Spelling

"Many studies show that effective gathering and use of assessment data has a strong influence on students’ achievement in literacy learning."

Effective Literacy Practice in Years 1 to 4, page 51

In this article, Louisa Moats discusses how spelling is more regular and predictable that many people think. 

The role of oral language

Classroom talk, involving focused speaking and listening, is an important way for students to become familiar with different sounds of English. For information about how oral language contributes to literacy teaching and learning, see:

• Learning through Talk: Oral Language in Years 1 to 3, pages 70–71
• Exploring Language: Oral language
• Effective Literacy Practice in Years 1 to 4, pages 19 and 32–37
• Sound Sense, page 4 

A thorough knowledge base

When a sound knowledge base underpins your teaching, you can confidently:

• teach students how words work so that they can develop fluency as writers
• teach the phonological, phonemic, orthographical, and morphological knowledge that students need in order to be efficient spellers
• teach students strategies to help them work out how to spell words with increasing accuracy
• enable students to develop metacognition – awareness of how and when to use their knowledge and strategies.

Knowledge of effective literacy teaching

The following resources include information on effective literacy teaching:

• Literacy Online includes resources to help teachers know and use instructional strategies and to build literacy content knowledge. Also see  English Online and  ESOL Online.
• Effective Literacy Practice in Years 1 to 4, chapter 2 and chapter 4
  chapter 4 describes the deliberate acts of teaching (such as modelling and giving feedback) that are indispensable tools in all aspects of teaching. The chart 'How Students Learn and What Teachers Do' is valuable.
• Learning through Talk: Oral Language in Years 1 to 3, page 50
  Their version of the chart 'How Students Learn and What Teachers Do' includes aspects of oral language.

Teaching spelling

• Students’ spelling develops progressively through a series of identifiable stages.
• Deliberate, goal-focused instruction is essential, especially in the context of authentic writing tasks.
• Careful assessment identifies students’ spelling strengths and needs in order to inform instruction.
• Attitudes and expectations influence how students attend to spellings in words.
• Students at all levels continue to benefit from instruction and practice to help them figure out words with challenging structures and unfamiliar words in different subject areas.

Explicit teaching requires explicit information

Quality assessment information is key to better understanding and to better-quality teaching interactions. Consider the following questions:

• Can the student use  phonemic awareness to identify and record individual sounds in words?
• Does the student know that there can be different ways of representing the same sound?
• Does the student use knowledge of sound-letter relationships to write (regularly spelled) words?
• Has the student developed knowledge of common letter combinations (such as the digraphs “sh” and “th” and some blends)?
• Can the student use  visual memory of words (drawing from a growing bank of sight words) and make analogies to known  chunks and rimes to help work out words when writing?
• Does the student attempt to record known parts of words that have more than one syllable?
• In writing, does the student demonstrate a developing awareness of some common spelling patterns?
• Does the student apply basic morphological knowledge, especially of common word endings, to read and write words?
• Is the student beginning to demonstrate strategies (such as use of classroom supports or use of visual memory) to monitor and self-correct spelling?
• Is the student able to write an increasing number of high-frequency words accurately? Does the student apply an increasing knowledge of word structures and rules, especially of word endings such as plural endings?
• Is the student developing the habit of self-monitoring to detect and correct errors?
• Is the student developing the ability and confidence to explain their use of spelling knowledge and strategies?

Teaching sounds and words for younger students

Focus: Working out how to record words during independent writing.

Context: A student is trying to write the word "cloud" but is stuck on the initial consonant blend.

Listen to: 

Read the transcript: 

 The teacher:

• prompts the student to review their writing
• scaffolds the student by questioning and prompting, enabling the student to apply a rule and so solve the problem
• builds awareness by articulating what the student has just done.

From year 5

• Is the student able to apply knowledge of all basic sounds and spelling patterns to accurately spell most words, including most academic and topic-specific vocabulary?
• Is the student able to work out longer and less-regular words by drawing on:
  • a growing bank of personal and frequently used words and specialist words from across the curriculum 
  • a range of letter combinations, for example, digraphs, long vowel sounds, and consonant and vowel combinations 
  • a growing knowledge of spelling patterns and conventions (ways of representing sounds) 
  • a range of word structures, for example, to identify and use roots and most prefixes and suffixes 
  • a growing knowledge of word derivations?
• Does the student select and use a range of supports, such as dictionaries and classroom charts?
• Does the student self-monitor by proofreading their writing and using a range of strategies to fix errors?
• Is the student able to explain their use of knowledge and strategies to make spelling decisions when writing?
• Does the student demonstrate a sense of responsibility and confidence as a speller?

From year 7

• Does the student demonstrate a good understanding of all basic sounds and spelling patterns and conventions and use these to accurately spell most words, including most academic and topic-specific vocabulary?
• Is the student able to work out more challenging and complex words by drawing on:
  • a growing bank of personal, frequently used, and specialist words from across the curriculum 
  • a growing knowledge of ways of representing sounds 
  • a growing knowledge of word structures (for example, can the student identify and use roots and most prefixes and suffixes) 
  • a growing knowledge of word derivations?
• Does the student select and use a range of supports, such as dictionaries and classroom charts?
• Does the student self-monitor by proofreading their writing, using a range of strategies to fix errors, and using print and computer-based tools as appropriate?
• Is the student able to explain their use of knowledge and strategies to make spelling decisions when writing?
• Does the student demonstrate a sense of responsibility and confidence as a speller?

Teaching sounds and words for older students

Focus: Self-monitoring – proofreading; identifying and fixing up a spelling error.

Context: A mini-conference during which the teacher is giving feedback on writing; in this interaction, the focus is on spelling.

Listen to: 

Read the transcript:

The teacher:

• builds metacognitive awareness by asking the student to explain the reason for a correction, that is, to articulate the rule
• uses questions and prompts strategically to model effective use of prior knowledge (the teacher knows what this student knows and can do)
• finally, uses a prompting question to ensure that the student takes responsibility for checking the writing and applying the rule.

Context: Shared writing of a report in science.

Listen to:

Read the transcript: 

The teacher:

• takes the opportunity in a curriculum context to add to students’ understanding of how knowing word derivations can help in reading and writing
• brings sound, spelling, and meaning together
• models how to use knowledge to work out unfamiliar words
• builds students’ understanding by having them talk about the learning to one another.

Related knowledge that will inform your teaching

The spelling patterns of English – Orthography

Orthography is knowledge about the conventional spelling system of a language – how letters combine to represent sounds and form words. To help you build your students’ knowledge of spelling patterns, see:

• Effective Literacy Practice in Years 1 to 4, pages 144–148
• Switch on to Spelling, Joy Allcock, pages 24–29
• Spell–Write: Teachers’ Manual, pages 16–17 

Units of meaning in words – Morphology

Morphology is the study of the structure of words and how they are constructed from units that have some kind of independent meaning. A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning in a word, for example, "-ing". Knowledge of morphology contributes to knowing the common rules and conventions that govern how English words are written, such as knowing about prefixes and suffixes, plurals, or the final "e" in a word. A sound grasp of structures of words and their associated rules and conventions will greatly enhance your teaching of spelling as you support students in recording increasingly complex word structures. Useful information can be found in these resources:

• Effective Literacy Practice in Years 1 to 4, pages 144–145
• Learning through Talk: Oral Language in Years 1 to 3, pages 74–75
• Exploring Language: The Word
• Switch on to Spelling, Joy Allcock, pages 30–32
• Teaching Reading Comprehension, Alison Davis, chapter 2

A bank of sight words – Visual memory

Visual memory is the ability to call on the visual image of a written word, or part of one, in order to read or write it accurately. A visual memory of many words enables students to use the strategy of  analogy, that is, to use their knowledge of how sounds in familiar words are written to help them read or write a new word. Visual memory continues to be important as the vocabulary demands of the curriculum increase. Find out more in:

• Effective Literacy Practice in Years 1 to 4, page 35
• Switch on to Spelling, Joy Allcock, pages 33–35.

Teachers make a difference: knowledgeable, informed teachers make more!

Judy Parr, in address at NZRA, 2005

What do I need to do?

It is what teachers actually do, moment by moment in their classrooms, that makes a difference to student achievement.

Effective Literacy Practice in Years 1 to 4, back cover

Teaching suggestions

Resources that can help you to enable your students to meet their needs in spelling development include:

• Sound Sense – The teaching ideas (page 15–42) include excellent suggestions for using Ready to Read materials to teach hearing sounds in words (syllables; initial, final, and medial sounds), building and breaking words, matching letters and sounds, and identifying common word endings. There’s also a series of appendices from the Ready to Read books, poem cards, big books, and the Kiwi Kidsongs series.

