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Making spelling fun
Ways for you and your children to enjoy spelling together and
so help improve your children’s spelling skills.
The English language is spoken by people all over the world but it’s
not an easy language to spell correctly. There are far too many
exceptions to the rules. But there is one rule that has no exceptions
– children learn far more quickly and easily if they are enjoying
themselves. So the most important thing to bear in mind when helping
your child with their spelling is to have fun together.
At Ravenstone, children start learning the THRASS 500 words which
are the high frequency words that they will meet and need when
reading and writing. When the children can spell these 500 words
they will then go on to another scheme where the spellings are based
on particular patterns.
What you can do as parents
You have a real part to play in supporting the work being done in teaching
spelling. Teachers can introduce children to new words and show them
how to remember how these words are spelled, but there’s only so much
time they can spend on this. You can make a difference to your child’s
spelling by taking the trouble at home to reinforce the work being done in
the classroom.
The most important thing to do
Encourage your child to you their THRASS chart. Encourage your
child to attempt to spell new words and praise their efforts. Don’t just
point out their mistakes, first tell your child what he or she got right in
their attempt, before helping them to make corrections. They will
probably have used the right phoneme (sound) but chosen the wrong
grapheme (spelling choice), celebrate what they have right and then help
them find the right grapheme. And never just spell words for them!
Encourage your child to try spelling the word in parts, by breaking it up
into phonemes and sounding it out.
Look for compound words, (eg. flowerpot, newspaper), prefixes (eg.
antisocial, unhappy) and root words (bene – beneficial).
At Ravenstone we use the following method and this is the method we
want children to follow at home too.
“Say, Name, Cover, Write, Check.”
1. Look carefully at each word
3. Name all the letters out aloud
5. Write the word
2. Say the word out loud
4. Cover the word
6. Check your spelling
Tips for helping younger children with their weekly
spellings

Give your child some coloured crayons and paper. Tell them that you
want to turn their spelling words into beautiful rainbow words. Let
them write their spelling words with a crayon. When they have done
this, go over each word again using a crayon in another colour. Now go
over each word once more with another colour. (Do not use black or
brown crayons.) By the time they have made a rainbow word with the
different colours, the repetition will have helped them learn how to
spell it. A variation of this activity is to write the words with coloured
chalk on black paper.

Write each spelling word on two index cards and play a matching game
together.

Let your child use their finger to write the words on your back and
then try to guess what word they have written. Now reverse the
process.

Take turns to write the words in the air and see if you can read what
each other has written.

Have fun together by finding unusual places and ways to write the
words. For example, try writing the words in sand, whipped cream,
shaving foam, in bubbly bath water or on the condensation on a
bathroom mirror.

Play the ‘plasticine writing challenge’. Flatten a piece of plasticine and
use a pencil to ‘write’ a spelling word in it. Now look at the word
together. After a while, smooth over the plasticine and challenge your
child to write the word from memory.

Encourage your child to draw pictures of their spelling words and to
write the word underneath it.

Give your child a newspaper, magazine or comic and see if they can
find their spelling words.

Cut a picture from a newspaper or a magazine and encourage your
child to use their spelling words to write a sentence or story about
the picture.

Make your own flashcards to study and review the spelling words with
your child.
Spelling strategies for older children
A race against time
Take the role of quizmaster and set your child a time limit for the
completion of each of the following activities and award points for each
correct answer.

Write each word five times.

Write the words in alphabetical order.

Write the plural of each word.

Write the opposite of each word.

