Spelling Help Page

Spellings Used On Previous SAT Papers

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Here are some activities you can do with your child to help strengthen their spelling.

• Help your child to understand words are made up of syllables and each syllable has a sound. Say a word and ask how many syllables there are. Help your child to spell each syllable at a time.
• Write words in different coloured pens to make a rainbow or in shaving foam, flour or sand over and over again to help your child remember them.
• With your child, look at the parts of the words which they find difficult - use colours to highlight just the tricky bit.
• Look for the prefixes and suffixes in words, e.g. -tion, -ness and learn these chunks. Explore with your child how many words have the same chunks at the beginning or the end of words.
• Use flashcards or play matching games to let your child see the words lots of times - the more times they see the word, the better they will be able to read and spell it.
• Use cut out or magnetic letters to build words together, then mix up the letters and rebuild the word together.
• Use mnemonics - silly sentences where the first letter of each word makes up. the word to be spelled.
• Find smaller words in the bigger word, for example 'there is a hen in when'.
• Go over the rules of spelling together, e.g. a 'q' is always followed by a 'u'.

Please see the files below for more ideas to help your child at home.

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