Spelling Sampling

A new skill that we are working on as part of the spelling programme is sampling.   We all did this when we were writing years ago when we had a scrap of paper beside us and wrote out how we thought a word was spelt, then crossed out the ones that didn't look right. In the Spelling Alive programme it is taught in a structured way - remember Spelling Alive is about teaching spelling skills not learning spelling words.

How it works:
If our teaching focus is the long 'e' sound, we first teach the spelling patterns.

The ones we looked at over the last 2 weeks were: 'e'  as in be, 'e split 'e' as in complete, 'ea' as in beach, 'ee' as in meet, 'y' as in Sally, 'ey' as in money, 'i.e.' as in Sophie

We looked at patterns and noticed that the 'y' or 'ey' patterns were always at the end of words, so if we were sampling a word with a long 'e' sound in the middle we wouldn't try one of those patterns.

Orally a word like seat would be given.  We conducted this - 1 conducting line, tooled it - 3 sound lines, then recorded the sounds in order, noting where the long 'e' sound was.

Our sampling would look like this:
seet
seat
set
siet
sete
We then look at our list as good readers.  Most people are fast to point out that it can't be 'set' as they read it quickly and can use clean sounds to tool the word.  A tick is put beside the word that is chosen.

In our writing books at the bottom of the page we have our sampling lines and we are learning to use this to sample words in this way on the run in our writing.

I hope in some way this clarifies "sampling" as a spelling skill.  Feel free to pop in and ask if you would like a quick lesson.