Websites to support spelling

[DaVinciNight]

I am looking at website/support to improve both dcs spellings which are bad. One is in Y4, the other in Y5.

I have come across spellzone which looks good. Anyone who has use it before?
Any other that would be just as good or better?

I worked twenty-five years in primary school, and spelling has always been a difficulty for many children.

Rather than on-line support, if you look in the MN Book Reviews, "Children's educational books and courses" section you should find the Oxford Phonics Spelling Dictionary. This book explains in a simple and attractive way HOW English spelling works, and if people understand some of the anomalies of English if should make reading unfamiliar words, and spelling words in general that much easier.

I'm not sure if your children are of the age that they would have been taught to read using Synthetic Phonics (the system currently in use) throughout their school life, but in any case some schools have been teaching it better than others.

This book, I believe, would address a lot of the 'mystery' of spelling, and will help support their learning into their secondary school years.

agree with avoiding online, particularly because spellings need to be regularly written for muscle memory to take over and correct spelling to become automatic.
My own spelling is terrible, I can recommend the Ruth Miskin Get Spelling seris which has helped my children (and me a little).

Yes they have done phonics but dc1 teacher agrees that the way they are teaching spelling is to be desired as spelling is an issue across the board.

Books which explain the rules are nice but they have done that as far as I know. They've also learnt words by heart and don't know them. Dc1 is able to write the same word 3 different ways in5 sentences .

What I really want to find is something that will have exercises which apply the rules on a very systematic way as I know it will work for both of them.

And something to help them both with visual memory so that they can 'see' when the spelling look wrong iyswim.

Then you can add the more 'unreliable' words.

If there are books doing that, its great but have never seen one. All the ones I have looked at talk about the rules, the phonics bits very much based on teaching to read which they do perfectly.

This is tricky, the gap between learning a spelling off by hear one week, and then getting it wrong during normal writing, say when writing a story, the following week is a common problem and one we have too.
Would love to know if you find anything that helps with this - TEs resources may have some ideas.

I still consider the book I mentioned, which treats words according to the initial SOUND will be really helpful.

In a 'normal' dictionary it can be difficult to look up some words, as you don't know what letter they start with UNTIL you can spell them! Thus words like 'cinema', 'centre', 'circus', 'cycle', 'scissors' that start with the /S/ (ssss) sound and are grouped in the 'S' section of the book. Also on the /S/ pages, because they contain a 'S' sound at the end or in the middle of the word, but SPELT in various ways are: 'class', 'dress', 'dance', 'palace', 'chase', 'house', 'castle', 'listen'.

You can see sample pages HERE:

www.spelfabet.com.au/2013/01/spelling-word-attack/

www.spelfabet.com.au/spelling-lists/

Hi Davinci:

St. Ambrose spelling pages has on-line spelling games that work through the rules: www.saintambrosebarlow.wigan.sch.uk/spellingpage.htm - most are working (a few do not automatically mark) - but works through a range of spelling rules (i before e except after c, with exceptions; doubling consonant after short vowel sound when adding an ending -stop to stopping, etc..).

We also found CGP literacy workbooks (Years 4 and 5) also helped review a lot of this too. e.g. on amazon: www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=CGP+literacy+workbooks&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3ACGP+literacy+workbooks

HTH

Mrz and Past Thank you so much for both the links.

Both the lists of spelling by sound etc... And the exercises to apply a rule are the sort if things I was looking for.
I will take on board the comment that children do need to write too, but just do a game online to help with memory. But from that I can easily adapt what I do with them.

Will have a look at the books too when I am back home. Struggling to see how good or not it is on the phone.

I am trying to notice when dd spells a word incorrectly - she writes a lot of little notes and stories – and then asking her to spell it to me again. A lot of the time, she does know if she thinks about it - she just doesn't seem to think it is that important.

At parents' evening, I told her teacher I was concerned about it. The teacher said there was so much the children had to think about when writing – interesting starts, conjunctives etc –and then said 'and on top of all that, they have to think about spelling'.... as if spelling is something you do as a bit of final polish. Hard to know how to react when even the teachers don't seem to think spelling matters!

I fear Swoosg your teacher was probably educated in the 1980s when spelling/ grammar were officially off the curriculum. They were raised to think spelling doesn't matter.

On one level, with technology (spell checks - although I think we all know there are reliability issues) knowledge of accurate spellings is less important - however it is helpful to understand why

happy becomes happiness

or

stop becomes stopping

why it is niece and not neice.

why it is wives and not wifes but roofs for plural of roof (not rooves).

I suspect that is why SPAG KS2 SATs test was brought in recently.

Certainly at University level it is clear that good command of spelling/ English grammar is essential for success, yet we are finding a significant cohort here who really are struggling (good ideas, clearly put in a lot of work, but their grammar lets them down).

Too often something like Yoda would say (Trouble with English Grammar have I) comes out on paper.

So that is why spelling and grammar are important. (although I hasten to add I'm not saint).

That's exactly the sort of answers I got from my dcs teachers. Don't worry about spelling it will come.

Except that 1- it didn't and 2- in the process they've learnt that spelling wasn't that important.

The more times a child sees and/or writes a word incorrectly a word spelt incorrectly the more likely it is to enter long term memory.

I know and that's what I am deeply desperate about.
Dc1 in particular has been writing stuff wrong for do long, incl very 'easy' words he should have known by the end of Y1~Y2 that I am wondering if he will ever know them.

But his spelling has hardly being corrected at any other time than during a spelling test

That came out jumbled!

The more times a child sees and/or writes a word incorrectly the more likely it is to enter long term memory.

Here's a great website which offers rock solid advice on reading and spelling and plenty of free resources: www.spelfabet.com.au/
Alison is a speech therapist in Melbourne and she's very good!