Principal's Report
SPELLING MASTERY
During Term 3 and Term 4 students in Year 3/4/5/6 have been participating in the Spelling Mastery program. Spelling Mastery provides structured lessons to effectively and efficiently teach the spelling skills students need to become proficient readers and writers.
Spelling Mastery builds dependable spelling skills for students through a highly structured method that blends the following approaches:
- Phonemic approach - helps beginning spellers learn the relationships between spoken sounds and written letters and then apply them to spelling
- Morphemic approach - exposes advanced spellers to prefixes, bases, and suffixes
- Whole-word approach - gives spellers at all levels the meaning and root of a word and shows how the word's spelling is influenced
Spelling Mastery interweaves these three approaches according to students' skill development and provides straightforward lessons to help efficiently and effectively teach the spelling skills students need to become proficient readers and writers. Explicit instruction, careful selection of spelling words, and repeated and cumulative practice help students master each concept and reinforce and retain key information.
Students have been grouped according to their ability levels and meet for 3 or 4, 30 minute lessons a week. Students are enjoying these Spelling Mastery lessons, as are the teachers, and we are seeing real student improvements in their spelling and understanding of words.
WHITE RIBBON DAY