Mr Irwin's Message

Term 3 Week 8

A Focus on Spelling

Hello everyone, I want to take the time to share staff professional learning that we have been conducting at the school as we work on improving the teaching of spelling across the school and improve outcomes for our students. We’ve been providing opportunities for staff to learn, collaborate and view what we believe is best practice in spelling. 

I’m sure if you cast your mind back to when you learnt to spell as a child, or consider the conversations you have with parents from other schools some common themes may be programs, lists and phonics based learning that promote the idea that A says /A/ or C says /C/. 

At Teesdale, we’re taking the time to get spelling right. We’ve invested significant time from our professional learning calendar to consider how our teachers can be effective teachers of spelling, and not simply administering an off the shelf program or approach. What we are embarking on as a team is a school wide approach to spelling that is inquiry based and targeted to the individual needs of students. 

Guiding our professional knowledge in the effective teaching has been the book Spelling K-8. This has guided our thinking and practice in the classroom and provided advice on the teaching of spelling that works and has impact.

The following snippets were compiled from some recent coaching that took place in classrooms across the school. Our school improvement team of Mr Lindsay and Miss Wojcik demonstrated some of the approaches that will be part of our approach to spelling at Teesdale going forward. 

Whilst I don’t intend the videos to show you every aspect of the teaching of spelling, it should give you a lens into what you can expect to see happening in class so you can have meaningful conversations with your child about their learning.