Teacher Notes

The areas covered by this unit should address many of the spelling problems that are met in the classroom. The unit contains a range of areas and activities. Most students at KS3 should find much that is worthwhile and helpful here. Revisiting and revising spelling rules and patterns at KS3 is essential if students are to do well in SATs and GCSEs.

Many KS4 students, also, would do well to revise some of the areas covered in this unit. The 1999 QCA publication 'Improving writing at key stages 3 and 4' identifies many of the typical errors found in GCSE writing, such as those involving homophones and doubling consonants, which are covered in this unit.

The examples and activities are really just 'samplers' for students to work on, and they must continue to examine their own spelling in their everyday writing. This is particularly true of the 'Common Patterns' section, which contains only a few examples. If a student has a problem with a particular word and letter pattern, one of the most constructive things they can do is to look for examples of the same pattern elsewhere and to study that pattern.

Hopefully this unit will encourage students to be more aware of the words that they use. It should also give them some different strategies on how to deal with spelling problems, rather than just giving up. Students learn in different ways, so tracing a word out might be helpful to one student whilst sounding it out is more useful to another.

Further activities might include:

• Creating their own personal spelling dictionary - perhaps the framework for their dictionary could be designed on computer.

• Designing weird and wacky mnemonics that can be displayed in class.

• Creating lists of letter patterns, e.g. vowel clusters like 'ea', 'ou' etc. Bringing in a competitive element and making a game of it can be motivational.

• Listing other roots, prefixes and suffixes, putting them on cards and playing a snap-type game, where they win when they find a successful match.

• Researching more on the history of English, perhaps using the Internet.