Roskear Primary and Nursery School

Learning together for a better future

Spelling Scheme

Spelling Shed

Spelling Shed is a spelling scheme which is divided into six stages, each stage corresponding to the respective school year. Within each stage, there are weekly objectives and spelling lists that give a steady progression through the English curriculum but also offers opportunities for our children to review spellings and attempt additional challenge lists to extend vocabulary. For each week's spelling list we provide a traditional printable practice sheet that follows the look-cover-write-check format but with other activities to add variety to this original concept. Spelling Shed has been developed to cover all spelling targets within the National Curriculum but additionally it offers further support for learning high frequency words for each key stage.

The Spelling Shed helps children to practise spelling via simple games. The game gives four different degrees of support in the form of difficulty modes; Easy, Medium, Hard and Extreme. Higher levels allow a higher score to be achieved but children can practise as much as they like on lower levels before trying to gain high scores. The scores achieved give a league position and each class has its own league position within a school league. It also creates a supportive environment for our learners to practice and master their spellings at their own pace. The programme also provides our pupils with a more interactive whole- class spelling test known as a ‘Hive game’ which continues to engage all of our learners and continue to create a fun environment for practicing spellings. Each week, your child’s teacher will set lists of words that your child/children should practise and will monitor their progress over the week and provide opportunities for their pupils to practice within school.

Once your child has their login information they can access the online game via https://play.spellingshed.com. Additionally, to further support your child/children’s spelling, you can also purchase the app for IOS available on both Ipad and Iphone for a small fee of £2.99. Unfortunately, this app is only available on the Apple store at the moment, nevertheless the website can still be accessed by any computer or smart device with access to the internet for no additional cost.

In addition to our spelling scheme, the children are also required to learn what are known as high frequency words. High frequency words are words that appear often in written texts. They are a mixture of decodable words (words that can be sounded out) and tricky / exception words (words in which the English spelling code works in an unusual or uncommon way, which means the words must be learned and recognised by sight).

It is incredibly important that our children learn how to read these words as they will make up a large proportion of the text in which your children will be exposed to during their journey through school. They also need to learn to spell these words, as they will find that they will need to use these regularly within their written work. Each of these are an additional list that will be consistently taught by your child/children’s teacher throughout the year.

In Reception, your child will be given around 45 high frequency words to learn over the year – the aim is for them to be able to recognise these words and to be able to read them. Children learn these words as part of their phonics lessons and may also bring high frequency words home to read. Additional high frequency words are then included in each of your child/children’s further classes as your child/children continue their journey through our school.

Spelling Shed - Coverage Guidance.pdf

Example activities for Parents.pdf