The Spelling Book: Transforming the Teaching of Spelling (Year 6)

This is a brilliant book which have helped us to transform our spelling lessons.It’s great, as a teacher, to find a resource which actually saves you workload!!Highly recommend

I am a huge fan of the Write stuff and hooked on books and I was keen to get the year 2 spelling book. Unfortunately, it seems to me to be very flawed. It has no cohesion and it jumps from one spelling pattern to another. In week 2 they cover il, /ee/ sound as y, convert incorrect spellings of common exception words. contractions, sorting words into pronunciation of a. I don't see how this learning will stick if they only do it once in a week. There are no small steps or linked learning. In another week, it asks children to do tasks which they don't have the prior knowledge to tackle. For example, asking children to convert present tense words into regular and irregular spellings before they have learned how to convert regular words into the past tense and the rules associated with them. I haven't had the training that goes with this book so I tried listening to the sunday session on Youtube. Jane says that her spelling series is heavily influenced by phonics teaching. I have taught in KS1 for lots of years and have had good quality phonics teaching. For me, good phonics involves following a well structured sequence of lessons with a cohesive curriculum that doesn't jump around from day to day. There are nice activities and ideas in this book but I wouldn't choose to follow the lesson sequence in it. Coming in a year where we are recovering from Covid I can't understand why she would advocate teaching prefixes from the year 3 spelling appendix in year 2. I believe our children need to develop a deep understanding of year 2 rules such as adding ing and ed to words not a shallow understanding of year 2 and year 3 rules.

Having watched all of JC’s Sunday Sessions and other videos during lockdown, I was excited to hear that a spelling book was coming out to further enhance my teaching or writing. I know from my experience of following JC’s approach that her ideas really do result in progress. Now that I’ve looked through this book, I’m excited to get started and am sure it will ‘transform’ my teaching.The book is a practical week by week guide for teaching spelling to whichever year group you pick. Excellent layout and fabulous ideas. I’d recommend this book and her equally excellent writing/reading books.

I’ve been using the plans for literacy which are good and thought I’d try the spelling . Some good ideas but without the training that goes along with it a bit if a waste. Need to persuade my school to spend the money!

I genuinely cannot wait to implement this with my new class in September then roll out to wider school when I can demonstrate how it works. After many years of teaching (and saying that spelling tests achieve nothing) I am so excited to see investigations, discussions and the teaching of sounds and words throughout primary school. Spelling is so important even in this technological age! After watching the online Sunday Spelling sessions I am so excited to get started. Thank you Jane, Ian and team for your fantastic resources.

I ordered this book last week and have started using it already - the investigative style activities are brilliant and such a good idea to empower the children to explore spelling patterns. It is larger and thicker than I thought it would be and easy to use. It is filled with activities and ideas to support the teaching of spellings effectively. I’m enjoying trialling it during this half term so that I’m prepared to use it at the start of the next school year.

Arrived quickly - excellent service.Introducing this to my Year 5s in September but I've been testing out the structure with my current y4 class. This approach to spelling is a breath of fresh air for teachers. No matter how many tests children do, they don't build up the skills to apply their knowledge of spelling into their independent work. Jane's 'Spelling Books' completely changes this. It transforms the teaching of spelling. Absolutely amazing.

This is a fantastic book and is really simple to understand. I love how it is split into weekly activities with a longer spelling activity in week one and then five short activities in week two. This has really inspired me to change the way I teach spelling. This will be a great resource this year especially as I am changing year group and key stage.