EXCELLENT SPELLING TEST

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The South Australian Spelling Test has been around for a number of years and is a staple of nearly all Australian primary and early secondary teachers assessment schedule. 

The test consists of 70 words and when completed allows the teacher to generate a spelling age for that student based upon their score.

It is a great tool for quickly identifying students who need assistance with their spelling skills.

The test and it's complete instructions can be downloadedhere.

It takes around 15 minutes to administer to a class.

SPELLINGCITY.COM - INTERACTIVE GAMES AND TASKS AROUND YOUR OWN WORDS

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I am sure that we have all used a number of web sites that offer some really good spelling games and activities for students to complete online or print out. 

Whilst they are a great resorurce, it is a bit limting in the manner that your kids cannot actually enter their own spelling words and complete activities based around them

SpellingCity overcomes this problem by allowing students to enter their words either individually, or in bulk and it then creates games and activities based around them.

Implications for teaching.

I feel that SpellingCity is a great task for kids to do as part of their homework or literacy rotations after they have been through their writing books with a teacher and located 10 or so words that they need to work on.

We would love to hear of any other great spelling games you are aware of.

The Foundations of Spelling Success

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To develop a foundation for spelling success and strengthen spelling skills the student needs to:

  1. Develop Phonemic Awareness: Phonemic awareness (PA) is critical to spelling development. The child needs to be able to recognize and distinguish the sounds within spoken words in order to then translate these sounds back to print. If the child has a phonemic weakness, you need to help that child strengthen their phonemic awareness with PA training. The great news is that research proves PA training has “strong and significant effects on reading and spelling development” (National Reading Panel) See Phonemic Awareness Explained.

  2. Understand phonemic nature of spelling: The student needs to understand written English is based on a phonemic code. In other words printed black squiggles represent sounds in the word.

  3. Learn the phonemic code: The student needs to learn the complete phonemic code. The English phonemic code is complex and the student needs to learn the complete code in order to handle these complexities. The student needs to learn the code systematically beginning with the basic code and then adding the complexities with vowel combinations, r-controlled combinations and other intricacies. Although there is code overlap (more than one way to write a sound), irregular and unexpected spellings, English is based on this phonemic code.

  4. Approach the process of spelling phonemically: The student needs to base their spelling on converting the sounds in the spoken word into print. They need to write the phonemic code for the sounds in the word. Spelling needs to be approached as recoding sound to print. Once again phonemic awareness is a critical skill. The child must have the phonemic awareness to recognize and distinguish the sounds within words. If your child has a phonemic weakness, you need to help the child strengthen their phonemic awareness.

  5. Acquire knowledge of spelling patterns and learn helpful guidelines: The student needs to learn and practice the common spelling patterns that are used in English. There are also guidelines that can help us learn correct spelling. While there are exceptions and irregularities most words follow common patterns. There are also a number of helpful guidelines to aid us in accurate spelling. Children are better able to achieve spelling success when they learn and practice these common patterns and helpful guidelines.

  6. Learn/memorize specific and ‘tricky’ spellings: For accurate spelling the student does need to learn the correct spelling for common words and begin memorizing the specific spelling pattern used for particular words. Accurate spelling can be tricky and does require remembering which spelling pattern is used within certain words.

The South Australian Spelling Test

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The South Australian Spelling Test has been around for a number of years and is a staple of nearly all Australian primary and early secondary teachers assessment schedule. 

The test consists of 70 words and when completed allows the teacher to generate a spelling age for that student based upon their score.

It is a great tool for quickly identifying students who need assistance with their spelling skills.

The test and it's complete instructions can be downloaded here.

It takes around 15 minutes to administer to a class.

Spellingcity.com - Interactive Games and tasks around your own words.

/

I am sure that we have all used a number of web sites that offer some really good spelling games and activities for students to complete online or print out. 

Whilst they are a great resorurce, it is a bit limting in the manner that your kids cannot actually enter their own spelling words and complete activities based around them

SpellingCity overcomes this problem by allowing students to enter their words either individually, or in bulk and it then creates games and activities based around them.

Implications for teaching.

I feel that SpellingCity is a great task for kids to do as part of their homework or literacy rotations after they have been through their writing books with a teacher and located 10 or so words that they need to work on.

We would love to hear of any other great spelling games you are aware of.

Lesson Plan: Use Wordle to improve spelling

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This is great lesson plan put together by one of my colleagues Beth Higgins.  The focus of the lesson to use Wodle to improve spelling in the junior years and is very easy to follow.  I hope you enjoy it and you can access it here.

Spelling Posters for your classroom

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Feel free to use this interactively on your whiteboard or print them out and display them around your room.  They are targeted at younger spellers.  You can download the Powerpoint directly here

Spelling posters