For students with Dyslexia and Learning Difficulties:

• spelling is confusing and doesn’t make sense

• words seem to run together

• reading is hard work and not fun

This is because of difficulties with:

• hearing sounds in words

• learning letter sound associations

• blending sounds together

• identifying beginning, middle and end sounds in words

• learning tricky sight words

• reading fluency

• retrieving words from vocabulary

Here is how Clever Speller helps:

• stories are full of words with a single focus sound

• all the ways to spell the focus sound are in one place

• stories provide the context for phonics to make sense

• easy to follow word family patterns

• focus sound words are grouped in lists from simple to complex

• tricky sight words are grouped into a focus sound so they DO make sense!

• rhyming stories help with predicting and memory

• recalling spelling is much easier from a story than from a spelling list

What you can do to help:

• first read the story all the way through then go back and listen for the focus sound words

• chat about words with green letters and notice how they all spell the focus sound

• say the green letters as a single sound when sounding out the word to spell

• start with simple List 1 words and separate into beginning, middle and end sounds

• learn tricky sight words in their word family groups rather than disconnected lists

• read the story out loud together, take in turns, predict the rhyme, read to others

• memorising the story will make it easy to recall how to spell words in everyday use

Most of all…enjoy reading together!