Spelling Tips!

[UmSusu]

You can google common spelling mistakes and some of the lists give helpful hints on tricky words. Also, I think the main problem with a lot of children's spellings stem either from their own mis-pronounciation of words (eg library) or that they are unable break down a word into syllables : try practising this with longer words and get them to spell each part so they don't miss out chunks of words. I guess this applies more to longer words : there are a lot of shorter words that children just keep getting wrong too - I couldn't spell 'who' until I was about 11 ( I kept writing 'hoo' no matter how many times I was told otherwise!)

UmSusu

[FluffyD]

I was trying to drum "septuagenarian" into my DS on the walk to school and this was one of this weeks spellings and he couldn't grasp it. In the end I had to break it down into chunks of septu-agen-arian for him to get it.
He got 16/16 so it must have sunk in!

[Samlet]

Why on earth would they put that in a spelling test?

[doodles]

I was taught an Envelope is stationery and an unmoving train is stationary

[yoyo123]

doodles, you have made my life ( well at least as far as stationary goes) complete!

I only ever knew it was E for envelope!

[FluffyD]

Why on earth would they put that in a spelling test?

Lordy knows! He had a whole host of words that would rarely be used....

Octagenarian
Nonagon
Nonagenarian
Septuagenarian

were all in between words that would be only slightly more likely to be used.....

Sextet
Setuplet
Octave

There are more, they normally do 16, but I threw them in the bin on the walk to school He got them all right so was happy.

[wonderwoman]

Well I'm absolutely shocking at spelling. Was hopeless as a child, but always managed to get full marks in spelling tests. As a teacher spelling tests are a certain skill and have little to do with spelling ability.

I use spelling tests because: parents expect them! they are school policy and I can introduce lots of interesting vocabulary. I have been asked why some words are in tests too. (I would think FluffyD's DC has been learning about number prefixes)

I discuss spelling strategies on a daily basis in the hope of reducing errors. This is what has helped me: use the words on worksheets, the board, wall displays - there is no excuse for getting those wrong. Mnemonics really helped me and I still use them - necessary - never eat cake eat sardine sandwiches and remain young, stationery / stationary as above, learning root words, homophones were really hard, but things like ear for listening in hear as opposed to here and heard / herd. Sometimes I say the word wrong in my head - pigeon = pig ee on. I'm always looking for things like that now and I found that phonics were not that useful as a child or for me as an adult - I just can't ever remember which ai / ay / a-e to use. There's probably something wrong with my visual memory! And use joined writing, somehow it helps to fix the word shape in your head.
And as Umsusu suggested - I just learnt those commonly misspelt words - definitely etc.
Oh and I'm very good at using a dictionary - but sometimes it's impossible to find a word if I've got the first letter wrong - so I use another instead.