Spelling Shed's approach to spelling involves the relationship between sounds and written symbols as well as using morphology to help spell through meaning.

The carefully selected word lists and engaging activities provide opportunities to incorporate phonics and meaning to strengthen spelling skills and build vocabulary acquisition.

Each lesson…

• includes more features to enhance the teaching and learning in your setting.
• is designed to be flexible to fit within the variable timetables that schools have.
• has main teaching inputs, which can then be followed up with additional activities that can be carried out immediately after the input during an extended session or revisited throughout the week in order to consolidate the learning further.
• has elements of the key areas below embedded in its core.

“Orthography is how patterns of letters are used to make certain spoken sounds in a language.”

In the new Spelling Shed lessons, students will continue to build on the firm foundations built whilst studying phonics in their early years of education. They will continue to break down spellings into the smallest units of sound and cluster them into syllables in order to read and write words efficiently.

Through adult-led discussion and investigation children will become more secure in their knowledge of English orthography based on the frequency and position of the sounds within words.

“Morphology describes how words are structured into subcomponents to give meaning.”

Children will study words; word parts; their meanings and how this affects spelling.

There are lessons throughout the scheme that consolidate children’s knowledge of common morphemes such as root formations, prefixes and suffixes.

“Etymology describes the origins of words, which can lead to certain patterns of spelling.”

Most lessons in the scheme include an etymology element that allows educators to teach the children about the origin of the words that they are learning about.

Children will be able to see how the English language has, over time, borrowed and integrated words and spellings from a range of source languages. For example, the latinate verbs which follow Latin prepositions in English words such as: -act (do), -pute (think) or -opt (choose).