Spelling support for Year 4?? Not sure where to start.

[BraveMerida]

Just had parent's evening and the teacher highlighted although DD is doing well overall, that her spelling needs support at home.

Not sure how best to do this though.

Her spelling is not too bad, just not accurate enough for the Year 4 expectation for her ability I think. She is an able reader, but her writing (and spelling) lags behind her reading.

Any ideas, suggestions, recommendations would be much appreciated. Perhaps a recommended easy to use app would be the way to go for this not to be another battle with DD.

TIA

Bumping for you as I am interested in apps recommendations.

Hi BraveMerida:

I stumbled across two things that really helped DD1:

St. Ambrose has a spelling section with on-line spelling quizzes (really revising rules - like doubling consonants when adding -ing endings when the vowel sound before the consonant is a short vowel - e.g. hop - hopping/ stop - stopping.

St Ambrose Spelling link here: www.saintambrosebarlow.wigan.sch.uk/spellingpage.htm - we found this in late Y4 but started from Year 3 and worked our way through.

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Whilst preparing for the 11+ I discovered DD1 had no idea what a noun/ adverb/ verb/ etc... was - so we got in some GCP literacy workbooks - but these also included spelling rule work/ foreign words/ etc... all of which also helped.

Any large newsagent/ Amazon/ bookstore/ etc.. will provide them - Amazon link to what I'm talking about is here: www.amazon.co.uk/KS2-English-Literacy-Workbook-Year/dp/184146158X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1381408687&sr=8-1&keywords=year+4+cgp+english - and you can 'look inside' a bit to see what it has to offer.

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There is also the Essential Spelling books (1-3) - see also newsagents/ book stores/ amazon - but DD1 found these a bit dry. There are fill in the blank and cross-words - but ultimately she just didn't like pen to paper workbook exercises as a person.

However 1 sheet takes about 10 - 15 minutes and they are a nice thing to do whilst waiting to pick up siblings (that was the only way I could get her to do them).

HTH

Thank you sell by date, will go and check out the info now....

Hi -

Retired TA here, and the best resource I have come across is the Oxford Phonics Spelling Dictionary. It lists words according to the initial SOUND, not just the letter as in a 'normal' dictionary. It has useful tips and hints for understanding spelling, and gives the tenses for Verbs, and plurals for Nouns. It is clearly presented, and ideal for a child to use on their own, or to share and discuss with an adult or older sibling if they prefer.

It is under £7 from Amazon, and you can see several sample pages from it HERE:

If you have an I pad try squeebles spelling games. My two dd love them.

Watching with interest. My son is struggling with spelling despite being an able reader and so on. His spelling is well below what we expect (me and teachers).

Squeebles apps are good and fun but not quite helping as much as expected. . He also does well in spelling tests but in writing he makes lots of careless mistakes.

I think I'm going to try to get through to him that it is important and see if that helps.