What can I do to support my child?
Ensure your child sets aside time daily to practise weekly spelling words.
Encourage your child to use the guide provided for activities to learn words.
Encourage your child to find ways that work well for them to help them retain their words.
Encourage your child to use the spelling bag sent home to practise weekly words. Please note they will not always have a spelling bag home. They will have this for two terms across the year.
For younger pupils, parents will need to lead the activities or practise tasks with the child.
BattlefieldPrimary School
Spelling
Parent Information
Guide
You may already be aware that we are putting new procedures into place for the teaching and reinforcement of weekly spelling. In the past few years there has been various developments in Battlefield on how we tackle spelling. The spelling bags were introduced and these have had a great impact on the enthusiasm and change in mind set for how spelling words should be practised at home. This has been exemplary practice which has been shared with other schools across Scotland. However, we now feel we want to further develop these approaches to tackling spelling in school as well as at home.
Research is now showing that improving spelling and learning to spell is not necessarily about copying words many times and writing sentences with spelling words. Through a new ‘Active Literacy’ approach children are encouraged to look at,think about and investigate the phonetic structure of words which have the same auditory sounds but different written representations.
For example
Different representations of the same phoneme ‘ae’ sound:
face rain played they great
This method aims to develop children’s spelling competence and independence.
Activities in class are all planned using 15 to 30 minute daily activities. The planned sessions in class have been based on solid research on what helps children spell with confidence and they have been designed to be active.
Pupils will be asked to practise their spelling words at home through a range of active tasks every week and this is where we look to parents to support this at least three times a week. They will not be given a set spelling task each week they will just be given the words they have to practise and pupils can use the suggested range of activities to help learn their words. Please see enclosed sheet for ideas. Jotters will be issued weekly with the spelling words. However there will not be a set homework task, pupils can use their jotters as they wish to practise their words. Pupils will still be tested on a Friday to see how well they have retained their words.
In class pupilswill be encouraged to work with a spelling partner to discuss and carryout a rangeof different strategies that have been taught by their teacher. Therefore they should be able to learn words with greater ease at home.
BattlefieldPrimary School