This year, spellings are going to be organised differently.
Instead of a weekly list, your child will have a list of 40 spellings which will span across a half term.
This method of practice (more words over a longer period of time) is said to improve memory according to a few cognitive science studies. Other classes, who have tried and tested this method, felt it had a positive impact.
Help at home by understanding the words your child is confident with and then focusing on the ones they’re not. You could choose a small number to practise each week, or one or two per day. It’s a good idea to regularly come back to the words they’re more unsure of. Most importantly, it’s about your child learning how they learn best.
Here are some ideas for how to make learning spellings more fun.
Every Friday, there will be a spelling test on eight words from the list at the bottom, chosen at random.
This half term, our spellings are linked to the rules and strategies we’ll be learning in class:
- homophones (words that sound the same but are spelled differently)
- ‘double up for a short vowel sound’
- ‘drop the y for an i’
- using apostrophes for contraction (eg can’t, won’t)
- adding the suffixes ed, ing, er, est
- adding the prefixes un, dis, im, in, ir, il
Spellings 1.1
there – their – they’re – inactive – accommodate
occur/ing/ed – can’t – won’t – category – busy
opportunity – advice – advise – practice – practise
naughty – dictionary – witch – which – according
irregular – embarrass – determine/ing/ed – century – ordinary
curiosity – library – identity – achieve/ed/ing – aggressive
disappear – appreciate – device – devise – cemetery
queue/ing/ed – unavoidable – immediately – impossible – variety
