This time of learning to spell sees children moving from the phonetic method to the transitional stage of development. This stage can be defined by the milestones of editing and the growth in automatic spelling.

Your child’s confidence will have grown slowly and as your child approaches this age they will draw on a range of strategies for spelling.

Your 9-10 year old is continuing to develop visual memory

Children never stop using their visual memory when spelling. As they grow they strengthen their visual memory and continue to use strategies such as 'Look, say, cover, write, check'.

Your 9-10 year olds spelling is getting increasingly accurate

You will notice that your child is making far less mistakes and becoming increasingly automatic. This improvement in spelling can be linked to improved reading and a growth in their vocabulary.

Your 9-10 year old is learning how to form compound words

When two smaller words are joined together, e.g. something, they are known as compound words. This forming of compound skills is a developmental milestone which must be mastered before moving on to learning about how words change form.

9-10 year olds is spell words made of many syllables

Now that your child is comfortable identifying the syllables in words, they will become more confident in spelling complex words. They will continue to break words down into sections and will spell by syllable comparing how letters sound to  how combined letters look in their visual memory.

Your 9-10 year old will develop personal spelling lists for their writing

Your child at this age will be able to identify ‘tricky’ words and know what topics might require them to spell this word. In this way, they will develop their own personal list of words that they find easy and words that confuse them.

Your 9-10 year old will learn spelling rules

Your child at this age will learn spelling rules which apply for tenses and also plural forms of words.. He will know when to change ‘y’ to ‘l’ and add ‘es’ (e.g. family – families). He should also know when to double the consonants after a vowel, e.g. when adding ing ‘swim- swimming’.
 
Read more about spelling milestones for 11-12 year olds here

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