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Diacritical Marking
On day six of the ten day programme, the children are introduced to diacritical marking. Diacritical marking involves 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.
Single sounds/phonemes are marked with dot under the sound
Joined phonemes are marked by underlining Split phonemes are marked with a joining loop
Elkonin Boxes
Elkonin boxes, used in stages 1-3, are still used to break down words into sounds.
Assessment
Children are no longer assessed purely on the basis of a single word spelling test. Teachers can make judgements about a child’s ability to spell words by placing them in a context e.g. a dictated sentence/paragraph.
At Home
You can help your child to identify words, which contain the different representations of the phoneme. You could ask them to diacritically mark words containing the phoneme representations. You could dictate sentences or paragraphs containing the phoneme representations.
When your child comes home with a list of common words, you could discuss with them what strategy they would use to help them remember to spell each word. You could use spelling words to play snap.

Active Literacy
A Guide for Parents
Stage 4 & 5
Phonics and Spelling

Introduction
The aim of this leaflet is to provide you with information about how your child is taught phonics and spelling at school and to give you information to allow you to support your child at home.
In Class
Spelling and Phonics are taught together at this stage. The children are taught in a block of four weeks, with two weeks being focussed on teaching phonemes and their representations, one week on spelling strategies and one week on spelling rules.
The children will continue to use the structure of SAY, MAKE/BREAK, BLEND, READ and WRITE, with which they have become familiar during stages 1-3. They will also continue to work with a partner and reciprocally teach.
Weeks One and Two
In the first two weeks of the programme, the focus is on teaching the different representations of a phoneme sound. See example below:
The children follow a ten day programme which involves, independent and partner tasks, to consolidate their phonological awareness.

ee	e	ea	ie	e-e
see / free / sleep	be / he / behind	sea / team / peace	thief / field / mischief	these / here / complete

Week Three (Spelling Strategies)
The children are taught strategies to help them learn how to spell and is especially useful when spelling words that cannot be sounded out:
Using Phoneme Knowledge (sounding out)
Syllabification – breaking words down into syllables. The children can clap out words to identify syllables e.g. go-ing/An-drew
Word Shape – Look at letter shape, size, ascending and descending letters.
Tricky Letters – Looking at the position of tricky letters as an aid to spelling.
Compound Words – Breaking the compound word into simple words e.g. into makes in and to.
Mnemonic – using an aide memoire e.g. because – Big Elephants Can Add Up Sums Easily
Using Analogy – If you know how to spell one word you can spell similar words e.g. if you can spell hill, you can spell mill, will, fill etc.
Week Four (Spelling Rules)
The focus is on learning and using a spelling rule which involves the children in selecting and revisiting all of the problem solving phonics into spelling and thinking strategies they have used over the month.
An example of a spelling rule is:
The letter ‘q’ is always followed by the letter ‘u.’
Together they make the ‘kw’ sound.