Spelling Shed teaching curriculum
It is nearly five years since we launched Spelling Shed and it has since become the number one selling spelling app in several countries.
Since our inception, we have continued to evaluate the latest spelling research and collaborate with schools and educators in order to develop our spelling programme.
At our core, we remain steadfast in our beliefs that repeated practice, short-term retrieval and small-step goal achievement is key to spelling improvement and this is why our technology-driven games remain in place.
The significant changes can be seen across our curriculum of lesson planning, teaching resources and printable handouts.
Each lesson…
- includes more features to enhance the teaching and learning in your setting.
- is designed to be flexible to fit within the variable timetables that schools have.
- has main teaching inputs, which can then be followed up with additional activities that can be carried out immediately after the input during an extended session or revisited throughout the week in order to consolidate the learning further.
- has elements of the key areas below embedded in its core.
Orthography
“Orthography is how patterns of letters are used to make certain spoken sounds in a language.”
In the new Spelling Shed lessons, students will continue to build on the firm foundations built while studying phonics in their early years of education. They will continue to break down spellings into the smallest units of sound and cluster them into syllables in order to read and write words efficiently.
Through adult-led discussion and investigation children will become more secure in their knowledge of English orthography based on the frequency and position of the sounds within words.
Morphology
“Morphology describes how words are structured into subcomponents to give meaning.”
Children will study words; word parts; their meanings and how this affects spelling.
There are lessons throughout the curriculum that consolidate children’s knowledge of common morphemes such as root formations, prefixes and suffixes.
Etymology
“Etymology describes the origins of words, which can lead to certain patterns of spelling.”
Most lessons in the curriculum include an etymology element that allows educators to teach the children about the origin of the words that they are learning about.
Children will be able to see how the English language has, over time, borrowed and integrated words and spellings from a range of source languages. For example, the latinate verbs which follow Latin prepositions in English words such as: -act (do), -pute (think) or -opt (choose).
What does research say?
The EEF Improving Literacy In Key Stage 2 Guidance Report says:
“ Fast and accurate spelling of an extensive vocabulary is a key component of writing fluency. Many of the skills that support word reading will also support spelling, but spelling demands great specificity and has different motor demands. There is limited high quality evidence about how to teach spelling, but it is clear that spelling should be actively taught rather than simply tested.
Phonics provides a foundation for effective spelling, which can be applied alongside other strategies such as focusing on morphemes. By analysing the types of spelling errors pupils make it is possible to provide support specific to their needs.
The report goes on to identify the most common spelling errors as being phonological, orthographical or morphological.
Spelling Shed 2022 provides the tools to explicitly teach in a way that addresses these kinds of needs while giving 100% National Curriculum coverage.