Parents play an important role in supporting their children s learning. Supporting your child Year 3 and 4 Spelling
Why is spelling important? Spelling is a key part of becoming a successful writer. We at Fountain value the Teaching and Learning of spelling since it helps children to write more fluently, dedicating more of their energies towards creative writing (rather than the mechanical process of spelling) gives our learners strategies to attempt to encounter unfamiliar words, enriching their vocabulary gives children opportunity to investigate and understand the true meaning of words develops confident writers develops confident readers supports children with dyslexic tendencies What do we expect children to be able to do in Year 3 and 4? By the time children leave year 3: spell the first 300 words correctly make plausible attempts to spell unfamiliar words using a range of spelling strategies By the time children leave year 4: all common words to be spelt correctly
How do we teach spelling at Fountain? Through a variety of exciting and structured Phonics or Spelling sessions, we will teach your child to become more competent at spelling. Children are split into groups that will best suit their individual needs. Children will learn to: understand and use the terms letter, vowel, consonant, phoneme, syllable, prefix and suffix read and spell words containing long vowel sounds such as dream, thief, bright, flair understand that the same sound can be represented in different ways e.g. mean, green, mummy, thief use the skill of syllable counting to chunk and spell longer words and compound words e.g. suddenly, unimportant, weekend, blackbird, investigate spelling rules and patterns e.g. adding ing or ed - stop, stopping, stopped common prefixes and suffixes - un-, dis-, -ful. ly learn to use dictionaries and ICT spell-checkers
How can you help at home? In Year 3 & 4 the children will be given a list of words to learn every week. These words will be linked to their Phonics /Spelling lesson and may include spelling patterns or key words. We will expect children to spell these words correctly within their writing. When the children are tested they will be given a word from their list in a sentence and asked to write the full sentence. This is to ensure the children can use them in context. The test will not include all the words in their list as we are testing that they understand and can apply the rule rather than learn a list of words. The score will be given back to the child, along with the new set of spellings to be learnt the following week. This allows you to see just how well your child is doing and practice any misspelt words with them. Spending a few minutes each night to help your child learn their spellings will help your child to become better at spelling. In turn they will become better writers as their vocabulary broadens and their creativity isn t hindered as spelling becomes a natural part of writing.
Spelling Rainbows Choose your 3 favourite crayons to rainbow write your spelling words. Write each word first in pencil. Then trace over each word three times. Each time you trace, you must use a different colour crayon. Silly Sentences Write ten silly sentences using a spelling word in each sentence. Please underline your spelling words! Write your sentences neatly! Example My dog wears a blue and purple dress when he takes a bath. Across and Down 1. Choose ten spelling words. 2. Write each word neatly across and down, sharing the beginning letter. Example when h e n Blue Vowels Write EACH of your spelling words out neatly. You will need a BLUE coloured pencil. Trace over ALL the vowels in each word with your blue coloured pencil. Vowels= A E I O U tried Spelling snakes Write the spellings into one long wiggly snake. Adding My Words 1. Choose ten spelling words. 2. Add up each spelling word. 3. Write them neatly. *Consonants are worth 10. *Vowels are worth 5. Example Said = 10+5+5+10=30 There =10+10+5+10+5=40 Spelling Scrabble Spell each of your words with scrabble tiles. Then add up the point value using the numbers on each tile. Write the words in order according to their point value from greatest to least. Crossword Use the spellings in your list to create words that cross each other by sharing some of the same letters. S P BECAUSE L WHILE
What do we mean? These are the definitions of some of the words your child will be used to: Phoneme-the smallest unit of sound in a word represented by letters or groups of letters (e.g. cat- has 3 phonemes, chip also has 3 phonemes ch-i-p). Grapheme- a written letter or group of letters that represent a sound e.g. the sound s can be represented by the graphemes s in sun, ce in dance, ss in dress, st in whistle, cy in cycle and so on. Digraph- 2 letters that make 1 sound (e.g. sh, ch, th) (Vowel digraphs contain 2 vowels that make 1 sound e.g. oo, oa, ea) Segmenting- to write or spell a word by listening for the sounds in the word (c-a-t) and deciding which letters represent those sounds. We use segmenting to help us spell. Blending- to say the individual sounds that make up a word and blend them together to hear the whole word for reading e.g. s-a-t becomes sat. We use blending to help us read. High frequency words- these are the words that occur most commonly in the English language. Some we can sound out like much whilst others are tricky words and cannot be sounded out like the (some refer to these as red alert words). Mnemonic- a phrase or saying that helps you remember a spelling (e.g. Big Elephants Can Always Use Small Exits helps with the spelling of because ).
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