily for approximately 15 minutes. In our mixed age classes, the spellings are taught on a rolling programme from the Year 3/4 units and the Year 5/6 units. Throughout the week the lessons cover the revise, teach, practice and apply sequence, that is so well embedded from phonics lessons.

Children who are not phonologically secure from Year 2 upwards, take part in ‘Little Wandle Catch Up’ sessions.  Other resources/strategies that we use for children who are not spelling at their age-related expectations include precision teaching, focus five spelling grids, have a go mats and accessing key word mats during lessons.

Spelling rules taught throughout the week, are sent home on the Friday to practice. The children have a spelling menu of activities to choose from when completing their practice. The class teachers will always suggest some activities to do and the children will also have some free choice to learn the spellings in a way they choose. The following Friday children complete a spelling quiz of the words they have been practicing all week.  As a result of introducing the spelling menu, the children now tell us that “spellings are fun” and that they “wish we had always done it this way.”

When children leave St Chad’s they are secure with their phonics and are proficient spellers or have known strategies to draw upon to aid their spellings.