Good spellers…

• apply knowledge they have been taught when writing independently
• use the resources available
• refer to the learning environment
• use personal strategies to help them work out a solution to words they don’t know
• have curiosity about language and words
• take responsibility for their own learning 

Good spellers are not…

• people who learn ten spellings for a test the following week.

At St Laurence we use Little Wandle Spelling (EYFS - Y2) and CUSP Spelling (Y3 - Y6) which are programmes designed to develop good spellers.

Learning is varied so the children are inspired to engage with the spelling focus on a more exploratory level.

Children may be challenged to:

• find words containing a particular phoneme/grapheme correspondence;
• explore all the derivations they can generate from a given root word;
• record the spelling strategy/ies they have decided to use for some given words in an innovative way;
• use their words in the context of sentences etc.

Alongside the chosen exploratory/creative/critical thinking activity, the child will have words to learn.