Your 11-12 year old child will soon be reaching the competent stage of being a confident speller and it won’t be long until they will be starting secondary school.
Your 11-12 year old has a phonological understanding of spelling
Your child at this age will be able to comprehend that sounds can be represented in lots of different ways and will be familiar with lots of complicated combinations of vowels. A good example of this is ‘ough’ which has many different sounds such as "bought, tough, though, thought."
Your 11-12 year old now has a visual knowledge of spelling
Your child should know how words look and be able to spell to a high standard of accuracy. If your child has reached this milestone, he should be able to correctly use generalisations such as ‘I’ before ‘e’ except after ‘c’. Children will also learn about homonyms which are words that are spelled differently despite sounding the same, for instance; "through, thru" and "through"
An 11-12 year old has a morphemic knowledge of spelling
Morphemic means how a word changes form. A good example of this is using the word ‘tele’ and applying it to understanding how to spell words such as" telegraph, telecast, television and telescope."
A child of this age should also be able to use meaning and context to spell unfamiliar words..
An 11-12 year old has an etymological knowledge of spelling
Etymological relates to the origin of a word and a child who has reached this milestone will know about certain rules which relate to words depending on their origin. For example, knowing that the final‘t’ in words of a French origin are silent, e.g." ballet" and "valet."
An 11-12 year old uses apostrophes
Your child at this age will be comfortable using apostrophes to indicate possession for words.
An 11-12 year old takes risks with their spelling
An independent speller is a child who is willing to take risks with their spelling. Children of this age will also be able to tackle technical language which is difficult to spell and understand.
