We are delighted that in the past few weeks the students in classes 3-6 have started Spelling Mastery, a program we’ve invested in to improve spelling abilities at McAuley.

Spelling Mastery is a fully scripted Direct Instruction program that has an extensive research base and is teacher directed. The program helps students understand the relationship between sounds, word parts, and spelling patterns. Spelling Mastery encourages students to learn strategies to spell correctly rather than rely on memory alone. 

There are three approaches within Spelling Mastery. Phonemic, whole-word, and morphemic. 

Through the phonemic approach, students learn sound-symbol relationship between letters and sounds that help student spell using predictable patterns. For example, words like map, tap, fog, fan.  

The whole word approach teaches students high frequency words and irregularly spelled words that do not follow a predictable pattern. Examples- ‘answer’ ‘the’ and ‘people’. 

The morphographic approach teaches students that all words are made of one or more morphograph or word parts. They also learn rules that apply when combining morphographs to form words. 

The students will learn to spell using all the above methods through lessons delivered in class. Please do not be concerned if word lists aren’t being sent home on a regular basis, as the focus of Spelling Mastery is for students to understand how to spell rather than spell ‘by heart’.   We also recognise the need for practicing the skills learned in class, so when there are word lists sent home it would be mainly when added practice is called for.  

Please  do not hesitate to contact your child’s teacher if you have any questions.