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The primary goal of the MESH Spelling site developers has been to bring together insights from the past 40 years of research into spelling, and to present these in ways that are bite-sized, clear and intelligible to a non-expert. We know that all teachers understand the importance of being able to spell, but we also know that as successive governments have made teacher preparation more and more school-based, teachers have had fewer and fewer opportunities to learn about the cognitive processes that underpin spelling before they enter the classroom.
The information on this site will help those who want to learn more about
The developers have drawn primarily upon research from the UK and USA, and the references list shows some of our main influences.
The development team brings together considerable expertise in reading research, research into ICT for learning, early reading development, assessment and supporting learners with special needs:
Colin Harrison is Emeritus Professor of Literacy Studies in Education at the University of Nottingham, Past President of the UK Reading Association and is the only UK citizen since 1984 to have been awarded the International Reading Association's International Citation of Merit. He was a founder editor of the Journal of Research in Reading, and has over 150 publications, mostly in the fields of reading and new technologies. His first major research grant for an online teacher development project was in 1998, and since that time he has led 22 research projects in the new technologies field, in schools and higher education. He currently leads on the Dyslexia component of the MA in Special Educational Needs at the University of Nottingham.
Greg Brooks is Emeritus Professor in the School of Education at the University of Sheffield. He has been President of the UK Reading Association, editor of the Journal of Research in Reading, and is an international expert on both phonics (his doctoral area) and assessment. In 2002 Greg was a founder member of the National Research and Development Centre for adult literacy and numeracy and was Research Director of its Sheffield arm until the consortium was dissolved in 2008. He directed 15 research projects for NRDC, which included reviewing various aspects of the field, especially previous research and the available assessment instruments, and investigating how much progress adult learners make and what enables them to make better progress, particularly in reading. He was a member of the Advisory Group to the Rose review of the teaching of reading, and in 2007 provided tables of phoneme-grapheme and grapheme-phoneme correspondences for Letters and Sounds.
Gill Johnson is Lecturer in Primary Education in the University of Nottingham. She has over fifteen years of experience as a teacher at Key Stages 1 and 2, and has been a SENCO, Literacy Coordinator and Advanced Skills Teacher. She is also an accredited trainer for the THRASS literacy development programme. Her PhD research focused on the role of the teaching assistant in literacy support contexts.
These MESH spelling materials have been devised with two goals in mind: first, to help teachers (and those training to become teachers) gain a deeper insight into how children learn to spell; and second, to provide some practical assistance in supporting that learning.
The text and links are being evaluated for coherence, clarity and usefulness by teachers and senior managers in schools across England, initially by a small group of seven volunteer schools, but then by a much wider population of teachers, senior managers in schools, and teacher educators. One great advantage of a web-based platform is that it is a relatively straightforward matter to update, correct or add material, and our goal is to monitor feedback from users. There are still a number of areas of disagreement in the literacy field, and ultimately the development team has to take editorial responsibility for judging the appropriate scholarly content and pedagogy that should be presented on this site, but our aim is to be responsive to all feedback, and to make the site as valuable as possible for teachers.
Our particular thanks go the seven schools that took part in the first phase of evaluation:
The full list of references
A developmental sequence of spelling acquisition and associated errors.
This section describes the typical sequence of development, but individual children may jump a stage, or seem to get stuck in one, or exhibit features of two stages simultaneously, or seem to go through some stages in reverse order. The labels for the stages were coined by Frith (1985).
Broadly speaking, having a background in another language can have some disadvantages, but many advantages, especially if a child has begun to acquire literacy in another language.
This is a massively researched area, so we shall only make a few key points here:
- Most multilingual learners in the UK have been acquiring English as well as their home language from birth. These learners (often termed 'simultaneous' English learners) may have far fewer difficulties in reading and spelling than 'sequential' language learners, who have come into an English language environment at a later stage in their life.
- The British Council has a useful web site to support those who are teaching English to young learners- including a section with spelling resources.
- Nearly all alphabetic languages derived from a common ancestor, so if a child has begun to learn a different alphabetic language, this could be very helpful.
