Spelling

Each week, we will be looking at a different sound (phoneme) and its corresponding combinations of letters that make that sound (grapheme). This is building on the knowledge children gained in phonics lessons in key stage 1.

A sound (phoneme) can have different spellings (graphemes). For example, the 'ee' sound can be spelt 'ee' as in knee, 'ea' as in tea and 'ey' as in key.

Therefore, we will look at some of the combinations of letters (graphemes) that make up that week's sound. We will do this daily in our spelling sessions and on Friday we will have a spelling test. The spelling test on Friday will test whether the children use the correct grapheme for the word (1 mark) and whether they spell the whole word correctly (1 mark). 

All children will look at the same sound each week; however, year 5 and year 6 will have different spelling words they will be tested on. Some children will have alternative words to explore instead. All spelling lists can be found below should you wish to support your child's learning.

This is a more creative approach to spelling compared to learning spelling rules (and their many exceptions), so should embed a stronger knowledge into your child's spelling and allow them to use this knowledge within their writing elsewhere rather than just spelling tests. 

Spellings included in the weekly spelling lists are chosen to align with the Year 5 and 6 Word List (below), the Year 5 and 6 Spelling Objectives (below), topical words for our learning in other subjects and tier 2 vocabulary words (words that are less common in day-to-day speech, but have a high frequency in written texts). 

National Curriculum expectations

Below, you can find the list of spellings that the Department for Education expects children to be able to spell by the end of year 6 and the national curriculum objectives for spelling: