Smart Spelling

SMART SPELLING AT HOLY FAMILY

Through our school newsletter we would like

 to share some information about the structured 

approach of SMART Spelling, that we incorporate

 at Holy Family. From Prep-6 we explicitly and 

systematically teach spelling.

Letters make different sounds in different words. Letters are called by their names, not by a sound. Letter names are consistent but sounds change depending on the word.

PHONEMES are speech sounds.

There are 44 phonemes in spoken English. There are 24 consonant sounds and 20 vowel sounds.

GRAPHEMES are spelling choices. A grapheme may have 1, 2,  3 or 4  letters.

GRAPH- 1 letter making one sound in a word

DIGRAPH- 2 letters making one sound in a word

TRIGRAPH- 3 letters making one sound in a word

E.g. KN-IGH-T: has 3 sounds (phonemes)

       KN- digraph     IGH-trigraph      T-graph  

*QUADGRAPH- 4 letters make one sound eigh-t 

*does not happen often

Ask your child about their spelling words or a word in a book and see if they can tell you all about the number of graphs/digraphs/trigraphs in a word.

*stay tuned until the next school newsletter 

for further information.