• Ready to Read teacher support material – This contains introductory information and notes on titles, with many relevant ideas for developing phonological awareness in reading contexts. You can also search for information about initial letters, blends, digraphs, and rimes.

• Effective Literacy Practice in Years 1 to 4, pages 32–37 – For example, relating sounds to print and relating parts of words to sounds.

• The New Zealand Curriculum Exemplars: English – These provide guidance about students’ progress and help teachers make decisions about next learning steps. Some of the annotations include comments on students’ use of phonological information to write words.


• Switch on to Spelling, Joy Allcock – This provides many relevant teaching topics. See appendices A and B for strategies for decoding and writing unfamiliar words and Appendix D for activities for teaching phonological and phonemic awareness.

• Spell-Write: Teachers' Manual, chapter 3 – Includes a  chart of the steps in learning to spell a word  (20 kB), which appears with notes for students at the beginning of the essential word lists and groups of words in Spell-Write: An Aid to Spelling and Writing.

• Monitoring Progress in Spelling Using Developmental Information – This includes a  summary chart for five stages of spelling development  (80 kB) that can inform your decisions about your students’ next learning steps.

Noticing the effect of changed practice

Over the next few weeks

• What is the difference I expect to see in my students’ reading and writing?
• What do I need to do differently?
• What will I notice my students saying and doing that will show my teaching is having the intended impact?

Reflecting on teaching

• What is the impact of my teaching? How do I know?
• What do I need to know more about?
• What changes to my practice do I now need to consider?
• What improvements do I expect to see in my students’ reading and writing?

"Teaching practice can be described as truly effective only when it has a positive impact on student achievement."

Effective Literacy Practice in Years 1 to 4, page 8

• What do I need to know and do? provides suggestions for teachers across all aspects of literacy learning.
• Sound Sense, pages 5 to 12 – See the section on spelling, as well as ideas about planning for phonics instruction, and discussion of phonics in the wider literacy programme.
• Exploring Language – Letters and sounds, including vowels and consonants.
• Effective Literacy Practice in Years 1 to 4 – Includes a discussion of using deliberate acts of teaching – modelling, prompting, questioning, and giving feedback – to help move students towards accurate spelling (pages 144–148).
• Learning through Talk: Oral Language in Years 1 to 3, chapter 5 – An Observation Survey of Early Literacy Achievement, Marie Clay, pages 111–112
• Teaching Reading Comprehension, Alison Davis, chapters 2 and 3 – Working with word strategies and vocabulary strategies.
• Dyslexia and learning guide for schools

Websites to explore for teaching ideas

• The International Literacy Association
• Primary English Teaching Association Australia: PETAA
• Australian Literacy Educators’ Association

Morphology resources

• Common Latin and Greek root words, common prefixes and suffixes 

Never underestimate the richness of the information you build up through:

• focused observation (for example, observing students’ use of independent spelling activities or during guided or shared reading and writing)
• brief, on-the-run interactions focused on how the student uses word-level information to write words
• discussing sounds and ways to write them during interviews or conferences about writing
• observing students’ reading, writing, and talking at all times of the school day.

Gathering assessment information on spelling

The following resources include information on assessment procedures and tools:

• Literacy Online – You can identify students’ strengths and needs by using diagnostic assessment tools and formative assessment processes.

• Effective Literacy Practice in Years 1 to 4 – pages 55–63 includes a summary of a range of procedures and tools.

• Sound Sense – page 14 provides assessment and monitoring in relation to phonological awareness and phonics.

• Spell-Write: Teachers' Manual, pages 35–50 – This resource can support you when assessing spelling and evaluating progress.

• Monitoring Progress in Spelling Using Developmental Information, pages 24–26, 48–50 – Comments on aspects such as purposes and frequency of assessment.

• An Observation Survey of Early Literacy Achievement, Marie Clay – This resource provides test items and a discussion of the understandings that underpin them. In includes information about knowledge of the sounds and names of letters (pages 82–90), control of sound-to-letter links (pages 111–120), and knowledge of letters and letter sequence (pages 97–107).

• Using Running Records – Supports teachers to gain detailed knowledge about a student’s attention to visual and grapho-phonic information.
• Using Evidence in Teaching Practice, Helen Timperley and Judy Parr, pages 59–68 – Includes a description of benchmarked assessment tools.
• Switch on to Spelling, Joy Allcock, pages 57–80 – What to assess, how to assess, and where to begin, across three stages.

