Year 3 & 4 Spelling

Spellings – Half Term 3

Year 3,4

This half-term, our spellings are linked to the rules and strategies we’ll be learning in class:

• alternative ways for writing the ‘igh’ sound
• alternative ways for writing the ‘o’ and ‘u’ sound
• adding the prefixes un, dis
• adding the suffixes il, ir
• homophones (words that sound the same but are spelled differently)
• ‘double up for a short vowel sound’

Each Friday, you’ll be tested on 8 of the words from the list below.

Spelling – Year 3,4 Half Term 2

Year 3,4

Autumn 2

This half-term, our spellings are linked to the rules and strategies we’ll be learning in class:

• alternative ways for writing the ‘oo’ sound
• homophones (words that sound the same but are spelled differently)
• adding the suffixes er, est
• plural nouns
• using apostrophes for contraction (combining two words to shorten them or be more informal)
• using apostrophes for possession (to show belonging)

Each Friday, you’ll be tested on 8 of the words from the list below.

Spelling – Year 3/4 Half Term 1

In Key Stage 2, instead of asking you to learn a short list of spellings each week, you will be given a longer list (roughly 40 words) that we will focus on in that half-term. Don’t worry, we’re not asking you to learn them all in one week. Instead, we’ll ask you to focus on learning these words over the course of the entire half-term. There’s a few reasons for this:

1.     We want you take responsibility for your own learning and start to figure out how you learn best (there’s some ideas below). Even if that means making some mistakes along the way.

2.      Lots of research suggests that learning more spellings over a longer time leads to better remembering how to spell them in the long-term.

3.     Similarly, lots of research suggests that if you learn something for a week and don’t come back to it you’ll likely forget it anyway

4.     We won’t have a ‘formal’ test each week. Instead, we’ll mix it up. We might ask you to test each other on the words you’ve been learning. We might test the words at random and then you’ll know which words you need to practise more and which words you’re confident with. We might just think about some of the words and share ideas for how we’re going about learning them.

5.     Ultimately, we want this to be about learning – and not just getting them right in a test.

How you decide to do this is up to you. You might decide to focus on the trickiest words first. Or, you might decide to learn 8 words a week and really focus on these whilst still practising the others, too. For some of you, you might already feel confident with some of the words so might choose to not practise these at all. However you decide to do it is up to you. The important thing is that you’re learning them and learning how you like to learn them best.

Every Friday, we’ll spend time practising or testing (informally) or discussing all things spelling so be ready (one of our 8 Rs for learning) to join in!

If you need some ideas for practical things to do, check out the Super Spelling Strategies Guide on the school website.

This half-term, our spellings are linked to the rules and strategies we’ll be learning in class:

• alternative ways for writing the ‘ay’ sound
• alternative ways for writing the ‘ee’ sound
• ‘double up for a short vowel sound’
• ‘drop the e for ing’
• ‘drop the y for an i’
• adding the suffixes ed, ing
• homophones (words that sound the same but are spelled differently)

Each Friday, you’ll be tested on 8 of the words from the list below.

Y3/4 Spellings

Year 3,4

 This half-term, our spellings are linked to the rules and strategies we’ll be learning in class:

• alternative graphemes: tion, sion, ssion, cian
• alternative graphemes: i, ie, y, i-e
• homophones: he’ll, heel, plain, plane, groan, grown, rain, rein, reign
• alternative graphemes: sc
• spelling patterns: que
• alternative graphemes: u spelled ou

Each Friday, you’ll be tested on 8 of the words from the list below.

3,4 Spellings

Year 3,4

 This half-term, our spellings are linked to the rules and strategies we’ll be learning in class:

• alternative graphemes: sh (ch, ss, ti, s)
• alternative graphemes: k (ch)
• adding prefixes: mis, re
• adding prefixes: sub, tele, auto
• spelling patterns: gn, kn
• homophones: piece / peace, main / mane, fair / fare

Each Friday, you’ll be tested on 8 of the words from the list below.

05 June 2023

This half-term, instead of learning eight different words each week, we’d like you to learn these 40 words over the whole half-term. Lots of research suggests that learning more spellings over a longer time leads to better remembering how to spell them in the long term.

How you decide to do this is up to you. You might decide to focus on the trickiest words first. Or, you might decide to learn 8 words a week and really focus on these whilst still practising the others, too. For some of you, you might already feel confident with some of the words so might choose to not practise these at all.

However you decide to do it, is up to you. The important thing is that you’re learning them and learning how you like to learn them best.

Each week, we’ll choose eight random words to test you on. These tests aren’t pressured. They might just help you figure out which words you need to practise more.

Learning spellings in this way might feel quite different – or even scary – but it shouldn’t. In fact, you’ve actually got less words to learn this half-term than you normally would.

We’ll keep thinking about this in school and we’ll regularly talk about how we can best practise these words at home.

If you need some ideas for practical things to do, check out the Super Spelling Strategies Guide on the school website.

21 April 2023

This half-term, instead of learning eight different words each week, we’d like you to learn these 40 words over the whole half-term. Lots of research suggests that learning more spellings over a longer time leads to better remembering how to spell them in the long term.

How you decide to do this is up to you. You might decide to focus on the trickiest words first. Or, you might decide to learn 8 words a week and really focus on these whilst still practising the others, too. For some of you, you might already feel confident with some of the words so might choose to not practise these at all.

However you decide to do it, is up to you. The important thing is that you’re learning them and learning how you like to learn them best.

Each week, we’ll choose eight random words to test you on. These tests aren’t pressured. They might just help you figure out which words you need to practise more.

Learning spellings in this way might feel quite different – or even scary – but it shouldn’t. In fact, you’ve actually got less words to learn this half-term than you normally would.

We’ll keep thinking about this in school and we’ll regularly talk about how we can best practise these words at home.

If you need some ideas for practical things to do, check out the Super Spelling Strategies Guide on the school website.

3 February 2023

Our spellings for the final week of the half term are all homophones: words that sound the same but that have different spellings and meanings. Practise the following for a test on Friday 10th February:

there       their      they’re     here     hear     which     witch     two     to     too     where     wear     were

27 January 2023

busy

strange

ordinary

particular

continue

accident

complete

surprising

occasional

probable

possible

20 January 2023

This week we have been looking at what happens when we add the prefixes -un and -dis to root words. Adding a prefix changes the meaning of the word.

Practise the following spellings in preparation for a test on Friday 27^th January.

unkind      unfriendly      uncertain      unclear      discontinue      disappear      disbelief      disadvantage

For some creative ideas on how to make learning spellings more fun, check out our super spelling strategies guide.