Spelling backwards: breaking words into sounds
English · Key Stage 1 · The School
Reading forwards, spelling backwards
Blending is what you do when you read: you take the sounds on the page and squash them into a word. Spelling is the same journey the other way. You start with a word you can say, break it into its sounds, and write something for each one. Grown-ups call the breaking-apart part segmenting. It is the half of phonics that gets least practice, which is why spelling usually lags behind reading.
Count before you write
Say the word slowly and put up a finger for each sound. "Ship" — sh, i, p — three fingers. "Train" — t, r, ai, n — four fingers. Notice that you are counting SOUNDS, so sh is one finger even though it is two letters, and ai is one finger even though it is two letters. Counting first tells you how many pieces the word has, and that is what stops letters going missing in the middle of a long word.
One piece for each sound
Now write one spelling for each finger. For "ship": sh, then i, then p. For "train": t, r, ai, n. The piece you write might be one letter or two — that is exactly the point. Children who write one LETTER per sound end up with "sip" for ship and "tran" for train, because they heard the right number of sounds and then wrote the wrong number of letters.
Check by reading it back
When you have written the word, read it back to yourself, sounding it out as if you had never seen it. Does it say the word you meant? If you wrote "shp" and read it back honestly, it does not say ship — there is no vowel in it. Reading your own spelling back is the single most useful habit in this lesson, because it catches the mistake while you can still fix it, and it uses the reading skill you already have to check the writing skill you are building.