Imagine the scene: your child shows you a story she has written and reads it back to you. She is really pleased with her writing, but you need her to read it to you because many of the spellings aren't either recognisable or accurate. Here comes the dilemma - what do you do? Questions like "How can I correct the spellings without discouraging her from writing ever again?" and "Should I correct all the spellings or just a few?" abound.

This answer to both these questions is, rather unhelpfully, that it depends. It depends on many factors varying from the stage your child is at, to the spellings she has been taught at school

How do schools decide what spellings to teach?
The National Literacy Strategy outlines a list of the most commonly used words and spelling patterns that each year group needs to be taught as part of the curriculum. With reception age children, schools concentrate on teaching them to write the first and then the last sound in the word. As they become more competent, they will then start to include other relevant sounds and it is at this stage that they can be taught conventional spellings of very simple 3 letter words and known sight vocabulary.

Often schools send a list of words home for the children to learn for a test. The best thing you can do is to help your child learn these words and only teach other words that she asks for help with. Before you help her, check to see if there is a phonetic pattern, e.g. is it a long e sound and how is it spelt, is it ee as in feet or ea as in seat? If she appears confident with these spellings extend her knowledge by thinking of other words with the same sound, but make sure they are spelt in the same way - if they aren't, try calling them 'spoilsports' because they aren't spelt how they should be.

It may help, however, if you adopt the language used in the National Literacy Strategy, which children are now taught, when you help with spelling. The most commonly used terms are:

• Grapheme - the way we write sounds, i.e. the letter of the alphabet that we write down to represent that sound.
• Phoneme - the sound that each part of a word makes, which may use more than one letter, e.g. the word 'shut' has 3 phonemes - sh-u-t, while tractor has 7 phonemes - t-r-a-c-t-o-r.
• Onset - the initial sound in a word, e.g. black - the onset is bl, dog - the onset is d. Some words don't have an onset e.g. or, use, out.
• Rime - the end sound of a word, e.g. black - the rime is ack and in dog the rime is og.

However, the big problem with the English language is that although many words do obey spelling rules, where your child can spell the word by just listening to the sounds, many 'spoilsports' and don't obey any rules whatsoever. One of the ways schools try to overcome this problem is to teach children to look at words, explore their shape in terms of whether it includes tall and short letters, so that they get a feel for what the word looks like. Adopting this approach, along with the following list of strategies, is one way you can support your child at home when she is trying to learn new spellings.

Spelling strategies to use at home

• Young children who have just started to read, will attempt to spell words they can read, e.g. the, and, he etc. Help her learn to spell these by finding the word in a book and suggesting she copies it down.
• Make early spelling games where she has to think of a word which begins with the last letter of the word you have said, e.g. ten, net, tip. Write these words down and play a domino game.
• Explore rhyming families, e.g. if cat is spelt c a t, then mat which rhymes with it will be spelt m a t.
• Adopt the 'Look, Cover, Write, Check' method:
  • Look at the word closely; examine shape, number of letters and letter order. Repeat the spelling several times.
  • Cover the word up.
  • Try writing the word.
  • Check to see if it is spelt correctly.
  
  This is particularly good for 'spoilsport' words.
• Think of mnemonics - devices that aid memory. These may include rhymes and sayings like 'eleven is spelt with eleven legs, eleven vans, eleven nuts', 'an elephant has an ant in it' or 'you hear with your ear'.
• Traffic lights - if a specific letter causes a problem, she could write the word out and highlight the problem letter by drawing a red light around it.
• Break the word up into syllables, these are often easier to remember than the whole word, especially when it is a 'spoilsport' word, e.g. be - ca - use.
• Memorise the first and last sound in the word and then learn the part in the middle.
• Spellimadoodles are good fun too. Draw a picture of the word and write the word around it several times, e.g. draw a candle and practise the spelling around it.
• Play noughts and crosses using words she has difficulties with, instead of the usual noughts and crosses.

But most of all - remember
Don't expect your child to spell perfectly all the time. If she is exploring vocabulary and trying to use really interesting new words in her writing, the chances are she won't be able to spell them correctly. Instead encourage her to 'have a go', using her knowledge of how words work, rhyming patterns and phonics. After all, spelling is only one part of writing. The most important thing about writing is to decide what it is that we want to write. And once we have done that, we can concentrate on the spellings.

Sarah St John is a fully qualified primary school teacher with seven years teaching experience. She has worked as a Literacy Co-ordinator implementing the National Literacy Strategy.