Key Stage One spelling rules?

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ourmaminhavana
Posts: 966
Joined: Mon Sep 07, 2009 11:14 am

Key Stage One spelling rules?

Post by ourmaminhavana »

I'm looking for a little bit of advice please re very simple spelling rules for DD who is in Year 1. I know a couple, but would love some more!
eg knock off the 'e' before adding 'ing'
double the consonant before adding 'ing' if there's a single vowel before it.
What does anybody else use to help their young DC learn to spell?! :)
fatbananas
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Joined: Mon Mar 08, 2010 2:03 pm

Re: Key Stage One spelling rules?

Post by fatbananas »

http://oxforddictionaries.com/words/spe ... s-and-tips" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/factshe ... le-letters" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Hi Ourmam, I wouldn't say the above are necessarily for DC but they helped me know what the rules were when I was going through KS1 spellings with DS1, to the extent now that he will repeat the rule to me, with a bored tone, before I get a chance to repeat my great pearls of wisdom when we're going through KS2 spellings ... :roll: :wink:
Seize the day ... before it seizes you.
yoyo123
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Joined: Mon Jun 18, 2007 3:32 pm
Location: East Kent

Re: Key Stage One spelling rules?

Post by yoyo123 »

spelling is taught with phonics. have a look at" letters and sounds" sounding out the words, choosing the correct way of writing the vowel phoneme etc plus the "tricky" words which don't conform. The "magic e" isn;t taught now, rather is is a split digraph oe, but the e goes after the consonant.

it's in 6 phases starting in Reception so you are probably looking at phase 5 /6
https://www.education.gov.uk/publicatio ... 00281-2007" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
ourmaminhavana
Posts: 966
Joined: Mon Sep 07, 2009 11:14 am

Re: Key Stage One spelling rules?

Post by ourmaminhavana »

Thanks FB. :)
Thanks, they look brilliant Yoyo, but I can't access them! :oops: I'm not sure if it's just me? It says they've been archived, but when I clicked on the download it half downloaded then stopped.... Then I got an error message. :(
Thanks I'm onto the phonics: 'o' split 'e', phonemes, graphemes etc, but do they teach spelling rules too through programmes such as RWI, Yoyo, as well as the sounds?! For example, how does a child know whether to use 'i' split 'e' for might or 'ght'? Is it just use and familiarity?
yoyo123
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Location: East Kent

Re: Key Stage One spelling rules?

Post by yoyo123 »

they do a lot of sorting of the words according to how the sound is spelt.

That way you can see which is the most common, which one is at the end of a word etc...

Sorry the links didn't work properly.

Try this one, it's to the BBC Words and Pictures programme and shows the long vowel sounds like 'igh'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/wordsandpi ... ndex.shtml" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;.
mystery
Posts: 8927
Joined: Tue Jul 21, 2009 10:56 pm

Re: Key Stage One spelling rules?

Post by mystery »

It's a jolly good question OMIH and one I've been trying to fathom for a while. Modern synthetic phonics programmes e.g. RWI, certainly in KS1 do not seem to teach any "rules" as such. For example, they seem to expect to the child to notice for themselves perhaps that an ay comes at the end of a word stem, and that ai does not come at the end of a word stem.

I think there are some much older synthetic phonics programs that do teach some "general rules or patterns" - of course there are almost always exceptions. I think there comes a point in a lot of the modern SP programs that you are just expected to learn that in this word you spell the /ay/ sound like this, and in that word you spell it like this - through banks of word lists.

Phase 6 of letters and sounds and Support for Spelling (probably archived too) goes through suffixes and prefixes. I think possibly the RWI spelling programme (designed for late KS1 and KS2) maybe goes through the kind of thing you are thinking of but I'm not entirely sure because I've never read it through.


If you look at the Sounds Write website you can download a lexicon of words organised according to the different GPCs. There might be some general rules in the spiel before that.

If you find the answer, good luck. I got frustrated with this early in KS1, but thankfully once DD1 started reading loads more once she was proficient it started to all come together. But I did feel that we are somewhere halfway between two methods at the moment - the "old ways" of teaching spelling seem to have gone, and the new way doesn't seem to have been fully worked out yet. I think synthetic phonics well taught can really speed up the early stages of reading and spelling, but I don't fully understand how it is supposed to work out for the later stages yet.
Fluffy66
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Joined: Fri Oct 23, 2009 7:18 pm
Location: NW Kent

Re: Key Stage One spelling rules?

Post by Fluffy66 »

Although your post OMH was last week i went on a phonics course yesterday for Teachers and TA's in Kent and might have a couple of suggestions for you. The lady teaching the course was very insistent, whilst laughing, that in England there is a system to our language :lol:

Firstly, which you may know, Letters and Sounds have 2 charts that you can find by googling Simple Speed Sounds and Complex Speed Sounds Charts. These list in order all the different grapheme-phonemes correspondences (GPC). Then in conjunction with this she showed us a book called Reading with Phonics by Prim-ed (hope its ok to mention) that has both a short text and long text exercise for each grapheme where the child has to pick out, for example every word with the ai/ay/a_e sound and group them. Seemed like a good idea as it shows a child, in one place, the different ways one particular grapheme can be spelt and then you can look at patterns. She suggested a lot of this sorting of words with same sound but different spelling.

The different ways of adding ing/ed/le we are teaching now in Y3. But the suggestion was to work on knowing the root word and what can be added and still make sense. You should be able to google Support for Spelling which includes lots of rules of spellings.

Fluffy
yoyo123
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Location: East Kent

Re: Key Stage One spelling rules?

Post by yoyo123 »

Letters and Sounds is really the next evolution of Phonographix and then Sounds Write I've used the root word approach quite well with y6 one to one. It;s like everything else really, finding the right approach for that child. I have always been against the "one size fits all"ness that seems to exist in eduction. The best teachers have always taken the best from new initiatives ( or should that be every new initiative??) while retaining the best bits of old ways. havingsaid that most teachers I know really like the L& S approach
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