- One possible disadvantage of coming from a non-English background is that a child may not hear or be able to pronounce every phoneme in English; it is believed that infants acquire the ability to differentiate phonemes in the first year of life, and subsequently find it very difficult to learn ones that they have not heard in infancy.
- An example of this problem would be Japanese learners, who find it hard to hear the difference between 'r' and 'l' in English, but there are many other problems from different language groups, whose users might not hear any difference between 'fought' and 'thought'. Here's a little video that emphasises the importance of combining hearing, seeing and feeling in improving the recognition of speech sounds (click on 'Watch video clip').
- We now know that infant language development, from birth to age 18 months, is multimodal, and brings together speech, hearing, touch and vision in far more complex ways than we used to think.
- English language learners may have hidden literacy talents- if we are able to exploit them:
Case study
I was once in a Y1 classroom with six-year-olds, and the class teacher said to me, 'See if you can get that little girl over there to talk- she's come from Algeria and knows no English. She's only been in England a month, and I can't get her to say a word.' I know a little French, so I asked her to tell me her name, and she beamed, told me her name was Anya, and started to chat away in French. I asked her if she could read or write in French. 'No- not a word,' she said, 'but I can read and write in Arabic.' I said, 'Would you be able to write on the board in Arabic?' and she smiled and nodded.
A little later, I asked the teacher if Anya could show the class that she could speak in French for them, and write in Arabic. The teacher readily agreed. So Anya and I came to the front, and the rest of the class listened intently as a child that they thought was mute answered lots of questions in French while I translated her answers. They learned where she was from and all about her family. Then I asked her if she could write her name and something about her family on the board. The children's mouths dropped open as Anya wrote confidently in Arabic, starting on the right, and translating into French as she wrote. When she stopped writing the class broke into spontaneous applause, and I turned to see Anya's teacher blinking away tears.
About nine months later there was a wonderful coincidence- I was talking to a group of comprehensive school modern language student teachers who had just completed their training about the potential value of a multilingual background, and I told this story. A woman at the back of the class stood up, and called out, 'That was my daughter! I am so grateful to you! You can't imagine what a difference that made to Anya's life in that school. She went from being a silent shadow in the class to being seen as a kind of genius, and her confidence rocketed. Within another month she had loads of friends and was talking to them in English.'
When I first spoke to Anya, my intention had been simply to try to help her to talk a little in English. But what I learned was that giving a child permission to use her multilingual skills could lead to a wonderful learning experience for the whole class, and could make her whole world a happier place.
Colin Harrison
1. Using I Before E
Use i before e, except after c, or when sounded as "a" as in "neighbour" and "weigh."
EXAMPLES: believe, chief, piece, and thief; deceive, receive, weigh, and freight
COMMON EXCEPTIONS: efficient, weird, height, neither, ancient, caffeine, foreign
2. Dropping the Final E
Drop the final e before a suffix beginning with a vowel (a, e, i, o, u) but not before a suffix beginning with a consonant.
EXAMPLES:
COMMON EXCEPTIONS: truly, noticeable
3. Changing a Final Y to I
Change a final y to i before a suffix, unless the suffix begins with i.
EXAMPLES:
COMMON EXCEPTIONS: journeying, memorize
4. Doubling a Final Consonant
Double a final single consonant before a suffix beginning with a vowel when both of these conditions exist:
EXAMPLES:
Adapted (with English spellings preferred) from Richard Nordquist's About.com guide
Omission, Insertion, Substitution, Transposition and Grapheme substitution
Author: Greg Brooks, Emeritus Professor of Education, University of Sheffield
Note: Some use is made of phonetic symbols enclosed in forward slashes, e.g. /ə/, which are explained when first used (/ə/ represents the schwa vowel, the first phoneme in about and the last in butter). For more detail on phonetic symbols see Burton (2011). Example words and errors are shown in italics, and graphemes within angle brackets, e.g. <or>.
The five main categories
A first-level count of the errors in a text or on a test within these five categories will reveal the principal tendencies. For an example based on errors on a spelling test used with adult literacy learners see Burton et al. (2010: 23-25).
