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Spelling by Grade

Spelling Scope and Sequence F-6

 

Spelling Planning F-6

Spelling Curriculum: Sample Planners

 

Foundation

ACARA v0.9 English Achievement Standards

AC9EFLY09 Recognise and generate rhyming words, alliteration patterns, syllables and sounds (phonemes) in spoken words (phonological awareness)

AC9EFLY010 Segment sentences into individual words; orally blend and segment single-syllable spoken words; isolate, blend and manipulate phonemes in single-syllable words (phonological awareness)

AC9EFLY11 Recognise and name all upper- and lower-case letters (graphs) and know the most common sound that each letter represents

AC9EFLY12 Write consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words by representing some sounds with the appropriate letters, and blend sounds associated with letters when reading CVC words

AC9EFLY13 use knowledge of letters and sounds to spell words

AC9EFLY14 Read and write some high-frequency words and other familiar words

AC9EFLY15 Understand that words are units of meaning and can be made of more than one meaningful part

High-Frequency Words

Letter Knowledge

  • Recognise twenty-six upper- and lowercase letters by name in all positions of a word.
  • Understand that a letter may be pronounced in more than one way, eg  the letter <c> in cat, circle, ocean.
  • Exploring words to form generalisations about the most common sound that each letter represents.
  • Letters are used to write words.
  • Understand the concept of word and sentence and there is a space between words.
  • Resources 'Letters'

Phonemic Awareness

  • Isolate phonemes in the beginning, final and medial positions in words, delete phonemes to produce new words, manipulate phonemes to form new words with different meanings.

Phonological Awareness

  • Immersing children in experiences that develop phonological awareness: recognising rhyme, producing rhyme sets, hearing how many syllables are in a word, blending and segmenting sounds in words, deleting and adding sounds in words
  • Resources 'Phonological Awareness' 

Onsets and Rimes (another aspect of Phonological Awareness)

  • Developing knowledge of onsets and rimes and using analogy to read and write words from a known word, eg  w-ent, s-ent, b-ent, t-ent. (This is essential work because it encourages children to use a vowel in words and when a vowel is at the start of a rime the sound-letter relationship is more reliable.)
  • Resources 'Onsets and Rimes'

Sounds (using the phonetic strategy)

  • Learning that each sound (phoneme) in a word can be represented in more than one way.
  • eg  the letter <c> in cat, circle, ocean.
  • Firstly exploring consonant phonemes to develop knowledge of sound-letter relationships and forming generalisations about the most common ways to represent consonants, including how the position in a word may affect this. (e.g. the /f/ sound may be the letters <gh> in <laugh> but it will never be <gh> at the start of a word.)
  • The following sequence is best used for teaching about the phonemes:
  • Consonant sounds, beginning with the ones that are mostly represented by one letter and will be the most useful /b/, /d/, /p/,  /t/, /m/, /n/, /w/, /h/, /r/, /l/, /f/, /s/)
  • Resources 'Sounds'

Prefixes and Suffixes

  • Learning about adding the suffix <s>  to base words to form plurals and understanding what a base word and a suffix are and that they have specific meanings, eg the suffix <s> changes noun base words to plurals.
  • Building word families, such as play/plays; hat/hats.
  • Resources 'Prefixes and Suffixes'

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Year 1

ACARA v0.9 English Achievement Standards

AC9EILY09 Segment words into separate phonemes (sounds) including consonant blends or clusters at the beginnings and ends of words (phonological awareness)

AC9EILY10 Orally manipulate phonemes in spoken words by addition, deletion and substitution of initial, medial and final phonemes to generate new words (phonological awareness)

AC9EILY11 Use short vowels, common long vowels, consonant blends and digraphs to write words, and blend these to read one- and two-syllable words

AC9EILY12 Understand that a letter can represent more than one sound and that a syllable must contain a vowel sound

AC9EILY13 Spell one- and two-syllable words with common letter patterns

AC9EILY14 Read and write an increasing number of high frequency words

AC9EILY15 Recognise and know how to use grammatical morphemes to create word families

High-Frequency Words

Letter Knowledge

  • Recognise twenty-six upper- and lowercase letters by name in all positions of a word.
  • Understand that a letter may be pronounced in more than one way, eg  the letter <c> in cat, circle, ocean.
  • Exploring words to form generalisations about the most common sound that each letter represents.
  • Letters are used to write words.
  • Understand the concept of word and sentence and there is a space between words.
  • Resources 'Letters'

Phonemic Awareness

  • Isolate phonemes in the beginning, final and medial positions in words, delete phonemes to produce new words, manipulate phonemes to form new words with different meanings.

