Making Remote Spelling Teaching Effective

Many schools are really refining their online provision this term during lockdown and teachers are developing their internet-honed, tech-savvy pedagogical prowess. And, if the teaching of spelling has slipped down a notch or two on the priority list, now be the perfect time to refresh your school’s approach and aim to ensure the remote teaching of spelling is timetabled regularly through the week. Short, regular sessions are what the spelling doctor orders.

Weekly wordlists and spelling tests to top-and-tail the week aren't always effective approaches by themselves and often don’t translate well for online learning. Learning spellings by heart may work for some children but the rules often don't go into their long-term memory or transfer into independent writing.

So how can we do this in a meaningful way?

Investigate

We would always recommend leading with an investigative, contextualised approach. Children will appropriate spellings more readily when they see unfamiliar words in a familiar context. An investigation will allow children time to explore, even discover any spelling rule by themselves. This would be an excellent way to kick the week off.

The class teacher can model the activity on video and introduce the spelling rule or words from the word list. Children can download the investigation to explore as the week begins.

Let’s imagine we are teaching the rule:

The /ɪ/ sound spelt y elsewhere than at the end of words.

This is a spelling rule taught in Years 3 and 4 and with words like myth, crystal, Egypt, mystery, mystical and pyramid it cries out to be embedded within the context of ancient Egypt or ancient civilisations. Texts like The Story of Tutankhamun and Weslandia provide ideal contexts. Children can discover some mysterious hieroglyphics with clues to discover their hidden meanings (see image). Can they add any of their own words to this puzzle?

Practise

Children need an opportunity to practise spelling rules, but we must breathe new life into the well-trodden Look, Cover, Write, Check approach. Children need to write the new words in a sentence, understanding their word classification and how this might change. Effective questions would be: Can you use this word as a verb? As a noun? How is the word being used in this sentence? How can you tell?

Children can be supported to play partner games with siblings or parents if possible. They could be encouraged even to utilise the home environment in different ways by looking for objects that may use the spelling rule or phoneme or be described by a certain adjective.

Children can use mnemonic techniques (Rhythm = Rhythm Helps Your Two Hips Move) or highlight words within words (there is an ear in heart so always listen to the one you love). Children can also be encouraged to highlight word shapes or create word pyramids. They can make posters even to teach others the new spelling rule.

This work can be held up on screen or uploaded and children invited to talk about their memory strategies. A great chance for a quick mid-week check-in.

Apply

As the week comes to a close, it is time to celebrate the children’s writing. Many schools are timetabling a live session at this point in the week for this reason. As part of this process, it can be a chance to edit work and prompt children to use spellings of the week in their writing where appropriate. Where possible, match the writing opportunity to the spelling words chosen, so that children have a purposeful reason to use the new vocabulary and the patterns learnt into their outcomes. Remember. learning spelling rules can be as much ab out the opportunity to explore new vocabulary as it is about correct spelling, and that's when it becomes really meaningful for children.

Coverage

Appendix 1 is the key document which specifies statutory spellings to be taught. This document encourages a myriad of different strategies - recognising prefixes, suffixes and their functions; root words and word families; etymology to name a few - and its essential the full breadth of these approaches is covered.

Teachers can use our coverage maps to highlight which books they have taught and which spelling rules they have covered (see image). Each spelling rule and word from the word lists will be covered multiple times through the year so there will be ample opportunities to deepen learning.

If a few minutes, three time a week can be dedicated to spelling and follow the investigate, practise, apply cycle, then a fresh and meaningful approach to the teaching of spelling will quickly emerge. Of course, the right choice of texts alongside this is vital – whether it be fiction, non-fiction or poetry – and provides the context and backbone to any school’s English provision.

Posted in: Curriculum | Home Learning