At Talbot Primary School, we understand that spelling is a fundamental part of developing our pupils as successful writers. We aim to support our pupils in becoming individuals who spell with accuracy, independence and develop the skills they need to assess and edit their own writing.

As with so much of our English curriculum, we lay firm foundations in Phonics lessons which are taught through EYFS (Year R) and KS1 (Year1-2). These sessions are taught daily and allow our pupils to build a strong understanding of letters and their associated sounds. At our school, we follow the Little Wandle scheme and have been very happy with the outcomes we have achieved since adopting this approach. You can read more about the teaching of Phonics on our dedicated page.

We look to mirror this approach when children join KS2 (Year 3-6), by continuing to have short sharp daily lessons rather than an extended session once a week. We believe that this approach allows pupils to strengthen their abilities as spellers as spelling rules are reviewed daily rather than once a week.

A typical week of Spelling lessons will see Monday-Thursday spent looking at a particular spelling rule and Friday used as an opportunity to look at 'Prickly Spellings' - those that are exceptions to rules.

A Typical spelling lesson will follow the structure below.

We begin by reviewing the learning from the previous day before teaching the new rule. After this we give pupils the opportunity to put this into practice with some spelling work either done in books or on whiteboards. This will often mean adding 'sound buttons' to words or manipulating words to change their tense. Finally we review the learning with a short spelling test of 4-5 words and recap the rule taught in the lesson.

Please find attached at the bottom of the page our Medium Term Plans for Phonics and Spelling across the school as well as a glossary of terms that are used in the teaching of these subjects at our school.