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Spelling Strategies – Unit One

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English Grammar and Skills Toolkit

Spelling StrategiesUnit One

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Learning objectives

In this unit you will…

Learn about some common spelling problems and identify some of your own spelling mistakes

Look at some strategies that you can use to improve your spelling including sounding out the word, breaking the word apart, using mnemonics and creating catchphrases

Test your spelling of some commonly misspelt words

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Common spelling mistakes

How good is your spelling?

Do you often misspell the same words?

Do you know any strategies for improving your spelling?

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Common spelling mistakes

Some common spelling mistakes include:

putting vowels the wrong way round, e.g. ‘freind’

forgetting a vowel, e.g. ‘defnite’

confusion over whether or not to usedouble consonants, e.g. ‘necesary’

problems with homophones,e.g. there/their

missing out silent letters, e.g. ‘nome’

misspelling plurals, e.g. ‘matchs’.

Have you ever made any of these mistakes?

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Test your spelling!

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Spelling strategies

Here is a list of strategies that are useful to help youremember the spellings of long or tricky words.

In this unit we will look at strategies 1–5.

1. sounding out the word2. breaking the word apart3. using mnemonics4. study, cover, write, check5. creating catchphrases6. finding words within words7. creating mental pictures8. looking for letter patterns

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Splitting a word into its different syllables and sounding each syllable out can help you to spell long words.

Strategy 1 – sounding out the word

Some words, particularly those with unstressed or silent letters, can be sounded out very deliberately.

Think of five other words suitable for sounding out.

re-mem-ber

bi-cy-cle

What are the unstressed letters in these words?

For example:

Deliberately mispronouncing these words (by saying the unstressed syllables) can

help you to remember their spellings!

Wednesday

definite

interested

Wed-nes-day

def-i-nite

in-ter-est-ed

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Silent letters

Press the play button to listen to five words. Can you spell them?

What are the silent letters in these words?

Words with silent letters can be really difficult to spell.Try slowly sounding out each of these words, deliberately mispronouncing them by saying the silent letters.

Knight

Knife

Plumber

Raspberry

Debt

Knight

Knife

Plumber

Raspberry

Debt