The National Curriculum requires children to learn to spell high frequency words across all the year groups. Please find further information below.
Word lists have been sent home so that you can work through them together at home. In addition to this, there are a number of games which can aid spelling that are available free of charge on the internet or via an app store.
Key Stage One
In Year 1, children are taught to:
- Spell words containing each of the 40+ phonemes (sounds) already taught.
- Spell common exception words (e.g. such as the and was)
- Spell the days of the week
- Name the letters of the alphabet
- Add some prefixes (e.g. un–) and suffixes (e.g. –ing and –ed) to words
A list of phonemes (sounds) and common exception words can be found below.
In Year 2, children are taught to:
- Use knowledge of phonics to spell words correctly
- Learn new ways of spelling phonemes for which one or more spellings are already known, and learn some words with each spelling, including a few common homophones (e.g. there/they’re/their )
- Spell common exception words (e.g. because)
- Spell more words with contracted forms (e.g. it’s)
- Learn the possessive apostrophe (singular)
- Add suffixes to spell longer words (e.g. –ment, and –ly)
Key Stage Two
In Years 3 and 4, children continue to develop their spelling. At St John’s we used a scheme called ‘No nonsense Spelling’ in KS2. This is supported by the learning of key words in our ‘Big Spelling Challenge’.
- Use further prefixes and suffixes and understand how to add them (e.g. dis– and –sure)
- Spell further homophones (e.g. except/accept)
- Spell words that are often misspelt
- Use the possessive apostrophe accurately (plurals)
- Use the first two or three letters of a word to check its spelling in a dictionary
In Years 5 and 6 children learn to:
- Use further prefixes and suffixes and understand the guidance for adding them (e.g. –able and –ible)
- Spell some words with ‘silent’ letters (e.g. knight)
- Continue to distinguish between homophones and other words which are often confused
- Understand the origin of words and know their relationships to other words in the English language.
- Use dictionaries to check the spelling and meaning of words
- Use a thesaurus
Perseverance Respect Forgiveness Truth Aspiration