In order to develop excellent spelling skills, students need to have an extensive phonics knowledge. This knowledge focuses on letter-sound relationships, letter strings, phonemic awareness and the coding of phonemes based on their position within a word.
The quiz deals with two main issues in learning to read and spell:
• many letters and digraphs have more than one sound,
e.g. the letter 'c' has two sounds: /k/ in 'cat' and /s/ in 'city'
the digraph 'ch' has three sounds: /ch/ in 'chop', /sh/ in 'chef' and /k/ in 'chemist'
• one sound may be coded in many ways,
e.g. the long /a/ sound may be coded using the bossy 'e' rule; the digraphs '-ai-', '-ay', '-ei', '-ea-', '-ey-', '-et-'; as well as '-eigh-' and '-aigh-'.