Spelling strategies

I find teaching spelling a bit of a minefield, especially when tutoring. When I worked in a school, I had a very structured way of teaching spellings, focussing on a different rule each week, with perhaps 3-4 opportunities that week to practise them in different ways. As part of these mini spelling lessons, we did a lot of work on ‘word families’ which I feel is invaluable to children’s mastery of spelling and understanding. We would then spend time finding other words with the same ‘spelling rule’. When it came to the spelling test at the end of the week, I wouldn’t just test children on the list of 8-10 spellings they had practised, but would throw in a few extras which used the same spelling rule, as that then showed me whether the child had a grasp of the rule itself, or had memorised the list.

As a tutor, it is definitely more difficult to teach spelling in the same amount of depth. When I first started tutoring English, I would dedicate the first ten minutes to spelling, and went through each rule in a logical way. However, I found that due to them only having that input once a week (or in some cases once a fortnight if they alternated English with maths) that it wasn’t the most effective use of time. I then changed tact, and decided to use the child’s writing and pull out any words they struggled with, going through the rule of each one. This was then giving targeted input on their specific needs.

Remember, spelling practice doesn’t have to be boring! In this blog I will go through a range of different ways that children can practise their spellings, to prevent it from being a mundane chore.

If you’d like a 1:1 parent consultation to discuss how to support your child further, contact Truependous Tutoring for more information. I also have a range of pre-recorded workshops.

Vowels and consonants

This one is quite self-explanatory – basically you choose two colours and write the vowels in one and the consonants in another.

abc order

This is where you have a list of words and write them in alphabetical order – a very useful skill which also helps with using a dictionary or thesaurus effectively (something I recommend all children should have!).

Wrong hand

One of my personal favourites, ‘Wrong hand’ is quite simply where you use your left hand (if you’re right handed) or your right hand (if you’re left handed) to write your spellings.

Rhymes with

‘Rhymes with’ is when you choose one of your spellings and write a list of words that rhyme with it. I find all rhyming activities incredibly useful for helping children with their spellings – it also highlights how some of the words have the same spelling at the end, and some are spelt differently. Of course, you’d need to go through the words they have written to check their spelling of the rhymes, which again highlights any spelling rules they might struggle with.

Fancy fonts

‘Fancy fonts’ is where you write each spelling using some interesting lettering! Make it as decorative as you like 😀

Scrambled words

This is where you write anagrams of the words (jumble up the letters) and your child has to rearrange them to make the word.

Pyramid words

I absolutely love this one! Children break the word down and build it up, letter by letter, so that it makes a pyramid shape. This is a very effective way of children remembering the order of letters.

Bubble words

This is where children write each of their spellings in bubble writing.

Rainbow words

Make your spellings colourful with ‘rainbow words’! Use all the colours of the rainbow to write a word.

Secret agent words

This is one for all the budding spies and secret agents out there! This is where I write the alphabet along the top of the page and write the corresponding number that goes with each letter. You can then write all the spelling words as numbers and children have to decipher which each one is.

Forwards and backwards

This one always reminds me of the book ‘Esio Trot’! If you like secret languages, this could be the one for you! All your spellings will look like gobbledygook.

Ransom letters

Ransom letters is quite time consuming, but fun nonetheless! Get a load of old child-friendly newspapers and magazines, and children have to make the words in their spelling list by cutting out the individual letters, ransom-note style!

Silly sentences!

Silly sentences is exactly what it sounds like – make a silly sentence using as many of your spellings as possible. It should still make sense grammatically so you’ll have to add in some additional words.

Shape of the word

This is a really good one for supporting with ascenders and descenders. An example of how I use this is to have the child’s spelling list, and then create the ‘shape of the words’ on the right hand side. They then have to match the shape with the spelling, through problem solving where the ascenders and the descenders are, and how many there are:

Monster letters

Monster letters is when you take your spelling and change each letter into a monster! Raaaa!

Screwed up spellings!

I have named the next one ‘screwed up spellings’. This is another fun strategy I learnt on a Teacher Toolkit training day, and is a great one if you’ve got a group of children learning the same spellings. If I remember it correctly, the children each have a piece of paper and split it into six sections. You give them their first ‘spelling’ and they have to write it in the first section.

They then screw up the paper and throw it to someone else in the room. You can even get them to throw the screwed up ball twice, to mix things up even more. So then each child should have someone else’s piece of paper. The teacher then writes the correct spelling on the board, and the children mark the work they’ve been thrown, correcting it if necessary. Then the next word is called out. Children write this in section two of their new piece of paper. They throw them again and then the process is repeated – next person marks the spelling, writes the next one and throws it again.

Once all six sections have been completed, then children can throw it into the recycling bin.

This activity is generally quite chaotic, but in a good way from my experience! It’s also really beneficial as it develops children’s skills of proof reading. It’s also a lot more fun that a ‘look, cover, write, check’ activity. Another benefit of this, is that it’s anonymous, so children may not feel so anxious about mis-spelling a word, as they know no one will know.

‘Roll the dice’ spellings

Another fun method I use is ‘dice rolling spelling’ where you give each number a strategy (you could use any of the strategies listed above for this, or make up your own).

For example

1 = as small as possible

2 = as big as possible

3 = with your eyes closed

4 = backwards

5 = wrong hand

6 = fancy font

I hope you find these strategies useful! If anyone has any more gems then please comment below.