Always show that you are interested in your child's spelling progress. Be positive; praise your child's efforts and attempts. If you are negative, your child will see themselves as a failure when it comes to spelling.

This will impact upon all of their writing. They simply won't want to write for fear of making spelling errors.

When your child is writing creatively, tell them not to worry about their spelling. Tell them that it is more important to get their ideas down on paper and offer to help them find and correct the errors later.

Good readers are generally good spellers. Encourage your child to read a variety of books. If your child is young, read to them as often as you can. Let the child watch the words as you read. Spelling for kids must be fun and the words should be achievable.

Get their eyes checked!

If your child is struggling with reading and spelling, then take them to an optometrist and get their eyes checked.

Sometimes you won't realise there is a problem until the work starts to become smaller and more information is placed on pages and boards. Usually this starts to happen when the child is around 9 years old. If they complain of headaches, this can be another indication that their eyesight may be a problem.

Some tips for improving your child's spelling.

Encourage your child to:
- read lots of different types of books
- make a list of new words they come across
- do cross-word puzzles
- close their eyes and picture the words in their head and write the words with their finger in the air
- spell words out loud and in their head
- highlight the tricky bits and learn the tricky part by repeating it

Try to make spelling for kids an interesting time. Play games with them and help them to examine the words they have to learn and you'll see your child's spelling skills improve dramatically.

These are just a few ideas from our Spelling DVD. It also covers the best method for learning a word, lots of other activities, mnemonics (memory tricks), most commonly used word list and demon word list, spelling rules, prefixes, suffixes, homonyms, synonyms, antonyms, anagrams, homophones and homographs. Yes, all those terms that confuse parents and children when they are doing spelling homework.

By Karen Campbell