5 tips for teaching your children spellings

Teaching your children spelling

Learning spellings is important for all children. It is beneficial for many things, including reading, writing and pronunciation.

 

As a parent you can make spelling fun when testing your children on their spellings at home.

 

Try our 5 tips for teaching your children spellings:

 

1. Group words with similar spelling patterns so they can be remembered easily.

For example, words ending in -ough can be grouped together: tough, rough, enough, cough… This will help your child with letter patterns, too!

 

2. Colour code spellings for easier memorisation

By colour coding spellings it makes them more visual and fun to learn. You can group spellings with different colours, for example grouping the same letter patterns can help these to be remembered easier.

 

3. Keep a record of the spellings your child finds challenging. Then you can test these spellings repeatedly until your child gets them right.

You can keep a note of the trickier spellings so they can be referred to and practiced regularly.

 

4. Carry out regular spelling tests with your child.

By doing a spelling test every week their spelling should improve. This will teach them a range of new spellings. Try to vary them, so there is a variety of different word being learnt.

 

5. Why not try spelling games?

  • You can play spelling catch. Throw a ball to your child and shout out a word. They must then spell that word once they receive the ball.
  • Hangman is good for learning spelling. Start off by thinking of a word. Write the amount of lines in place of where the letters for the word would go. Then the other players must guess one letter at a time. You must make a hangman gradually for every letter that is guessed incorrectly. Every letter that is correct goes on the lines to make the word. You can use trickier spellings, allowing your child to spell out the word.
  • Or give your child a spelling. From this spelling, they must spell a new word from the last letter of that spelling. This should result in a long list of words!
  • For example:

Because

Element

Tedious

Suspicious

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