- Thursday 20 January 2022
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Spelling is a balance of memory and skill, where students remember how to spell words and apply the language strategies to future words. Practising spelling consistently allows your students to return the words they’ve recently learnt as well as learn how to spell new words and continue progressing. That’s why leaning on tools and equipment that are structured for optimal spelling progression can be imperative to helping your class succeed in mastering spelling at their relative complexity requirements.
R.I.C.’s Spelling Box series is designed exactly for this, to help students not only learn how to spell words but gain strategies and skills that arm them with the tools they need to excel at future spelling. There are boxes for Years 1 to 6, so the difficultly and lessons are tailored to the ability of different ages. Below we explain exactly what The Spelling Box is and how you can integrate this resource into your lessons effectively to help your students master spelling.
What is The Spelling Box?
The Spelling Box is an educational resource filled with content cards designed to enhance spelling. The content is anchored around nine skills and strategies that support a comprehensive spelling education and provide students with the ability to apply these principles to future words and become spelling masters.
Developing these skills is important to aid students in understanding language and applying skills throughout their lives, so every year level box focuses on all nine strategies. However, as the boxes are tailored to different levels of knowledge and understanding the way they teach these skills varies. Here we outline each level so you know what to expect:
Boxes 1 and 2
Following the nine skills and strategies, the text on the cards for Years 1 and 2 is larger and easier to read so young children can practice and begin to exercise their independence. These also come with more colourful artwork, to keep young minds engaged and curious about spelling.
Boxes 3 and 4
Boxes for Years 3 and 4 are designed with text written clearly and concisely so students in this age range can follow along easily. These middle boxes extend students’ learning through strategies including ‘Using phonemes’ and ‘visualising’; and for Box 4, ‘Chunking’ and ‘Using analogy’. Students can work independently or with a partner.
Boxes 5 and 6
Years 5 and 6 provide an array of simple strategies that can be expanded on and applied in other situations. These upper boxes extend students’ learning through strategies such as ‘Using rules and generalisations’ and ‘Using sources’; and for Box 6 ‘Applying morphemic principles’ and ‘Using etymology’.
How does The Spelling Box help students master spelling?
Creating fun and challenging content to enhance spelling helps students learn skills while remaining engaged. Engagement is a pivotal part of learning, as it means students are actively involved in their learning and knowledge is retained more easily. The Spelling Box harnesses fun to keep students engaged while they learn the nine skills and strategies that power spelling ability.
Once they’ve mastered these strategies, spelling becomes a much more natural process, and something students can use throughout their lives to understand new words and communicate through language. Below we explore the nine skills and strategies and how they benefit students’ spelling skills and abilities:
1. Learning and using phonemes to distinguish sounds between words
2. Harnessing visualisation for visual learning that helps retain knowledge
3. Chunking to break words up and make their spelling manageable
4. Analogies allow students to refer to words they already know to spell a new or more challenging word
5. Rules and generalisations that can be applied to new words and help students adopt an approach to spelling unfamiliar words on their own
6. Morphemic principles equip students to understand word parts and extract meaning from unfamiliar words
7. Mnemonics that provide patterns, rhymes and ideas associated with remembering words
8. Using etymology to teach students how words and letter combinations are derived from other languages, providing insight into how to spell a word and why it’s spelt a particular way
9. Using various sources to provide a comprehensive method to solving spelling challenges and unfamiliar words
How to implement The Spelling Box for optimal engagement
Apply any or all of the below methods to seamlessly integrate our fun and engaging spelling boxes into your classroom:
Identify what strategies are lacking in your classroom
Your particular teaching style and that of your students' previous teachers is likely to favour particular spelling strategies and skills. It’s natural for teachers to lean into what they know works, but chances are there are additional principles and strategies that your class is unfamiliar with and could really help advance students' spelling to the next level.
Consider which principles aren’t being utilised and use the appropriate card in The Spelling Box to introduce new strategies to your students. If there are particular types of challenging words or individual students struggling with spelling, a different strategy approach may be all they need to improve their ability.
Plan spelling activities for optimized learning
Planning before you introduce The Spelling Box to your classroom can help your students gain the most valuable learning experience. To plan, you might want to break students into groups relating to their current spelling ability and tailor their content to make sure each group is appropriately challenged, encouraging motivation and progression.
Planning might also involve identifying students struggling with spelling or general gaps in knowledge and leveraging the content in The Spelling Box to match their learning needs.
Personalise activities and cards
As teachers, you’ll know that each of your students has a different learning style and thrives on different topics. R.I.C.’s Spelling Boxes allow you to lean into their different preferences with practical activities across the nine different skills and strategies, all of which are well-researched to cover the principles of spelling. You’ll have the capacity to keep each of your students engaged with a lesson you can personalise to allow every style to thrive.
Make it fun!
The Spelling Box allows you to stir enjoyment into the mix with a collection of ‘Just For Fun’ cards that use games and activities to encourage students to exercise their spelling skills. When fun's involved, they’ll want to continue to master spelling outside of the classroom, too!
Check out The Spelling Box series today and browse our site for more engaging and fun products for your students.