As part of our cycle of review the teaching staff recently reviewed our spelling programmes. As part of this process we wanted to ensure parents understood exactly what was happening in classes, so we have created a simple table that outlines the spelling focus in each year level as the children move through the school. If you have any questions relating to this school-wide approach please do not hesitate to discuss it with your child(ren)’s teacher and/ or Senior Leadership.
| Spelling Guidelines 2018 | ||
| At Cornwall Park District School, spelling is taught directly and our spelling pedagogy follows the guidelines based on Switch onto Spelling by Joy Alcock, (2008), MJA Publishing.
Our aim in learning spelling is to build the reading circuits (upper and lower) of the literate brain. These two circuits connect our brain’s visual and auditory modules and our programmes aim to build these circuits between these modules. Each component of our spelling programme aims to develop these areas to form balanced literacy in our brain. The strategies we use to read and spell unfamiliar words are critical for successful reading and spelling. Good readers and spellers can read and spell words that they have never seen before because of what they know about how words work in written English. They can use the knowledge of phonology, orthography, morphology and rules and convention to read and spell unfamiliar words accurately when they need to. (Alcock, 2005) Our spelling programme incorporates these key learnings: • phonological properties of words – sounds inside words • complex orthographic structures – spelling patterns that represent the sounds • morphological structures – meanings of parts of words • the rules and conventions that underpin English spellings – which determine why words are spelled in particular ways Knowledge about each of these processes will help students read and write unfamiliar words correctly Essential list Programme Focus across the Years |
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| Year 0-2 Learning to spell | Year 3-4 Learning about Spelling | Year 5-6 Using Spelling |
| New Zealand Curriculum Levels
Level 1 (Year 1 & 2 students)
Students who are spelling proficiently at level 1 will be able to spell some high frequency words (Lists 1-3) correctly. Year 1
Year 2
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Learn to Spell
New Zealand Curriculum Levels Level 2 (Year 3 & 4 students):
Students who are spelling proficiently at level 2 will be able to spell most high frequency words (Lists 1-4) correctly.
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Learn to Spell
New Zealand Curriculum Levels Level 3 (Year 5 & 6 students):
Students who are spelling proficiently at level 3 will be able to spell most high frequency words (Lists 1-6) correctly.
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