Phonological Awareness

Onsets and Rimes (another aspect of Phonological Awareness)

  • Continuing to use onsets and rimes to read and write words from a known word.
  • Changing the onset or the vowel at the start of a rime to form new words (hat-hot-hit-sit-set).
  • Resources 'Onsets and Rimes'

Sounds (using the phonetic strategy)

  • Exploring phonemes and grouping according to letters representing the phoneme: /k/, /g/, /z/, /y/, /j/, /v/, /sh/, /zh/ as in 
  • confusion, treasure, /ch/, /th/ as in think, /th/ as in this, /ng/
  • Forming generalisations, such as the most common ways to represent a sound or how position in word affects pronunciation.
  • Resources 'Sounds'

Contractions

  • Recognise and understand contractions with am (I'm), is (she's), will (we'll), not (can't)

Compound Words

  • Some simple compound words (into, myself, itself, cannot, inside, maybe, nobody)
  • Resources 'Compound Words'

Plurals

  • Understand concept of plurals and plural forms: adding -s (books, apples, cats, desks); adding -es (when words end in x, ch, sh, s, ss, tch, zz)
  • Resources 'Plurals'

Prefixes and Suffixes

  • Learning more about suffixes being added to base words.
  • Building word families, such as play, plays, playing, played.
  • (Verb endings -s, -ing, -ed). Note that at this stage you need not embark on the deep explorations to form generalisations about how to add these suffixes to base words.
  • Resources 'Prefixes and Suffixes'

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Year 2

ACARA v0.9 English Achievement Standards

  • AC9E2LY09 Manipulate more complex sounds in spoken words and use knowledge of blending, segmenting, phoneme deletion and phoneme substitution to read and write words
  • AC9E2LY10 Use phoneme–grapheme (sound–letter/s) matches, including vowel digraphs, less common long vowel patterns, consonant clusters and silent letters when reading and writing words of one or more syllables, including compound words
  • AC9E2LY11 Use knowledge of spelling patterns and morphemes to read and write words whose spelling is not completely predictable from their sounds, including high frequency words
  • AC9E2LY12 Build morphemic word families using knowledge of prefixes and suffixes

High-Frequency Words

Sounds (using the phonetic strategy)

  • Exploring phonemes and grouping according to letters representing the phoneme: /ay/, /ee/, /igh/, /oh/, /oo/ (food), /yoo/, /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/, /oo/ (good), /ou/ (now), /er/, /ar/, /ah/ (bath), /or/, /aw/, /air/, /ear/ (hear), /oy/, schwa and rounded schwa sounds.
  • Forming generalisations, such as the most common ways to represent a sound or how position in word affects pronunciation.
  • Resources 'Sounds'

Spelling Patterns

  • Exploring common spelling patterns and grouping words according to their pronunciation: th, sh, wh, ph, ch, ea, a-e, o-e, i-e, ee, ow, ai, oo, ou, ar, or, ay, ie, igh, -y, oa, ew, e-e, oi, u-e.
  • Forming generalisations where appropriate, about common ways to pronounce a spelling pattern, such as ou is usually pronounced as in the word round.
  • Resources 'Spelling Patterns'

Contractions

  • Recognise and understand contractions with am (I'm), is (she's), will (we'll), not (can't)

Compound Words

  • Some compound words (into, myself, itself, cannot, inside, maybe, nobody, outside, sunshine, today, together, upset, yourself, without, sometimes, something)
  • Resources 'Compound Words'

Plurals

  • Understand concept of plurals and plural forms: adding -s (books, apples, cats, desks); adding -es (when words end in x, ch, sh, s, ss, tch, zz); changing spelling (foot/feet, goose/geese, man/men, mouse/mice, woman/women)
  • Resources 'Plurals'

Prefixes and Suffixes

  • Recognise and use common prefixes
    (re-, un-)
    Verb endings (-es, -ed)
  • Building word families such as play, plays, playing, played, replay, replays, replayed, player, players, playtime, playschool, playground, playmate, plaything.
  • Resources 'Prefixes and Suffixes'

