Spelling
SCODE Spelling
At St Philips, from Years 3 to 6, we follow the SCODE Spelling Scheme. This is a programme that allows the children to decide upon which strategies, knowledge and skills they are more confident to use to ensure more accurate use of spellings. It is also a programme that we have selected as it focuses upon ensuring that the fundamentals of phonics based learning continue with the children into KS2. It encompasses a wider range of strategies to help children understand the etymology of words - something we consider vital to the children's development and understanding of language.
The focus of the programme is on the teaching of spelling, which embraces knowledge of spelling conventions – patterns and rules; but integral to the teaching is the opportunity to promote the learning of spellings, including statutory words, common exceptions and personal spellings.
The Teaching Sequence:
The teaching of spelling follows the same pattern in each year group to ensure consistency and continuity of provision through the years. In each lesson, there is a heavy focus upon phonological awareness and their recognition of alternative phonemes to spell. The sequential approach follows the model below:
· Revision of previous year group expectations in spelling to activate their prior knowledge. This includes revising alternative phoneme/grapheme correspondences
· Teach and Introduce the new concept through Explain, Investigate, Model
· Practise learning through Individual/group work. There are opportunities to extend/explore the concept independently before they Investigate and Generalise
· Apply/Assess - Assess through independent application and transfer skills into other areas of learning
Assessment:
• Testing – this is achieved by a baseline at the start of each half term and an end of unit assessment on words covered at the end of the half term
• Dictation
• Explaining their understanding
• Independent application in writing
• Frequent learning of statutory and curriculum words.
How can Parents/Carers help encourage their child’s learning with SCODE?
On a Monday, your child will come home with SuperScoder homework. This will be instead of Spelling Shed. Spelling homework will be due in every Friday. These tasks are an opportunity for your child to practise what they have learnt in the classroom, they do not introduce new learning. To engage your child further and also to help to support your child with spelling at home we have created some videos on our website to go alongside these tasks. For these videos along with further information, hints and tips head over to our website www.scodespelling.com
Tips to learn spellings at home:
Learning at home needs to be an extension of the practice in school. It may be useful to consider the following:
• limiting the number of words you learn in one go. Break down the words into manageable amounts, to ensure success and enable deeper learning
• making sure pupils and parents have access to the range of learning strategies which have been taught in school, to use in home learning (see help sheet below)
• assessing spellings in context, for example: learning spellings in a given sentence, generating sentences for each word, assessing through unseen dictated sentences
Spelling online games to further support your child's learning: