The children do short, daily spelling sessions in school and the week looks as follows:
Monday:
We will introduce the phoneme (sound) for the week and read the word list together. For example: “We are learning 10 different graphemes (letters that make a sound) for the /ee/ phoneme (sound) this week. These are our words for the week…”
Tuesday:
We will practise spelling the words using a ‘sound sort grid’, thinking carefully about which grapheme to choose.
Wednesday:
We will add sound buttons to the words.
Thursday:
We will practise spelling the words with a partner.
Friday:
Dictated sentences – not a traditional spelling ‘test’. The children will be ‘tested’ on approximately 6 of the words from the list in their partnership book. Rather than writing the words alone, they will write the words as part of the sentence; this allows them to focus on key aspects of writing such as full stops, capital letters and recapping spellings learnt in KS1.
A dictated sentence for the /ee/ phoneme could be: I believe the people.
If all punctuation and spelling is correct, a child could earn extra marks for this sentence. This will be recorded in the partnership book as usual.