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Stages 6 & 7
Children are taught spelling in 2 main ways at Stage 6 and 7. They are taught common words appropriate and relevant to their stage, words linked to interdisciplinary learning, current school events or a specific writing genre. Spelling strategies and spelling rules are the focus for teaching these words and build on knowledge acquired from previous stages. Reciprocal teaching (peer
teaching) is also continued to encourage communication and problem solving.
Spelling Strategies
The strategies the children are taught are:
Knowledge and use of phonics – using Elkonin boxes and the diacritical
spelling code
Syllabification – breaking words into syllables
Words within words
Compound words
Using analogy – for example if you can spell ‘light’ you can also spell bright, sight, fright etc
Mnemonic – children learn or create mnemonics as a memory aid
Spelling rules – for example ‘i’ before ‘e’ except after ‘c’
Word Building
The second part of the spelling programme focuses on word building. Children are taught about affixes (additions to a root word eg –ful to help creating helpful) and how they alter word meanings. This also means that children deepen their understanding of the grammatical elements of word building. As well as affixes children are taught about homophones and confusions. Words which sound the same but have different spellings and meaning are called homophones e.g. ate and eight. Words which sound or are spelt similarly are called confusions e.g conscience and conscious.
At Home
Encouraging your child to talk about what they have been learning is an excellent way to support them at home. You could look for words in magazines or play simple games with word lists they bring home.

Active Literacy
A Guide for Parents
Stage 1 - 7
Spelling

Introduction
In Bankhead Primary School we implement an Active Literacy approach to phonics and spelling throughout the school.
Stages 1-3
On a weekly basis (or more often in Primary 1) a new phoneme is introduced by the teacher. A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a word. This can be a single letter or a group of letters that together make a sound for example:
‘pin’ has 3 separate sounds – p / i / n
‘chip’ also has 3 sounds - ch / i / p - as ‘c’ and ‘h’ together make ‘ch’.
Some weeks are revision weeks. During these weeks children will be given
up to five phonemes to revise.
Letter formation and word building are demonstrated using magnetic
boards and letters.
This is reinforced throughout the week by:
Working with partners to read and write words and dictated sentences and then check these.
Using magnetic boards to mirror the taught lesson either individually or with a partner.
Taking part in a range of spelling activities.
Working with a partner to say, make/break, blend, read and write each word from a phoneme list.
Your child is taught to problem solve using spelling strategies to spell tricky words. Children are no longer assessed purely on the basis of a single word spelling test. Instead the teacher makes judgements on a daily and weekly basis about your child’s ability to spell words in a variety of contexts eg. working with a partner to write dictated sentences, transferring words into topic work and looking closely at taught writing.

Stages 4 & 5
Children will continue to develop their knowledge and understanding of sounds (phonemes). The children are taught in a block of four weeks, with two weeks focusing on teaching phonemes and their representations, one week on spelling strategies and one week on spelling rules.
Week 1 and 2
The children begin the process by being taught one particular phoneme and all of its representations in words (e.g. the phoneme ‘s’ has the representations ‘s’, ‘ss’, ‘c’, ‘se’ and ‘ce’). Children then consolidate their understanding of the phonemes using the following strategies:
Elkonin Boxes - breaking words into phonemes and recording this using Elkonin boxes.
Reciprocal teaching – working with a partner pupils take it in turns to be the reader, writer and checker .
Diacritical marking – investigating words – recognising and identifying which phonemes are contained within each word. Children are involved in listening carefully, enunciating the words accurately and using the diacritical marking code to identify individual sounds and blends.
Phoneme Stories – finding words containing the focus phoneme within a story
Active Spelling activities – e.g. rainbow writing, pyramid writing etc
Week 3
This week focuses on words that cannot be spelt using knowledge of phonics. A tricky word list will be introduced appropriate to pupils’ stage, interdisciplinary learning or current school events. The teacher will model how to spell these words and pupils will participate in the following activities:
Discussion of the meaning of words
Discussion and use of spelling strategies
Active spelling activities
Week 4
This week focuses on developing children’s knowledge of spelling rules. A word list is introduced featuring words which follow the rule. Children will participate in the following activities:
Thinking of words that follow the spelling rule, working with a partner, they will be involved in peer teaching where they take it in turns to be the caller, writer and checker, active spelling strategies