An inescapable and notorious feature of the English spelling system is that almost all phonemes have more than one spelling (nearly 300 graphemes are used to represent the roughly 44 phonemes - see again Burton, 2011 for handy lists of the main correspondences and some of the rarer ones that nevertheless occur in common words), and so in many cases it is not possible to lay down rules for which grapheme is the correct spelling of a phoneme in a particular word.
Fourteen subordinate categories
With these categories we begin to move from objective classification to speculation about causes; correspondingly, these minor categories are not mutually exclusive, and when errors are being analysed every error should be logged under all of these headings that are relevant (though there may be none), as well as in one of the main categories.
Table of Illustrative errors, with codings
Note: This is not intended as a model for every classroom, but rather an illustration of all the categories described in the other pages of this site.
For simplicity, each example contains only one error.
Key to main categories: O = Omission; I = insertion; S = substitution; T = Transposition; GS = grapheme substitution
For an explanation of the other categories see the Other categories of spelling page.
ret = wrongly retained; om = wrongly omitted; non = consonant wrongly not doubled; wrong = consonant wrongly doubled.
What are the 100 most commonly misspelled words (and how can we remember to spell them correctly?)
A defining feature of dyslexics is that they reverse letters- either at the single letter level ('d' instead of 'b') or at the word level ('saw' for 'was'). Right?
Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!
Sometimes dyslexics do reverse letters in words- but they do so only slightly more frequently (and in some studies just about as often) as normally developing beginning readers. In fact, just about all beginning readers and writers reverse letters in words some of the time. And this is perfectly understandable: to a child a cup is a cup, whether the handle is on the left or the right- so why shouldn't the same principle be applied to letters or words? To make this confusion is perhaps little different from when an adult types 'saw' for 'was' on a keyboard- it's not because they can't spell, but because the letters are typed almost simultaneously, and the fingers get the letters down as a group, rather than as an ordered set. Children have to learn such constraints; they aren't born knowing them. Thus, at the first (logographic) stage of learning how to spell, many children know words as 'wholes', and might spell them forwards or backwards, because they haven't as yet developed a set of alphabetic or orthographic spelling rules.
Having said all this, however, it is important to note that if a child is still consistently reversing letters or groups of letters after age 8 or 9, then this might be a strong indicator of dyslexia, as poor phonological skills make it difficult to learn the links between letters and phonemes.
Age 5-11 spelling curriculum
Here's an Anglicised version of a simple and straightforward curriculum for spelling, derived from the US equivalent of the National Curriculum, that of the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010:
Age 4-5
Age 6-7
Age 7-8
Age 8-10
NOTE- the new spelling curriculum documents for England are much more detailed than those shown above.
New National Curriculum spelling requirements
New National Curriculum spelling requirements- these apply to England only
The UK government has published in September 2013 a new National Curriculum, most of which will be statutory from September 2013. For English, there is a separate 25-page Spelling Appendix that lays out in detail precisely what sounds and word lists pupils must be taught. The introduction states 'Some of the listed words may be thought of as quite challenging, but the 100 words in each list can easily be taught within the four years of key stage 2 alongside other words that teachers consider appropriate.'
These word lists include 'accidentally', 'knowledge', 'occasionally', 'purpose' and 'possession' for Years 3 and 4, and 'accommodate', 'achieve', 'appreciate', 'conscience', 'exaggerate', 'harass', 'leisure', 'opportunity' and 'pronunciation' for Years 5 and 6. University teachers will be particularly pleased to know that in future students will have known how to spell all these words for seven years before they arrived at university- in fact, the words above all occur on a list of spellings that postgraduate teacher trainees regularly used to misspell, that I compiled some years ago.
The good news is that- whatever you think of the government's spelling lists- the teaching methods suggested for this spelling work are helpful, and would be regarded by most experts as sound. Although the Spelling Appendix does not give lesson plans, there is actually quite a lot of guidance that would set an experienced teacher well on the way with planning. At least the requirements can't be accused of failing to offer detail that would support a teacher who wanted to deliver regular lessons on spelling.
