Spelling - CCEA

• Use tricks like mnemonics to help remember spellings, and spend some time learning and practising difficult words
• Sounding out words can make it easier to remember how they’re spelled
• Homophones sound the same but mean different things, so it’s important to learn which is which
• Silent letters like ‘k’ in knife or ‘b’ in thumb can make spelling tricky
• Making up your own rhymes or phrases can help you remember difficult words better

There are many ways to help you remember how to spell words. If there are certain words that you struggle with, spend some time learning and practising them so you can easily recall the correct spelling in future.

You could:

• use mnemonics
• write the words out again and again
• get creative and make colourful posters featuring the words you want to remember
• ask for help from friends, family or teachers or use spelling apps to practise

Spending time on spelling will be worth it. Accurate spelling helps to ensure that your intended meaning is conveyed through your writing.

You could try out the following methods to master your spelling.

A mnemonic is a tool that helps your memory to retrieve information you have stored in it. In spelling you might use a pattern, rhyme or saying to help you recall the way a word is put together.

For example, a mnemonic for remembering ‘necessary’:

“It’s necessary that a shirt has one collar and two sleeves.”

This helps us to remember that ‘necessary’ has one ‘c’ (collar) and two ‘s’s (sleeves).

Finding words within words is another way to create a mnemonic.

For example:

‘Emma faced a dilemma’ might help you remember that there are two m’s in ‘dilemma’.

‘Never believe a lie’ where we find the word ‘lie’ in the middle of ‘believe’.

‘There’s a rat in separate’ reminds us to put ‘arat’ in the middle of ‘separate’.

Another mnemonic involves creating an acrostic. This means taking the letters from the word you want to learn and using these as the initials for words that form a sentence.

These work best when you have invented them yourself and even better when they are funny or peculiar in some way.

For example:

‘Big Elephants Can Always Understand Small Elephants’: the initial letters form the word BECAUSE.

‘Rhythm Helps Your Two Hips Move’ is a useful way to remember RHYTHM.

Hear with your ear

Another way of remembering a tricky spelling is to sound the word out. By doing this, you break down the way the word is structured and this makes it easier to remember.

For example, you might break down the word ‘friend’ to 'fri-end' to remind you that the 'i' comes before the 'e'.

Homophones are words that sound identical but have different spellings and meanings. Finding ways to remember which one to use is helpful, as getting these wrong can really confuse a reader.

Here are some common examples. Write your own sentences including these words to practise using the correct spelling.

witch/which

• Which witch is which?

too/two/to

• She had two owls.
• He is going to work.
• I like you too.

sight/site

• The sight of the new site for the school made her smile.

through/threw

• He threw the ball through the window.

whether, weather

• Whether or not we go surfing tomorrow, depends on the weather.

they’re/their/there

• Their house is over there.
• They’re leaving tomorrow.

break/brake

• She had to break the biscuit and share it.
• He pulled the brake hard to stop the car.

right/write

• You have the right to write whatever you want.

waist/waste

• He tied the belt around his waist.
• The waste went in the bin.

where/wear/were

• Where will you wear that t-shirt?
• Were you at school today?

coarse/course

• The course was difficult.
• The cloth was coarse and uncomfortable.

its/it’s

• It’s Saturday.
• The dog scratched its ear.

stare/stair

• She gave her sister a mean stare.
• She sat on the bottom stair.

weak/week

• That week she felt quite weak.

so/sew/sow

• The gardener had to sow more seeds that day.
• She was thirsty so she drank some water.
• He learned to sew a hem.

by/bye/buy

• She decided to buy a new phone.
• The phone was by the cup.
• As she left, she turned to say, ‘Bye.’

tail/tale

• His favourite tale was about the tail of a donkey.

bored/board

• Everyone was bored by the writing on the board.

piece/peace

• A sense of peace came over the room.
• There was only one piece of cake left.

serial/cereal

• She ate cereal for breakfast and watched her favourite serial on the television.

aloud/allowed

• No one was allowed to speak aloud.

flour/flower

• The flour was ground by stone.
• The flower smelled sweet.

sent/scent/cent

• She sent them away with no more than a cent.
• The scent was strong.

in/inn

• They stayed at the inn.
• He was in love.

It is useful to think of ways to remember the correct homophone for your sentence. You might like to use pictures or, as with your spellings, you could make up a rhyme or mnemonic to help you.

Sometimes, you might not need to include your homophones in a sentence to remember which is which – you just need a little tip to help you tell one from another.

For example:

To/too/two
To – remember just the one 'o' to get from one place to another.
Too – means 'as well as'. Remember the spelling by thinking that it has ‘toooooooooooo’ many ‘o’s.
Two – remember this by thinking of the ‘w’ (double u) meaning ‘2’.

Aloud/allowed
Remember that if you’re speaking something aloud, it will be ‘loud’.

There are some general rules that can help when checking your spelling. For example:

'i' before 'e' except after 'c'

Notice how the ‘i’ comes before the ‘e’ in believe, achieve and retrieve.

But after a ‘c’ the ‘e’ comes before the ‘i’, as in receive, ceiling and deceit (beware that the word weird likes to break this rule – perhaps because it is weird!).

Using the past tense

Take care when using the past tense. You usually need to add ‘-ed’ to a verb, though some verbs need extra consonants as well.Here are some examples of verbs that add ‘-ed’ in the past tense:

If a verb is three letters in length and ends in a consonant, you will usually need to double the consonant before you add ‘-ed’. For example:

Some verbs have irregular spellings in the past tense. You might need to invent mnemonics to remember these. For example:

-ing forms of verbs

If you’re using the -ing form of a verb – walking, running, seeing – the rules are similar to those for past tense.

If the word ends in a consonant, you can usually simply add ‘-ing’.

If a verb is three letters in length and ends in a consonant, you will usually need to double the consonant before you add ‘-ing. For example:

Another rule which may help is to know that when changing a verb, words that originally end in an 'e' (such as ‘have’) will lose that 'e' when you add 'ing', (‘having’).

Silent letters

Some words contain silent letters. These are not spoken aloud. For example:

• Silent w – wrong, write, wrap, wrist
• Silent b – climb, comb, thumb, lamb
• Silent k – knowledge, knuckle, knee, knife

Look at the list of 50 commonly misspelled words and notice those that you are less confident about. Spend some time coming up with a mnemonic to remember the spelling and practise using the words when you can:

Key fact

It’s better to learn one or two spellings a day than all of them at once!

Words which are two words – not one!

• A lot
• In case
• Of course
• Best friend
• As well
• Each other
• In fact
• In front