"TELL ME AND I FORGET. TEACH ME AND I REMEMBER. INVOLVE ME AND I LEARN!"
At Mapplewell Primary School we have a balanced and consistent approach to the planning and teaching of spelling. We aim for children to be able to apply a range of phonemic, morphological, lexical and etymological approaches to spelling.
At Mapplewell Primary School we teach spelling by following key National Curriculum objectives, which take children through statutory and non-statutory spelling lists in each age phase. As a school we follow the Spelling Shed approach, which gives 100% coverage of the National curriculum.
We ensure that children are exposed to weekly taught spelling lessons with opportunities to practise and apply these skills built in throughout the week in a variety of ways.
Some activity examples are: scrambled words, spot the error, hidden spellings, investigating rules and patterns, crosswords/word-search and exploring letter patterns, etymology and morphology.
Weekly spellings are sent home to practise which can be done on paper or using the Spelling Shed app, these are also available on the children’s seesaw accounts.
Teachers set 'assignments' using Spelling Shed so pupils can practice rules and patterns in interactive games either in school or at home. They all receive a login for the website and use this at their leisure at home.
Spellings quizzes occur weekly after which children are given verbal feedback. Spellings scores are sent home to parents.
Spellings are tracked weekly on a spreadsheet. This gives class teachers a clear indication of the "flight path" of improvement, or indicated where pupils may require bespoke intervention.
Handwriting is a skill which, like reading and spelling, affects written communication across the curriculum. Below is a button which shows the handwriting policy in full, including an introduction on page 2. This policy is followed daily and all pupils have time at the start of every Literacy lesson to set ensure this becomes embedded and high standards for handwriting are set at the start of every session.
Below is an example of a Learning Objective that would be used in Literacy. the same template is used throughout school for consistency. The bottom box is always taken directly from the Handwriting policy and gives pupils a clear model of the Handwriting focus for the session. Where it is appropriate the same focus will be continued to give pupils time to embed new learning.