The teaching approaches include:
Year 1 (age 5-6)
Year 2 (age 6-7)
Years 3 and 4 (ages 7-9)
Years 5 and 6 (ages 9-11)
Early years foundation stage
If you are a foundation stage or KS1 teacher, you already know some of the most important facts about learning to read, write and spell:
Dr Seuss was a genius!
In what ways was Dr Seuss a genius?
p.s. Some of the US reviews that castigate this book for not offering 'positive role models' or accusing the mother of 'criminal negligence' (for leaving her children at home alone) are almost as funny as the book itself.
New National Curriculum spelling requirements: Key Stage 1- these apply to England only
The UK government has published in September 2013 a new National Curriculum, most of which will be statutory from September 2013. For English, there is a separate 25-page Spelling Appendix that lays out in detail precisely what sounds and word lists pupils must be taught.
The good news is that the teaching methods suggested for this spelling work are helpful, and would be regarded by most experts as sound. Although the Spelling Appendix does not give lesson plans, there is actually quite a lot of guidance that would set an experienced teacher well on the way with planning. At least the requirements can't be accused of failing to offer detail that would support a teacher who wanted to deliver regular lessons on spelling.
The teaching approaches include:
Year 1 / age 5-6 (see pages 2-6 of the Spelling Appendix)
Year 2 / age 6-7 (see pages 7-10 of the Spelling Appendix)
Learning to 'sound out'
How do children learn to be able to spell a word that they have never written down before?
The answer is that they 'sound it out'.
But learning to 'sound it out' isn't easy- young learners especially need to be given some strategies and practice in learning to sound out words.
These are the stages in sounding out that children need to learn, as suggested by Richard Gentry:
Make spelling tests (and doing spelling corrections) worthwhile
Adapted from Mark Pennington's approach: http://penningtonpublishing.com/blog/category/spelling_vocabulary/
How to make spelling tests and doing spelling corrections worthwhile (age 7-11):
New National Curriculum Key Stage 2 spelling requirements- these apply to England only
The UK government has published in September 2013 a new National Curriculum, most of which will be statutory from September 2013. For English, there is a separate 25-page Spelling Appendix that lays out in detail precisely what sounds and word lists pupils must be taught. The introduction states 'Some of the listed words may be thought of as quite challenging, but the 100 words in each list can easily be taught within the four years of key stage 2 alongside other words that teachers consider appropriate.'
These word lists include 'accidentally', 'knowledge', 'occasionally', 'purpose' and 'possession' for Years 3 and 4, and 'accommodate', 'achieve', 'appreciate', 'conscience', 'exaggerate', 'harass', 'leisure', 'opportunity' and 'pronunciation' for Years 5 and 6. University teachers will be particularly pleased to know that children will soon know how to spell all these words before they get to secondary school- in fact, they all occur on a list of spellings that postgraduate teacher trainees regularly misspell, that I compiled some years ago.
The good news is that- whatever you think of the government's spelling lists- the teaching methods suggested for this spelling work are helpful, and would be regarded by most experts as sound. Although the Spelling Appendix does not give lesson plans, there is actually quite a lot of guidance that would set an experienced teacher well on the way with planning. At least the requirements can't be accused of failing to offer detail that would support a teacher who wanted to deliver regular lessons on spelling.
First, the KS1 teacher had a rather daunting list of objectives, so it might be wise to know what these are, just in case a little revision is necessary!
Year 2 / age 6-7 (more detail on these can be found in pages 7-10 of the Spelling Appendix)
For Key Stage 2, the following is an outline of your curriculum
Years 5 and 6 / ages 9-11 (see pages 18-22 of the Spelling Appendix)
Developing readers and writers
The current Appendix on Spelling in the National Curriculum for English in England does not give advice or statutory guidance on spelling for Key Stages 3 and 4.
However, it's worth knowing that all teachers will be required to have taught children to spell the words in two rather challenging word lists before they get to secondary school. Here they are (in downloadable jpg files): Word list for Y3-Y4; Word list for Y5-Y6.
