The Spelling Route

The Spelling Route outlines 6 stages: 1) Discovering Words, 2) Preparing for Phonics, 3) Early Phonics, 4) Further Phonics, 5) Beyond Phonics and 6) Near-Correct. These are detailed below.

Discovering Words

What learners do when writing

· Learners "write" scribbles, which are beginning to look like real letters.

· They want to communicate in this "grown-up" way.

· They are enjoying some words purely for their sounds.

What learners know

· Learners know that writing is different from drawing.

· They have a dawning awareness that there are such things as letters.

· They have a dawning awareness that words are made up of separate sounds.

What learners need, in order to move on

· To have their written "messages" accepted and valued

· To watch how writing is done, and have that talked-through

· To play around, orally, with the sounds in words

· To begin to learn a few straightforward letter-sound matches that are personally important, and some letter names.

See Discovering Words - Stage 1 of the Spelling Route.

Preparing for Phonics

What learners do when writing

· Learners get some letters right when writing words.

· They often get the left-right sequence correct.

· They are confident to have-a-go at writing.

What learners know

· Learners have grasped the principle of coding: they understand that letters stand for sounds.

· They know that actual letter shapes matter; they've left letter-like shapes behind.

· Beginning to know a growing number of letter-sound matches.

What learners need, in order to move on

· To polish their skills in hearing the sounds in words

· To become sure about the left-right sequence of sounds and letters

· To learn yet more letter-sound matches

· To learn by sight some frequently-used whole words

· To work at L-S-T-C-W-C, with great care over the 'look' component.

See Preparing for Phonics - Stage 2 of the Spelling Route.

Early Phonics

What learners do when writing

· Learners write some words with 1, 2 or 3 letters, which will be mainly consonants.

· They are confident to experiment with words, seeing spelling as a problem-solving task.

What learners know

· By the end of this stage, learners know all the single letter-sound matches.

· They also know some digraphs.

· They can read and spell a good number of whole words (with words read probably outnumbering words spelled).

What learners need, in order to move on

· To practise hearing the sequence of sounds in words, and to write them in that sequence, left to right

· To learn all the most frequently occurring letter-sound matches

· To add to their word-bank of frequently-used whole words, for reading and spelling

· To work at L-S-T-C-W-C, with great care over the "look" component.

See Early Phonics - Stage 3 of the Spelling Route.

Further Phonics

What learners do when writing

· They encode almost all words directly from the way they sound, generally managing to represent every sound in the word.

· They have a positive attitude towards themselves as spellers.

What learners know

· They have acquired the ability to capture sound in spelling, and they are on course to acquire the whole phonic code.

What learners need, in order to move on

· To round off the acquisition of letter-sound matches

· To build an appreciation of the complications of the phonic code: how letters can represent different sounds, and sounds can be represented by different letters (multiple mapping)

· To look for visual spelling patterns (common sequences of letters in words)

· To work at L-S-T-C-W-C, with great care over the "look" component

· To be introduced to morphemes

· To add to their word-bank of frequently-used whole words for reading and spelling

· To begin to learn how to proof-read and edit their own writings.

See Further Phonics - Stage 4 of the Spelling Route.

Beyond Phonics

What learners do when writing

· When writing, learners employ a sense of "what looks right".

· They are complementing phonics with a growing memory bank of common visual patterns within words.

· They have a growing understanding of the value of the various kinds of morphemes.

· They are willing to take risks in their spelling.

What learners know

· Learners know that sound is not all there is to spelling.

· They are meeting morphemes.

· They are meeting spelling rules.

· They are meeting word derivations.

What learners need, in order to move on

· To continue an interest in the visual patterns of words

· To look at word meanings and derivations

· To work at discovering rules from generalisations

· To continue the use of word-banks, now often thematic

· To work at L-S-T-C-W-C, with great care over the "look" component

· To continue practising proof-reading and editing skills.

See Beyond Phonics - Stage 5 of the Spelling Route.

Near-Correct

What learners do when writing

· When writing, learners make some mistakes, but have a wide range of skills for their correction.

What learners know

· Learners put into practice what they've learned about phonics, and morphemics (and rules), and learning spellings by sight.

What learners need, in order to move on

· To focus on meaning as a guide to spelling

· To continue all the strategies that they've met over the course of their learning thus far.

See Near-Correct - Stage 6 of the Spelling Route.