Strategies

Look. Cover. Write. Check.

There are a number of ways you can practice and improve your spellings. You may already be familiar with ‘Look. Cover. Write. Check’ from primary school. It is a simple and effective way to help practice your spellings.

Step One

Look at the word you are trying to spell.

• Think how you can group the letters in the word e.g. direct – ion, jump – ing
• Look at the letters you tend to get confused or muddled, think of ways you can remember their correct order
• Visualise the word in your head, how does it look?

Step Two

Cover the word up.

• Close the book, turn around, go out of the room!

Step Three

Write the word.

• Write the word out, thinking about how it looks and sounds
• Think about how it looks on the page and how it feels to write it out

Step Four

Check your spelling.

• Check whether you’ve spelt the word correctly.
• If not, you know some more work is needed.
• If you have, congratulations! Wait a few days then test yourself again, until you can spell it correctly without checking the word first!