Spelling strategies

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Strategy 1: Look, cover, write, check.

This is the oldest and most widely taught of all the spelling strategies

around. To learn a difficult spelling or list of spellings you have the words

written down or typed out correctly. You take a good look at the word(s) and

then cover it up. You then write down the word(s) you are trying to learn and

then uncover the original, correctly spelt versions to check if you got the

spellings correct when you wrote them down.

You can repeat this as many times as you need in order to remember the

difficult word you need to learn.

Here is a list of 6 words that people often spell incorrectly. Use the look, cover, write, check strategy to learn these.

Science

Design

Answer

Listen

Autumn

Length

Strategy 2: Mnemonics.

This is where you create a rhyme to help you remember how to spell words

or difficult parts of words. This technique is particularly useful for words

that don't follow the rules!

Here's an example of a mnemonic: one collar, two sleeves is

always necessary.

Mnemonics focus on the difficult part within a

long word. The rhyme should include the whole word that needs to be spelt as a

way of practising it and seeing if it looks right before you use the word in

the piece you are writing

Here is a list of 6 words that people often spell incorrectly. Create a mnemonic for each word that helps you to remember the difficult part o the word. The sillier the mnemonic, the more likely you are to remember it!

Friend

Practice

Stationery

Signature

Heard

Subtle

Strategy 3: Acronyms.

Similar to mnemonics but this time the word you need to spell is an

acronym, made up from the first letter of each word in the rhyme you have

created e.g. to help you remember how to spell the word 'heir' you

could use the anagram

He

Enjoys

Interesting

Riches

Here is a list of 6 words that people often spell incorrectly. Create a rhyme where you can use the first letter of each word in the rhyme to form the word you need to spell, the acronym.. The sillier the rhyme, the more likely you are to remember the acronym!

Sword

Hymn

Wrong

Read

Break

Reign

Strategy 4: Words within word.

This strategy works well for remembering part of longer words or for remembering the correct spelling of some common homophones (words that sound the same but have different meanings). When we look at words, especially longer ones, we can often see shorter words within them for example, the word vegetable has the word 'table' at the end. So if this was a word we had difficulty remembering we could try remembering the 'table' at the end and the 'vege' at the beginning.

Here is a list of 6 words that all have other words hidden within them. See if you can spot the hidden words!

There

Separate

Definite

Piece

Immediate

Temperature

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