• STAR (Supplementary Tests of Achievement in Reading)– Word recognition test.

• Assessment Resource Bank

Information from analysis of students’ writing

Finding out how your students record sounds when writing will give you rich information about what knowledge of the sound system of English (and related skills) they have already acquired. You can discover, for example, whether they are writing all sounds or whether there is a pattern in their omissions.

• The New Zealand Curriculum Exemplars: English – Provides examples of how students progress and how teachers can make decisions about next learning steps. The annotations of writing samples include comments on students’ spelling attempts.


• Annotated writing samples illustrate development in spelling. A monitoring sheet is used to establish the stage (or predominant and related stages) and to provide evidence of the knowledge and strategies the writer is drawing on. This enables teachers to identify a student's strengths and needs, and plan for further teaching.

• Switch on to Spelling, Joy Allcock – Includes writing samples across three stages of spelling development, with comments on what the writing reveals about students’ progress in spelling and suggested next steps in learning.

• asTTle (Assessment Tools for Teaching and Learning) – Covers levels 2–6 of The New Zealand Curriculum. Spelling, a "surface feature", is assessed in relation to skill and knowledge about high-frequency words, use of irregular and less common spelling patterns, spelling of multi-syllabic words, and spelling of irregular, technical, or academic vocabulary.

• Monitoring Progress in Spelling Using Developmental Information,
  summary chart for five stages of spelling development (PDF 80KB)
  pages 30–50 

Information from oral language

You can gather information as you monitor how students hear and articulate the sounds of English and as you listen to the rhythm and intonation of their talk.

• Learning through Talk: Oral Language in Years 1 to 3
• Exploring Language: Oral language

Specialised assessment resources

• The Communicate to Participate kit contains screening tools for use with students whose progress in ability to identify and record sounds you are concerned about.
• Dyslexia and literacy – Ministry of Education resources that provide specific strategies for supporting students with dyslexia in phonological awareness, reading, and writing.
• Dyslexia and learning guide for schools
• About Dyslexia - Supporting literacy in the classroom 03.2024 (PDF 3MB)
  defines and describes dyslexia and provides information about assessments as well as support for teachers. It includes activities to build phonemic and phonological awareness and writing and spelling activities.

• The English Language Learning Progressions: A resource for mainstream and ESOL teachers

"We used to spend a lot of time talking about other things like their home backgrounds. Now we constantly bring it back to 'What is the data telling us?', 'What can we change and what can’t we change?' … The idea that we can’t make a difference just disappears."

Principal, quoted in Using Evidence in Teaching Practice, Helen Timperley and Judy Parr, page 123

What should my students know and be able to do?

The New Zealand Curriculum: English, level 1 indicators

Speaking, writing, and presenting

Processes and strategies

• Creates texts by using meaning, structure, visual and grapho-phonic sources of information, prior knowledge, and some processing strategies with some confidence.

Language features

• Spells some high-frequency words correctly and begins to use some common spelling patterns.
• Begins to use some strategies to self-correct and monitor spelling.

After one year of instruction, most students will be working towards level 1 achievement objectives.

National Standards

Standard: Writing

After one year at school, students will create texts as they begin learning in a range of contexts across the New Zealand Curriculum at level 1. Students will use their writing to think about, record, and communicate experiences, ideas, and information to meet specific learning purposes across the curriculum.

Literacy Learning Progressions

Writing

They draw on knowledge and skills that include:

• using their developing phonemic awareness to aurally segment words into syllables (for example, win-dow, ham-bur-ger) and one-syllable words into individual phonemes (for example, b/a/n/d; sh/i/p) 
• using their developing  visual memory to accurately write some key personal words and some high-frequency words 
• encoding (spelling) unfamiliar words by using their developing knowledge of phoneme–grapheme relationships, which enables them to:
  • recognise and write most sounds of English in at least one appropriate way (for example, s, t, ch,ow, k, f, oy)
  • recognise that there can be different ways of representing the same sound (for example, phone/father; keep/cat)
  • apply sound–letter relationships in order to write words they want to use (for example, catapulla)
• encoding (spelling) unfamiliar words by using their developing knowledge of morphology to write word endings correctly (for example, jump/jumped; boy/boys) 
• using classroom resources such as wallcharts and picture dictionaries.

What should my students know and be able to do?

