Sea Adventures: About this Spelling Book

This spelling book is designed to help your child develop confident spelling skills through regular, manageable practice.

Each set contains five carefully selected words: three phonics-based and some have one or two tricky words.

The Two-Week Practice Approach

Each spelling set is practised over two weeks. This gives children time to see the same words multiple times, helping them to remember and to spell automatically. If your child can already recall the words after a couple of attempts, keep practising since this helps them to remember permanently. Spacing practice over time, rather than cramming in one session, moves information from short-term to long-term memory.

Daily Practice Tips

Keep practice short and positive: just two to three minutes daily is more effective than longer, infrequent sessions.

™ For phonics words: Help your child to sound out each part of the word and identify the pattern they are learning. Use the phonics mat via the button below to help with this.

™ For tricky words: Encourage your child to spot the 'tricky part' that doesn't follow the rules and find ways to remember it.

Supporting Your Child

™ Celebrate effort and improvement, not just correct spellings

™ Notice your child’s strategies, such as using sound buttons or self-correcting. Can you tell your child how many are correct and see if they can identify the errors? This will prompt useful discussion.

™ Make practice fun and varied to maintain interest. Why not do giant writing, forming each letter as big in the air as possible? Write the letters or graphemes on post-its and invite your child to jump on each one as they spell the word. For more ideas to motivate and to encourage positive conversations about inaccuracies, please click here.

™   Ask your child where in the word the grapheme goes – at the beginning, in the middle of the word or at the end. Remember at this stage, a grapheme can be one to three letters to make a single sound (for example, digraphs like 'sh', 'ch' and 'oa' or trigraphs like ‘igh’).

™ Take your time: every child progresses differently.

Retaining and applying learning

Remember: consistent practice over the two-week period will give your child the best chance to master these spellings and to build their confidence as a speller. Encourage your child to write these using their best handwriting as well as in other ways. This will help your child’s fluency further. Try these words accurately when trying to write a sentence. This is trickier than it sounds and will take practice. Use the buttons below to find some silly and sensible sentences and some handwriting sheets for each set.

Thank you for helping your child to flourish.