Spellings

[Ireolu]

DC is in yr 3 and is OK with spellings but it's just not her thing. Any ideas how to get this better for her? Any apps/workbooks anyone has used to help.

She reads well enough and is encouraged to look up words she doesn't know the meanings of. I will have to start reading with her more. Any Ideas welcome thanks in advance.

Reading is always good. Maybe play scrabble with her as well.

We do 10 spellings every other morning, we just pick them out of the reading record. Then select 2 words and write 2 sentences, each containing one of the selected spellings.

Write out some spellings, write each word, 3 different ways and they have to select the correct spelling.

Thank you this is a great idea. She gets 20 words a week. Needs to do 5 sentences using t words for homework anyways. We have all the yr 3 and 4 words they need to know and may get her to learn a few every other day. Will get a scrabble. Thanks for the ideas.

My kids really like daily challenges like wordle. We also play boggle and bananagrams and watch programmes like Countdown, Lingo and 1% club as a family.

There used to be a children's version of scrabble, if it is still around it would be better to get that.

I play scrabble and although it does test your spelling it is more about the numbers.

It's also knowing words without vowels, words with a 'Q' and no 'U' which might not help with spelling for her age group.

Boggle might be better

I never worry about the schools expected spellings. My dd reads and we also have a list of year 3/4 common exception words on our table at breakfast. The games suggested above are lovely ideas.

Will look up boggle. I am not great at English or with words. Never played scrabble as a child or an adult. She just needs her vocabulary broadening and we need her to get motivated about it. She will get full marks for their weekly tests but new words are a challenge and using words in her work doesn't flow either. Thanks for your thoughts.

My y3 is on the Literacy Gold website through school.

Spelling Shed is excellent
https://www.spellingshed.com/en-au/parents
Boggle, Bananagrams and Scrabble are a great shout.

Wordle. I confess DH does this (since year 1) not me. I believe her school actually does this weekly from year 4. Now they also do the follow on games: connections, mini crosswords and another game where you make as many words as you can out of the letters given.

This is really quite an interesting educational problem because there's research that says children who use apps to develop their spelling skills struggle to demonstrate it when it comes to writing. I've also seen it myself in the kids that I teach.

So I don't think there's any shortcut with this, and what you need to do is encourage plenty of reading and writing. You know that feeling you get when you write a word and it just doesn't look right? That's what you want children to develop...and the apps just don't do that.

I’m mot aware of that research and it surprises me, tbh - that’s definitely not my experience. Have you got a link, please?

Did some digging and I really don’t think there is any such research.

Get her learning them in different ways- write them in the air with different body parts
Write them on your back with her finger for you to guess the word
Use felt tips and write each letter a diff colour
Hangman
You write the word and cover a letter for her to guess.

This is what my husband thinks too. Its more time consuming though but we will be looking closer at learning what way works over the summer break. Thanks for your thoughts.

With effort comes reward x