Every Thursday morning, the children will be introduced to their list of spellings for the week and taught about each list so they are familiar with the pattern.

Then, at home, they will be able to log into Spelling Shed and play online games that are based on their spelling list.  There will be no test at school, but there will be group ‘have a go’ sessions and we will talk about strategies to remember how to spell words in that list.

The list will be available from the Thursday through to the following Wednesday and new list will then become available on each Thursday incorporating the new week’s spellings.

Common Exception Words

Common exception words (often called 'tricky' words) do not follow the conventional rules for the letter sounds contained within the words.  For example 'the', 'me', 'where', 'because' etc, children are encouraged to learn how to spell these words by remembering the whole word.  For short words this is a relatively simple process but where words are longer, we use strategies at school to help children remember the correct spelling, for example memorable acronyms

big elephants can always understand small elephants - because

oh you lucky duck - to remember the 'ould' spelling in could, would and should

There are a list of words for Year 1 and Year 2 and the children are expected to be able to write these words correctly by the end of the academic year.

These words are incorporated within the Spelling Shed lists but any practise you can do with your child at home would be very helpful.