At Anton, we firmly believe that good spelling is an essential skill that allows the children to communicate their understanding in all curriculum subjects. We want our pupils to be equipped with a range of strategies for spelling and to be able to apply these when spelling words in their independent writing. We want our pupils to enjoy exploring and investigating the rules, patterns and the contradictions of the English language, leading to the children developing a love of language and the confidence to spell more challenging and ambitious vocabulary.

Aims: At Anton Junior School our Spelling Curriculum aims to:

• Build on children’s prior knowledge in order to enable them to access their next steps in learning.
• Ensure that children know how to use a dictionary to check spellings effectively.
• Enable children to write with confidence and creativity, while developing the skills to self-edit, correct and improve.
• Encourage children to be imaginative, creative and challenge themselves with vocabulary.
• Promote a positive and confident attitude towards trying unknown spellings.
• Help children use their phonic skills effectively when segmenting phonemes for spelling.
• Help children use a range of effective spelling strategies and know age-appropriate spelling rules.
• Develop an interest in words, their meanings and their origins, developing a growing vocabulary both for speaking and for writing.
• Show an understanding the principles underpinning word construction (phonemic, morphemic and etymological).
• Build children’s self-images as spellers.
• Ensure children are able spell accurately in order to confidently communicate their skills in a literacy context. 

Anton uses ‘Spelling Shed’ to support our aims and ensure there is a consistent teaching approach to spelling across the school. Your child also has access to Spelling Shed at home, where their weekly spellings will be uploaded for them to practise (see supporting spellings at home document for more information). Spelling Shed is a comprehensive, yet accessible, progression in the teaching of spelling. Guidance is provided on how to teach the strategies, knowledge and skills pupils need to learn to become confident and accurate spellers. It focusses on spelling rules as well as covering statutory spellings. The teaching sequence we follow looks like this:

Revise and Teach: Activates prior knowledge and revisits previous linked learning. Introduce the new concept: explain, investigate, model, use of spelling voice, discuss etymology of words.

Syllable and phoneme segmenting: Children are taught how to segment and chunk sounds using their knowledge of syllables and phonemes.

Practise/ Apply: Children explore the concept independently, generalize rules, spot patterns, correct mistakes, apply to sentences.

Assess: Spellings are assessed weekly through a given dictation. 

Our children who are unable to access their year group’s curriculum will be following a similar teaching pattern, but focusing on Year 1 / 2 high frequency words or the Year 3/ 4 statutory words depending on age and ability. These focus groups are fluid and are constantly reviewed and amended if needed. 

Assessments:

After 3 taught lessons, pupils complete a weekly spelling test, which is marked and returned to pupils. The 'tests' are in the form of a dictation and the words are all related to a specific spelling rule or from the statutory words spelling list. The children's weekly spelling lists can be found at the bottom of their homework sheet.