Spelling Topic Guide for Teachers

It is important to be able to spell correctly, so that other people can read our writing and know what we mean.

There are lots of interesting ways to practise spellings and learn spelling rules.

Teach your children about spelling using our handy topic guide!



Teaching Ideas

This class spelling game is a great starter or time filler.
Use this sheet to reinforce ways of spelling the “ow” sound.
Use a puppet who keeps getting their sounds wrong. Children love to teach the puppet and reinforce their own learning at the same time!
Play Bingo with the spellings you are learning.
Write a sound on the board, and challenge the children to think of words that contain that sound.
Ask your children to write a short piece of text that includes the spellings that they are learning.
This poster can be used for matching activities to learn those tricky irregular plurals!
Encourage children to spot spelling mistakes by making a deliberate mistake and rewarding them for finding it.
Play spelling games, like Hangman, or give children a selection of letters and challenge them to make as many words as they can with them (spelled correctly of course!).

i

Use our enormous Phonics Pack to support your younger readers.
Our Prefixes Pack is full of activities and information about prefixes and root words!
Our Spelling Games Pack is full of perfect activities for spelling practice!

Print out these Spelling Tips posters to help children remember those tricky words!
These display posters explain all about prefixes and suffixes.



Words that sound the same but are spelt differently are known as homophones. There are lots of these in English, including sun and son, wait and weight and break and brake. Be careful to choose the correct spelling!
The English alphabet has 26 letters, which can be used to make the 44 sounds used in the language.
A spoken sound is called a phoneme, and the letter or letters used to represent a sound in writing is called a grapheme.
Many English words originate from other languages. For example cookie comes from Dutch, whereas biscuit comes from Latin. This helps to explain why there are so many different ways to spell the same word in English.
A mnemonic is a saying which helps you to spell tricky words. The first letter of each word in the saying give the correct spelling. A well-known one is Big Elephants Cannot Always Use Small Exits. Do you know any more?