Top Tips for Learning Tricky Spellings

The very fact we need 44 phonemes to cover every spelling in English speaks for itself. Spelling is a complex minefield, chequered with broken rules, vial vile variations and even ghostly letters that dare not speak their names. However, it’s certainly possible to find useful patterns, reduce the confusion and make spelling (dare I say it?) fun — here are my best tips and tricks for making your students into super spellers.

National Curriculum

The spelling requirements in the National Curriculum start with children applying their knowledge of phonics to decode words and learning all of the different grapheme-phoneme correspondences. By the time they reach Key Stage 2, these become statutory word lists that pupils are likely to use when writing and come across in reading.

The SATs Spelling Test

The spelling section of the KS2 SATs forms almost 30% of the spelling, punctuation and grammar mark. The 200 words on the statutory word lists rarely appear in the spelling section of the Key Stage 2 tests, but variations of them do. There are some common patterns that usually appear and they’re easy to practise for with CGP+’s word lists.

• Theirs/There’s always a homophone.
• Silent letters need to be under the thumb – it’s usually b.
• Adding -ing or -ed has happened and may be happening.
• The -ly suffix usually makes an appearance.
• There will be a -tion, -sion, -cian challenge causing tension.
• ie and ei will be there to deceive or reprieve.
• -able and -ible are predictable.
• Soft c will make its presence felt.
• ough, ou and ous are all tough but ought to appear.

 You can have a fun staff sweepstake with these patterns. List all the spellings from 2017 to 2023, find these variations and guess what this year’s words will be. Who can get the most right? The winner could receive an ironic dictionary.

A Seriously Casual Approach

Routine, low stakes spelling activities can help make spelling fun, investigative and remove the stress of a test. Spelling well is a result of experience and a sense of confidence when faced with a challenge, such as an unfamiliar word. Creating your own variations of mnemonics for spelling tricky words can be a fun way of getting pupils to engage with spelling. There are lots of well-known mnemonics out there, but if children make up their own (the sillier the better), then you might be able to coax even the most reluctant spellers to join in. Giving clear examples of spelling rules can also help your more logically minded pupils to understand that there is some order in all the chaos.

Although a spelling test is inevitable, lowering the stakes can mean turning a test into a quiz or a quick spellcheck with a partner. It could be a game of hangman, a crossword or even a ‘show-me’ activity on a whiteboard. By the end of Year 2, most pupils are phonics experts, so why not keep that going into Key Stage 2? As a Year 6 teacher, that idea initially had me quaking, and I attended some phonics lessons in Key Stage 1. We now have a phonics staff meeting starter every few weeks where our wondrous Key Stage 1 colleagues help us all practise our digraphs and trigraphs. It’s great fun.

Make Spelling Interactive

Here are some of my favourite ways to keep my pupils engaged with spelling:

• Play syllable and phoneme counting games using physical finger counting, clapping, or chanting together. Discuss where words might split or what to do with double letters and other tricky parts. Keep your phonics language conventions going from foundation stage all the way up to Year 6.
• Focus on the trickiest part of a word. Find a root word and work out how this root fits together in other words. If we know the root of the word, we can apply common rules — this is a great way of bringing in prefixes and suffixes.
• Find out where a word or silent letter came from. The etymology of a word reveals a whole new historical backstory, such as the fact that the ‘silent k’ in words like ‘knight’ was pronounced during the Middle Ages. English is rich in historical influences which can bring spelling to life for pupils who love history and geography. Plus, if it sounds funny, you remember it better.
• Focus on the hard spelling words and the ones you find repeatedly misspelt in your pupils’ writing. Keep lists and systematically work at them, as repeated exposure builds memory.
• Have a word of the week and revisit it. Find its root and its route into English. You could even get pupils to nominate their own words of the week!
• It can be helpful for pupils to make their own dictionaries or word mats so that they’re aware of words that they struggle with. These could be kept in writing journals or at the back of writing books. It’s important to put words in contextual phrases or sentences, as not knowing a word’s meaning makes it harder to remember. Developing vocabulary and spelling go hand-in-hand.
• Homophones are real trouble causers. However, this Homophone Holiday worksheet for Years 3-4 from CGP+ is fun for pupils to correct — they love playing teacher! There’s also a stretch version for pupils who need an extra challenge.

Spelling can be befuddling, treacherous and unfathomable — exemplified by this conclusive sentence! However, making it fun, investigative, rhythmical, historical and geographical can make it approachable. Have fun with it! 

I have been a teacher for 28 years, deputy head for about twenty-four of those, and taught from Reception all the way up to Year 6. In this time, I did a two-year stint with my local authority as an adviser for ICT, working in a wide range of schools with teachers and children. I have always been a class teacher at heart, inspired by the wonderful minds of pupils, which makes teaching such an intense but creative and satisfying career.