The New Zealand Curriculum: English, level 1 indicators

Speaking, writing, and presenting

Processes and strategies

• Creates texts by using meaning, structure, visual and grapho-phonic sources of information, prior knowledge, and some processing strategies with some confidence.

Language features

• Spells some high-frequency words correctly and begins to use some common spelling patterns.
• Begins to use some strategies to self-correct and monitor spelling.

The New Zealand Curriculum: English, level 2 indicators

Speaking, writing, and presenting

Processes and strategies

• Creates texts by using meaning, structure, visual and grapho-phonic sources of information, and processing strategies with growing confidence.

Language features

• Spells most high-frequency words correctly and shows growing knowledge of common spelling patterns.
• Uses a range of strategies to self-monitor and self-correct spelling.

After two years of instruction, most students will be working at level 1 and towards level 2 achievement objectives.

National Standards

Standard: Writing

After two years at school, students will create texts in order to meet the writing demands of the New Zealand Curriculum at level 1. Students will use their writing to think about, record, and communicate experiences, ideas, and information to meet specific learning purposes across the curriculum.

Literacy Learning Progressions

Reading

They draw on knowledge and skills that include:

• automatically recognising between 300 and 500 high-frequency words in their instructional texts 
• decoding unfamiliar words by:
  • using their knowledge of grapheme–phoneme relationships to identify both consonant sounds (for example, s, t, p, sh, th, ch, ng) and vowel sounds (for example, e, a, o, ai, ow, igh, ou, ee)
  • recognising common  chunks of words and making  analogies to words that look similar
  • using their developing knowledge of morphology (such as knowledge of prefixes and suffixes).

Writing

They draw on knowledge and skills that include:

• using their developing phonemic awareness to form new words aurally by changing or taking out some of the sounds in a word or by adding new sounds to words 
• using their  visual memory to spell personal vocabulary as well as high-frequency words, which could include most of the words in essential lists 1 and 2 as well as some of the high-frequency words in essential lists 3 and 4 
• encoding (spelling) unfamiliar words by:
  • using their knowledge of diverse phoneme–grapheme relationships to write some of the sounds of English in different ways (for example, photo, laugh, Friday)
  • applying strategies such as sounding out words, making analogies to words that sound or look the same, and using known chunks and rimes
  • using their increasing knowledge of morphology to correctly spell word endings and other morphemes (for example, greatest, florist)
  • applying their knowledge of simple spelling rules (for example, using -es for plural nouns ending in s, such as buses).

What should my students know and be able to do?

The New Zealand Curriculum: English, level 2 indicators

Speaking, writing, and presenting

Processes and strategies

• Creates texts by using meaning, structure, visual and grapho-phonic sources of information, prior knowledge, and some processing strategies with some confidence.

Language features

• Spells some high-frequency words correctly and begins to use some common spelling patterns.
• Begins to use some strategies to self-correct and monitor spelling.

After three years of instruction, most students will be working towards level 2 achievement objectives.

National Standards

Standard: Writing

After three years at school, students will create texts in order to meet the writing demands of the New Zealand Curriculum as they work towards level 2. Students will use their writing to think about, record, and communicate experiences, ideas, and information to meet specific learning purposes across the curriculum.

Literacy Learning Progressions

Writing

They draw on knowledge and skills that include:

• using their  visual memory to spell personal vocabulary and high-frequency words (for example, many words from essential lists 1–4 and some from list 5 and list 6) 
• encoding (spelling) unfamiliar words by:
  • using their knowledge of phoneme–grapheme relationships, along with their developing awareness of spelling conventions, to select correct spelling patterns for sounds in words (for example, spelling the k sound correctly in both catch and kitchen)
  • applying their growing knowledge of useful spelling rules (for example, the rules relating to adding simple plural suffixes such as those in baby/babies and half/halves) and their growing knowledge of morphology (for example, adding a d to hear to make heard)
  • applying their expanding knowledge of graphemes (for example, of graphemes such as or,awe, oar, and oor, which record similar sounds) to write words correctly.

What should my students know and be able to do?

The New Zealand Curriculum, the  National Standards, and  The Literacy Learning Progressions provide guidance for teachers of year 5 and 6 students.

At this level, students continue to draw on word-level information to meet the widening range of spelling requirements across the curriculum. Use a variety of teaching opportunities to deepen students’ knowledge of how written English works and to build their confidence and awareness.

