Literacy

Smart Spelling -Talking Circle

On Monday 2nd March we held a Talking Circle for parents on Spelling. The parents shared their own experiences of how they learnt to spell, as well as how they help their own children at home. The parents were introduced to the SMART Spelling program which has been designed to support teachers in the explicit and systematic teaching of Spelling. The class teachers have begun implementing the strategies from SMART Spelling into their classroom practice. You may hear your child beginning to talk about words, letters and sounds and you might hear them beginning to analyse words more closely, first breaking them up into individual sounds and then breaking them into letters, saying letter names using clustering. They will begin to use language such as ‘graphs’, ‘digraphs’, ‘split digraphs’, and ‘trigraphs’. From next week, the children will begin to bring home spelling words from the SMART Spelling program as part of their home learning. This will be related to the sounds, letters and words they are working on at school and words from their own writing.

If you would like more information about SMART Spelling please do not hesitate to come and see me.

Annabelle Marinelli

Literacy Leader

and

Antonella Tsakmakis

Family Engagement Leader