I’ve been thinking about adapting Who Wants to be a Millionaire for teaching phonics. Those who get stuck could be invited to “phoneme a friend”.

Now that the Ofsted report on the third year of the National Literacy Strategy has arrived, I might well take the idea further - for phonics is still in the firing line. Too many children are arriving in Year 3 without a sufficient grasp of phonics. Consequently, they struggle with writing and reading.

Effective phonic programmes mean that, by the end of Reception, almost every child can hear, identify and represent all 44 sounds. The ability to segment is so well developed that their writing - as well as reading - has taken off.

A programme like Jolly Phonics provides a lively, multi-sensory approach that is fun and works (visit www.jollylearning.co.uk for details). This programme can kick-start the process, and works well when it has a strong link to the activities in the NLS’s Progression in Phonics. One headteacher said to me: “In all my career it is the only thing that I can point to and say - ‘that works’.”

To strengthen phonics in infant classes, an action plan might focus on the following principles:

* speed up;

* make sure phonics is taught daily;

* keep it cumulative, lively and interactive;

* teach phonic skills of segmentation and blending as well as phonic knowledge (which letters typically go with which sounds);

* use sharedguided reading and writing to help children make the link between phonics and spelling decoding;

* above all, keep it fun and purposeful.

But what happens when children arrive in the juniors without a strong base? It may not be enough just to rely on the Additional Literacy Support materials for those needing extra help. The answer for many classes is to steal some of the games from the ALS modules for whole-class daily quick-fire spelling activities. The BBC series Look and Read has three excellent programmes on spelling strategies. Below are a few games that might be useful.

1. Daleks

The teacher says a word clearly. The children say the word aloud slowly, then stick out their writing arm and move it from left to right, saying in dalek-style voice each sound in the word (for example: the word strip as “strip”). This is about hearing and isolating sounds - not letters. So, a word like “sheep” would be segmented as “sheep”, only three sounds. This game practises segmentation - the key skill for spelling.

2. Dalek writing

In another variation, pupils say the word in dalek voice and then draw a short line for each sound on their whiteboard. On top of each short line, they write the letter or letters that represent each sound: brush = b Jr Ju Jsh.

If you are working with children who really struggle with spelling, ensure that the words that you choose contain sounds that they have already learned.

Many children will want to be first to show their board - rushing often leads to errors. Train them to re-read what they have written, blending the letters together. Does it say what you wanted to write?

3. Bingo

Create a set of laminated bingo cards. Write on words that might easily be confused, and are related to the current objectives being taught - for example, steal, steel, steep, step, stake, steak, star, stare, steer. The teacher says a sentence containing the word, and the children tick the relevant word.

4. Rhyme it

This game is useful for looking at vowel choices: where there are different ways of spelling the same vowel sound, such as gate or gait, which is more likely? The teacher says a word and the children have to list as many words as they can think of that rhyme with it, spelling them on the whiteboard.

Give a time limit, perhaps one minute, and make it like a game. Once a word is written, the children should get used to re-reading - check, does it “look” right? Then list the words on a class board, sorting them by vowel choice, to discover the most common pattern.

This game helps to find probabilities. For instance, that when a word rhymes with “day”, the long “a” sound at the end is probably spelled “ay”. Try investigating from these words - gate, feet, pie, might, toe, goal, flew, moon, clear, bear, four. Each list will provide a generalisation that may be useful when spelling.

5. Ouch! - split digraphs

Provide the word “tie”. Ask the class to spell “time”. What happens to the spelling of “tie”? Note how the “ie” provides the vowel sound, but becomes split to get “time”. Pupils now do the same with lie - lime, line, like, life; pie - pine, pipe, pile; toe - tone, tote, tome, stone, stole; joe - joke; cue - cube, cute, cure.

A final thought

What about “classic spellers”, those who are all right for the Friday test but still make errors in composition? These children need:

* daily quick-fire activities on the whiteboard to warm up;

* the teacher mark to errors, some of which the child has to correct when the writing is returned;

* to be taught a range of spelling strategies - learning by sound (phonics, breaking words into syllables), look (taking a picture, remembering and checking by the “look”), feel (speed-writing a word to help remember) and brain (using mnemonics, knowledge about affixes and roots, etc);

* to witness occasional “spelling in action” by the teacher during shared writing.

Pie Corbett is an author and educational consultant. His Searchlights for Spelling, a multi-sensory scheme, has just been published Cambridge University Press