The teaching of Spelling is in line with the requirements of The National Curriculum (2014). To be able to spell correctly is an essential life skill. When spelling becomes automatic, pupils can concentrate on the content of their writing and the making of meaning. We have an effective approach to the teaching of phonics in our school where needed. This is further built on throughout school, where the children continue to develop their spelling ability through our Spelling programme. It is a progressive systematic spelling programme that covers all National Curriculum expectations for all year groups.

Once pupils have successfully completed their Little Wandle SSP, they will be assessed on our Junior Spelling intervention programme and assigned a learning group. There are 6 stages in our spelling programme. It is expected that most children, having completed Little Wandle, will enter on Junior Spelling 4 or 5. Within these adaptive learning groups, children are taught using a range of strategies (including revisiting and revising their phonic sounds) to develop their understanding of spelling rules. Through dictated sentences, spelling, grammar and punctuation is taught and progress measured. During their daily sessions, emphasis is put on direct teaching, practising, applying, self-marking and correcting.

When writing, children should be concentrating on higher order thinking skills and should simply ‘have a go’ at spelling. Where words are spelt incorrectly, they are highlighted in their books for the children to edit and correct. Staff also recognise common errors in class and these are added to vocabulary banks.