Spelling is something that nearly every primary school child does on a daily basis with a weekly test on a Friday. Many schools follow the Prim- Ed; My Spelling Workbook where children complete around 20 spellings a week along with activities from crosswords to wordsearches, anagram puzzles and completing sentences.
I have noticed however that many children are unaware about which letters make a particular sound (e.g. head is often spelt hed) so I have decided to concentrate on these for now. I have created a ‘Spelling Garden’ for each child using a booklet format. Then I draw a flower on each page with the sound we will look at. After that, the children think of words with this sound and write them in the petals or around the flower. So far we have covered Stage 2 phonics and will be moving onto Stage 3 and 4 in the coming weeks.
The children have really enjoyed finding words with different sounds and then remember these sounds when they are doing written work! Overall the quality of their spelling in their written work has improved greatly!