English level 2 indicators, National Standards, and Literacy Learning Progressions for end of year 4 are also provided on this page to give guidance to teachers at these levels.

The New Zealand Curriculum: English, level 2 indicators

Speaking, writing, and presenting

Processes and strategies

• Creates texts by using meaning, structure, visual and grapho-phonic sources of information, and integrating processing strategies with growing confidence.

Language features

• Spells most high-frequency words correctly and shows growing knowledge of common spelling patterns.
• Uses a range of strategies to self-monitor and self-correct spelling.

The New Zealand Curriculum: English, level 3 indicators

Speaking, writing, and presenting

Processes and strategies

• Creates a range of texts by integrating sources of information and processing strategies with developing confidence.

Language features

• Demonstrates good understanding of all basic spelling patterns and sounds in written English.
• Uses an increasing range of strategies to self-monitor and self-correct spelling.

The New Zealand Curriculum: English, level 4 indicators

Speaking, writing, and presenting

Processes and strategies

• Creates a range of texts by integrating sources of information and processing strategies with increasing confidence.

Language features

• Demonstrates a good understanding of spelling patterns in written English, with few intrusive errors.
• Uses a wide range of strategies to self-monitor and self-correct spelling.

By the end of year 6, most students will be working at level 3 and towards level 4 achievement objectives.

National Standards

Standard: Writing

By the end of year 6, students will create texts in order to meet the writing demands of the New Zealand Curriculum at level 3. Students will use their writing to think about, record, and communicate experiences, ideas, and information to meet specific learning purposes across the curriculum.

Literacy Learning Progressions

Reading

They draw on knowledge and skills that include:

• decoding texts fluently and accurately, using a range of reliable strategies 
• finding and learning the meanings of unknown vocabulary by using strategies such as applying their knowledge of how words work or seeking explanations in the text or in illustrations.

Writing

When students at this level create texts, they:

• independently revise and edit their writing to clarify its meaning and add impact, often in response to feedback 
• proofread to check the spelling, grammar, and punctuation, using appropriate computer-based or print tools.

They draw on knowledge and skills that include:

• using their knowledge of how words work (for example, knowledge of diverse phoneme–grapheme relationships, of common, reliable spelling rules and conventions, and of the meanings and spellings of morphemes), along with their knowledge of word derivations, to fluently and correctly encode most unfamiliar words, including words of many syllables 
• correctly spelling all high-frequency words used in their writing.

What should my students know and be able to do?

"Even the most experienced readers and writers will need to use word-level information at times, for example, when trying to decode or encode unfamiliar technical terms. All students, therefore, will benefit from deliberate instruction on how to use the sources of information."

Effective Literacy Practice in Years 5 to 8, page 32

At this level, students continue to draw on word-level information to meet the widening range of vocabulary requirements across the curriculum. Use a variety of teaching opportunities to deepen students’ knowledge of how written English works and to build their confidence and awareness.

The New Zealand Curriculum: English, level 4 indicators

Speaking, writing, and presenting

Processes and strategies

• Creates a range of texts by integrating sources of information and processing strategies with increasing confidence.

Language features

• Demonstrates a good understanding of spelling patterns in written English, with few intrusive errors.
• Uses a wide range of strategies to self-monitor and self-correct spelling.

The New Zealand Curriculum: English, level 5 indicators

Speaking, writing, and presenting

Processes and strategies

• Creates a range of increasingly varied and complex texts by integrating sources of information and processing strategies.

Language features

• Uses a wide range of text conventions, including grammatical and spelling conventions, appropriately, effectively and with increasing accuracy.

By the end of year 8, most students will be working at level 4 and towards level 5 achievement objectives.

National Standards

Standard: Writing

By the end of year 8, students will create texts in order to meet the writing demands of the New Zealand Curriculum at level 4. Students will use their writing to think about, record, and communicate experiences, ideas, and information to meet specific learning purposes across the curriculum.

Literacy Learning Progressions

Writing

When students at this level create texts, they:

• craft and re-craft text by revising and editing, checking that the text meets its purpose and is likely to engage the intended audience, and proofreading the text to check the grammar, spelling, and punctuation.

They draw on knowledge and skills that include:

• fluently and correctly encoding most unfamiliar words (including words of many syllables) by drawing on their knowledge of how words work (for example, in terms of diverse phoneme–grapheme relationships, common and reliable spelling rules and conventions, and the meanings and spellings of morphemes) and their knowledge of word derivations.