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Year 3

ACARA v0.9 English Achievement Standards

  • AC9E3LY09 Understand how to apply knowledge of phoneme–grapheme (sound–letter) relationships, syllables, and blending and segmenting to fluently read and write multisyllabic words with more complex letter patterns
  • AC9E3LY10 Understand how to apply knowledge of common base words, prefixes, suffixes and generalisations for adding a suffix to a base word to read and comprehend new multimorphemic words
  • AC9E3LY11 Use phoneme–grapheme (sound–letter) relationships and less common letter patterns to spell words
  • AC9E3L12 Recognise and know how to write most high frequency words including some homophones

High-Frequency Words

Sounds (using the phonetic strategy)

  • Exploring phonemes and grouping according to letters representing the phoneme: /ay/, /ee/, /igh/, /oh/, /oo/ (food), /yoo/, /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/, /oo/ (good), /ou/ (now), /er/, /ar/, /ah/ (bath), /or/, /aw/, /air/, /ear/ (hear), /oy/, schwa and rounded schwa sounds.
  • Forming generalisations, such as the most common ways to represent a sound or how position in word affects pronunciation.
  • Resources 'Sounds'

Spelling Patterns

  • Exploring common spelling patterns and grouping words according to their pronunciation: th, sh, wh, ph, ch, ea, a-e, o-e, i-e, ee, ow, ai, oo, ou, ar, or, ay, ie, igh, -y, oa, ew, e-e, oi, u-e.
  • Forming generalisations where appropriate, about common ways to pronounce a spelling pattern, such as ou is usually pronounced as in the word round.
  • Resources 'Spelling Patterns'

Contractions

  • Recognise and understand contractions with am (I'm), is (she's), will (we'll), not (can't), have (should've)

Homophones

  • Recognise and use simple homophones (sound the same, different spelling and meaning: to/too/two, here/hear, blue/blew, there/their/they're, which/witch
  • Resources 'Homophones'

Compound Words

  • Some more complex compound words (airplane, airport, another, anyone, anybody, anything, everyone, homesick, indoor, jellyfish, skyscraper, toothbrush, underground, whenever)
  • Resources 'Compound Words'

Plurals

  • Common plurals, such as adding s, adding es, and changing y to i before adding es to words that end in consonant plus y.
  • Resources 'Plurals'

Prefixes and Suffixes

  • Recognise and use common prefixes
    • (re-, un-)
  • Understanding that prefixes and suffixes are morphemes that have a particular meaning, eg the suffix <ed> means that the action happened in the past.
  • Building word families such as play, plays, playing, played, replay, replays, replayed, player, players, playtime, playschool, playground, playmate, plaything.
  • Resources 'Prefixes and Suffixes'

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Year 4

ACARA v0.9 English Achievement Standards

  • C9E4LY09 Understand how to use and apply phonological and morphological knowledge to read and write multisyllabic words with more complex letter combinations, including a variety of vowel sounds and known prefixes and suffixes
  • AC9E4LY10 Understand how to use knowledge of letter patterns, including double letters, spelling generalisations, morphological word families, common prefixes and suffixes, and word origins, to spell more complex words
  • AC9E4LY11 Read and write high frequency words including homophones and know how to use context to identify correct spelling

High-Frequency Words

Sounds (using the phonetic strategy)

  • Revising some sound explorations with more extensive vocabulary, according to children's writing needs.
  • Resources 'Sounds'

Spelling Patterns

  • Exploring spelling patterns: oe, ir, ur, ough, aw, er, ui, au, augh, oy, ey, ue, ei, iew, uy, are, ear, ere, eir, our.
  • Some revision of previous spelling patterns with more extensive vocabulary, according to children's writing needs.
  • Resources 'Spelling Patterns'

Contractions

  • Recognise and understand multiple contractions with not and have (shouldn't've)

Homophones

  • Understand the meaning of 'homophone' and realise that the best way to be sure of using the correct one is to check the spelling and meaning in a printed or digital dictionary or wordbook. For commonly used homophones a memory aid is useful, eg 'the principal is your pal'
  • Resources 'Homophones'

Compound Words

  • More complex compound words and hyphenated compound words (airplane, airport, another, anyone, anybody, anything, everyone, homesick, indoor, jellyfish, skyscraper, toothbrush, underground, whenever, empty-handed, well-being, re-elect, father-in-law)
  • Resources 'Compound Words'

Plurals

  • Other forms of plurals such as tooth/teeth, man/men.
  • Keep the same spelling in singular and plural form (deer, lamb, sheep, mouse).
  • Resources 'Plurals'

