Writing and Spelling

There are many things you can do at home that will naturally develop your child's writing and spelling skills.

They can write to family and friends using:
* email
* notes
* cards
* letters

They could keep a diary of their daily activities to share on their return to school. Illustrate their daily recount of events with drawings and colour.

You may be writing to create texts for reading and could:
* caption photographs
* write instructions (how to make your favourite recipe, get to someone's house, play a game)

Spelling
There are many sites on the internet that can assist with practise of spelling at home. Classroom blogs will have links to many of these games appropriate to your child's spelling ability.
Other activities you could do include:
* Eye spy using letter names, sounds and rhymes, e.g. I spy a words that starts with the sound... I spy a word that rhymes with....
* Changing the endings of words to generate words, e.g. adding ed, ing, s, er
* Making lists of words that rhyme, e.g. bark, mark, clark, shark
* Practising writing words in chalk, on steamy mirrors or with water on the pavement.

Older children could explore dictionaries and thesaurus taking the opportunity to expand their vocabulary.
Try searching visual dictionary, but these sites might be interesting:
http://www.infovisual.info/
http://thesaurus.com/

Becoming confident speakers helps children become better writers. Many children don’t speak in sentences but a steady stream of linked (or not!!) ideas. Learning to order ideas carefully is how children learn to change thoughts into stories or other forms of writing.  Children who write well can differentiate ideas into separate sentences (or smaller more concise ideas).

This game will help children practice the art of converting “stream of consciousness” talking or thinking, into written language.
  • Cut out some pictures, the newspaper is an excellent source. Sit in a quiet space (ie no telly, radio or computer in the background.)
  • Get one person to pull out a picture. Have a general discussion about the picture. 
  • Next, one person has to say a sentence about the picture. * The concept of a sentence is a difficult one for some children to grasp. Talk about it being an idea – one that could stand on its own.
  • As you all get better you can play the game so that the next person has to make their sentence link to the previous idea.
  • You can get children to practice other language techniques too, eg simile, onomatopoeia or alliteration.
  • You could write up some of the suggestions and stick them on the fridge with the photo for everyone to read.

If nothing else this activity will help remind you what a difficult thing we ask children to do when we ask them to come up with a story!