It is essential to make time for some work on spelling, particularly during Years 7 and 8, both in English and in other curriculum areas.
Some important principles to bear in mind:
Do ask the pupils to make a list of spelling errors that their spell-checker software missed. Remember- Spell checker software is NOT always reliable.
Working with those who have a serious delay in spelling
Let's begin, not with spelling, but with some principles. These will be familiar to most teachers, but they are too important to omit:
Source: Burton, M., Davey, J., Lewis, M., Ritchie, L. and Brooks, G. (2008). Improving Reading: phonics and fluency. Practitioner guide. London: National Research and Development Centre for Adult Literacy and Numeracy. Available at: http://www.nrdc.org.uk/?p=254
A whole-school spelling policy
Primary schools
Secondary schools
For secondary schools, a number of key principles are the similar to those for a primary school:
What kind of detail should go into a whole-school spelling policy? Here is a useful example, from Heathfield Primary School.
Spelling Policy
Spelling - a whole school policy
John Buchan Middle School
It should be recognised that whatever the subject, whoever is teaching, the basic principles apply to all.
The teacher's job is not to correct mistakes the pupils have already made, but to help them not to make that mistake next time. Equally parents, pupils and teachers should be aware that spelling is a secretarial skill and is not related to how clever a person is.
The school's marking policy requires spellings that are incorrect to be indicated by the insertion of 'sp' this however requires further explanation.
Marking spelling
Teaching and correcting spelling
Spelling strategies
To continue learning, constructing and checking spellings, pupils should be able to:
The TES online community has over 2.6 million users, and over 4,800 classroom resources classified under 'spelling', some of which have been downloaded 50,000 times.
Follow this link to look at ten of the most highly rated TES spelling resources.
- Online whole-class spelling games from the BBC, with worksheets
- A US site with loads of free spelling resources
- How might you develop a weekly spelling lesson? (US teacher video)
- and here are some lesson plan templates to go with the video
- An interesting multisensory approach to teaching spelling
Is Read-Cover-Write-Check a good strategy?
Pupils with special needs - Writing/spelling support software
Software for building vocabulary A dictionary crossed with an octopus!
Concrete poems - Wordle
There are dozens of programs available to support writing and spelling, many of which have been devised with the goal of supporting those who are dyslexic, or who have failed to make normal progress.
Below are links to some of the better known. But be aware: it's unwise to assume that any one program will help all learners: often it's a teacher's understanding of how a particular program works that makes it successful. However, all those listed below have been evaluated positively (and often used extensively) by teachers on the MA in Special Educational Needs at the University of Nottingham.
The only schemes reviewed (see below) are ones that are readily available and that have been quantitatively evaluated in the UK and shown in at least one study to double pupils' normal rate of progress. For tests which provide reading or spelling ages this means a ratio gain of at least 2.0, that is, average monthly progress of at least two months of reading/spelling age per month between pre- and post-test. For tests which provide standardised scores this means an effect size of at least 0.5. For more detail see Greg Brooks's book via the weblink. http://www.interventionsforliteracy.org.uk/
Y1-Y3 (age 6-8) The Complete Spelling Programme (Read Write Company Ltd) Spellings are planned for each school year and structured into daily word groups. Children learn how to process both regular and high-frequency irregular words. The programme has three levels, allowing all ability groups to learn together.
Y2-Y6 (age 7-11) Cued Spelling. This is a paired programme devised by Keith Topping and colleagues at the University of Dundee. It involves either parent and child or two children working together - in the latter case the roles of tutor and tutee may be fixed, or be reversed from time to time.
Y3-Y8 (age 8-13) The THRASS programme (Teaching Handwriting, Reading and Spelling Skills) THRASS is a structured multi-sensory literacy programme. It increases understanding of the structure of English with its focus on 44 phonemes: 20 vowel sounds and 24 consonant sounds. The THRASS picture chart is a widely-used support for helping pupils make informed speech-sound/spelling decisions.