community 

education forum 

Spelling 

Whether or not your child has the expected level of spelling competency became an obvious area for parent concern during remote learning. The way spelling used to be taught, in what my kids rudely refer to as the olden days when I was at primary school, with rigorous lists and regular tests is no longer supported by the Department of Education. 

Kate Middleton and Emma Mallia are BNWPs literacy coordinators and have provided some thorough information about the overall literacy program and spellings role within it. During the Education Forum Kate and Emma answered questions regarding the school's 2019 Grade 3 NAPLAN results for spelling.

Scaffolding

The school takes a scaffolding approach towards literacy. This is done to support engagement of children and get them thinking about story writing including writing styles and vocabulary. The aim is to build the skills together. The school would therefore expect to see improvement in the 2019 Grade 3 spelling outcomes in their 2021 Grade five NAPLAN.

Feedback

One of the key aims of the scaffolding approach is to reduce anxiety in children towards writing. Each literacy session will have a different feedback focus, sometimes spelling will be the focus of the session and so kids' work will be reviewed and comments made regarding spelling, but other times spelling will be left as grammar or story arc will be the focus. Teachers do not want to overwhelm them with feedback about everything they need to do better. Learning to draft a piece of writing, working on correcting different aspects in the second and third drafts is a life skill that supports their future education and fosters enjoyment of writing.

Introduction of a spelling program

Kate and Emma had plans to introduce a school wide approach to spelling, like the maths current program, during 2020. The program, now to be introduced in 2021, will build consistency into the use of phonics, spelling lists and vocabulary building work that is currently being done. Different kids learn different ways and the spelling program needs to be able to help kids develop many ways of checking and self-correcting their spelling.

Building stamina

For many students sitting down to write a story can seem like a big task. Building up a student's stamina for writing is important. Both physically as nothing is worse than a sore and cramping hand and mentally so they don't feel exhausted by the very thought of writing.

Parents and reading

There is considerable evidence to support the role parents play in a child's literacy. Reading with and to kids, being seen to enjoy reading whether its books, magazines, the ABC's US election blog.... all play a huge part in supporting a child's attitude towards reading. Many celebrated kids books series such as Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Captain Underpants seem to celebrate sometimes phonetic but blatantly incorrect spelling. But the key here is the reading itself, whatever it may be. Even if we start with the silly (and incorrectly spelt) and move onto a range of other books, giving our kids the gift of a love of reading is one thing parents can do that comes with huge rewards.