Write a sentence using each word. See if your child can write a
sentence with two or more spelling words. Award a point for each
word he or she uses.
Games
Scramble
When your child has learned their spelling words and is confident they
know them, write them down in a scrambled fashion and set your child the
challenge of unscrambling them again, eg. denlysud = suddenly.
Crossword puzzles
Work together with your child to create a crossword puzzle using the
spelling words.
Word search
Make a word search using the spelling words and ask your child to do the
same. When you have both finished making your word search, swap them
over and see if you can find the hidden words.
Scrabble
Let your child use Scrabble tiles to spell the words. Then ask them to add
up the score for each word. Which word is worth the most points? The
least? When you have done this, why not play a proper game of Scrabble?
It’s an excellent game to play as it really makes you focus on words and
how to spell them.
Shannon’s game
This game is rather like Hangman except that the letters have to be
guessed in sequence, eg.
B________
Br _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Bre _ _ _ _ _ _
Brea _ _ _ _ _
Break _ _ _ _
Breakf _ _ _
Breakfa _ _
Breakfas _
Breakfast
Start by writing the first letter of a word. Then put down dashes to
represent the other letters. Let your child have five guesses (or ten if
they are not confident) for the next letter. If he or she doesn’t guess
correctly, put the letter in for them and go on to the next. Continue until
the whole word is completed. As an extra prompt for guessing letters, it
may help your child to have the alphabet written out in front of them. As
your child gradually grows in confidence, you can begin to cut down the
number of guesses they are allowed.
Word hunt
Give your child a dictionary. Then read out the words they have to learn
to spell. Now see how quickly they can find these words in the dictionary.
Challenges
Another good way of engaging your child’s interest is to set them a
challenge of some kind, which involves them working with letters.
Take a letter
For a real challenge, have your child use the letters of the spelling words
to make sentences. For example, the word ‘young’ could become ‘yellow
otters understand nuclear gadgets’.
A skeleton story
Explain to your child that the spelling words are going to form the
‘skeleton’ or framework on which they will construct a story. For example,
if they had the following ten words: traveller, storm, castle, dwarf,
candle, stairs, bed, shadow, scream, breakfast – they could use them to
make up a story like this.
The weary traveller was caught in a terrible storm. Then, in a bright flash
of lightning he saw a gloomy castle. He ran to it and knocked on the door.
The door creaked open but there was no one there. Then the man looked
down and saw a dwarf holding a candle. The creature told the man to
follow him and led the way up some rickety stairs. They walked into a
small room containing a four-poster bed. Cobwebs covered the pillow but
the man was so tired he soon fell into a fitful sleep. Then something woke
him. He opened his eyes and saw a huge shadow on the wall. He gave a
terrified scream but then saw it was made by the dwarf who said, ‘Sorry
to disturb you but I forgot to ask what you want for your breakfast.’
How to remember spellings
It is true that we remember what we want to remember. It is also right
that practice is vital for memory and that the easiest things to
remember are those we have found out for ourselves. So you need to
remember these points when helping your children to remember their
spellings.
However, it’s a fact of life that we tend to remember best the things we
have just learned. So don’t be surprised or cross if your child forgets
how to spell most of the words you worked so hard on together the week
before. Just build in some time to look at these words again.
Using mnemonics
An effective way of remembering how to spell words is to use mnemonics.
A mnemonic is really a trick that jogs the memory. When your child has a
spelling to learn that he or she can’t seem to grasp then making up a
mnemonic together may be the answer. For instance, if they were
struggling with the word ‘weight’, which does not match the ‘i before e
except after c’ rule, then the mnemonic ‘What’s the weight of eight
people?’ might help them. Another mnemonic could take each letter of the
word weight and make a simple sentence with them – ‘Which elephant is
going home tonight?’ Making up mnemonics with your child is fun and
allows them to find enjoyable, creative solutions to remembering hard
spellings. Here are some other examples of mnemonics you could use with
your child.

Piece – I would like a piece of pie.

Believe – Never believe a lie.

Separate has a rat in it.

Build – U and I build a house.

Because – Big elephants can’t always understand small elephants.

Miserable – A miser is always miserable.

Bicycle – Don’t ride your bicycle in icy weather.

Hear – has an ear in it.
Key things to remember when helping your child with
spellings
1
Practice makes perfect.
Practice only makes perfect if you’re practising it right. Each time your
child spells a word wrongly, they’re ‘practising’ the wrong spelling.
2
Don’t try to learn all the words on a spelling list at once.
Even if your child wants to learn them all in one sitting, encourage them
to practise a few at a time. Find out what works best for them – it may
be one or two words or as many as three or four. Each time they learn
another word, go back and practise the ones they’ve learned before it,
because practice makes perfect.
3
Review the words they know.
If your child already knows some of the words on the list, have them
practise them once or twice each before you start tackling the ones they
don’t know yet – it will help boost their confidence.
4
Encourage your child to use the words they’ve practised.
That’s the reason for learning them in the first place. Words learned on
their own are soon forgotten. So encourage him or her to keep a
notebook containing all the words they’ve learned to spell. This will be
their personal dictionary and they will be more likely to use it than a
conventional one. Let your child write sentences and stories using these
words. They can look the words up in their notebook to make sure they’re
still spelling them correctly. Besides, using them is practising them and,
as we all know, practice makes perfect.
If you have any questions or concerns please see your child’s teacher or
Catherine Dowler (literacy co-ordinator).