Spellings in Willow

Every half term, children will bring home a sheet in their green spelling books that has their spellings for the half term separated into weeks. These spellings are a mixture of spelling rules from the curriculum and key words for Year 5/6 (common exception words). Learning spellings encourages the children to make links between word patterns, transfer their phonic knowledge and be more accurate, fluent and independent writers. Helping them to understand the meaning of the words is also helpful and finding other examples of the spelling pattern. Dictating short sentences for them to write or getting them to generate verbal sentences for the words is a good idea. We recommend you practise spellings little but often. In Year 6, there will never be more than ten spellings per week.
Ideas for making spelling practise more interesting:

• Rainbow write: use different colours or fonts for each letter of the word to make it more memorable e.g. one
• Draw a picture(s) around the word to help them make links
• Play games like ‘heads up’, hangman, do a spelling bee and others we’ve done in class