Prefixes and Suffixes

  • Exploring how to add other common prefixes: dis, il, im, ir, in, mis, anti, under. 
  • Understanding that prefixes are just added to the base word, with no change to the base word.
  • Exploring suffixes <ed> and <ing> and the generalisations that apply, depending on the base words. Learning about  other ways to form past tense, eg write/wrote, take/took, teach/taught, mean/meant, catch/caught.
  • Building word families such as run, running, ran, runner, runs, rerun, reran, rerunning; satisfy, satisfying, satisfies, satisfied, dissatisfied.
  • Resources 'Prefixes and Suffixes'

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Year 5

ACARA v0.9 English Achievement Standards

  • AC9E5LY08 Use phonic, morphemic and vocabulary knowledge to read and spell words that share common letter patterns but have different pronunciations
  • AC9E5LY09 Build and spell new words from knowledge of known words, base words, prefixes and suffixes, word origins, letter patterns and spelling generalisations
  • AC9E5LY10 Explore less common plurals, and understand how a suffix changes the meaning or grammatical form of a word

High-Frequency Words

Spelling Patterns

  • Exploring spelling patterns: eau, eigh, aigh, eo, ua, uar.
  • Some revision of previous spelling patterns with more extensive vocabulary, according to children's writing needs.
  • Resources 'Spelling Patterns'

Homophones

  • Continue to learn memory aids for more commonly used homophones, eg the car was stationary'
  • Resources 'Homophones'

Plurals

  • Other common plurals: words ending in f, lf, ff, fe.\
  • Adding an unusual suffix (ox/oxen, child/children).
  • Add either -s or -es in words that end in a vowel and o or a consonant and o (radios, zeroes, heroes, volcanoes). 
  • Learning the importance of checking when not certain of spelling.
  • Resources 'Plurals'

Prefixes and Suffixes

  • Exploring other common prefixes: ex, sub, extra, super, uni, tri, bi, quadri, trans, inter, semi, pre.
  • Exploring suffixes er and est for comparatives and superlatives.
  • Exploring other common suffixes: ly, ist, er, or, ment, proof, th, ive, ship, tion, sion, ion, able, ible, ful, less, ness.
  • Building word families, such as playful, playfulness, playfully; love, loves, loving, loved, lovable, unlovable, lovingly, lovely, lovelier, loveliest.
  • Resources 'Prefixes and Suffixes'

Apostrophes for Possesives and Plurals

  • Exploring where to place the Possessive apostrophe

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Year 6

ACARA v0.9 English Achievement Standards

  • AC9E6LY08 Use phonic knowledge of common and less common grapheme–phoneme relationships to read and write increasingly complex words
  • AC9E6LY09 Use knowledge of known words, word origins including some Latin and Greek roots, base words, prefixes, suffixes, letter patterns and spelling generalisations to spell new words including technical words

High-Frequency Words

Spelling Patterns

  • Revising some spelling patterns with more extensive vocabulary, according to children's writing needs.
  • Resources 'Spelling Patterns'

Plurals

  • Less common plurals: larva/larvae, gateau/gateaux, radius/radii, phenomenon/phenomena, memorandum/memoranda.
  • Resources 'Plurals'

Prefixes and Suffixes

  • Exploring less common prefixes: auto, non, circum, be, en, co, contra, counter, dia, macro, micro, post, pro, octa, multi, fore, vice.
  • Exploring less common suffixes: ation, age, ary, oid, ate, ic, ure, ance, ence, ant, ent.
  • Building word families, such as: direct, directs, directing, directed, direction, directions, directive, directives, director, directors, directly, indirect, indirectly, misdirect, misdirects, misdirected, misdirecting, misdirection, misdirections.
  • Forming major generalisations about changes to base words depending on the suffix being added.
  • Resources 'Prefixes and Suffixes'

Derivatives and Origins of English Words

  • Exploring derivations, eg aqua, aero, auto, chloro, centum, cyclos, deca, demos, electro, grapha, photo, mono, hemi, octo, logy, video, bio, audio, geo, hydro, mille, pedi, phono, tele, scribe, scope, thermos. Learning about the derivation affects the spelling of words and the meaning of the derivation helps with knowing the meaning of a word containing that derivation
  • Resources 'Derivatives'

Apostrophes for Possesives and Plurals

  • Exploring where to place the Possessive apostrophe

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