spelling homework ks2

KS2 English videos, quizzes and activities that will help students practise their spelling knowledge and skills.

Part of English

What are vowels and consonants?

Find out how to spot the five vowels in an alphabet full of consonants.

Compound words

Learn how compound words are formed when two or more separate words are joined together.

Find out how to identify and distinguish a range of common homophones and use them correctly when writing.

Their, they're and or there?

Explore the uses of there, they're and their.

Silent letters

Discover how to spot and spell words with silent letters or unstressed vowels.

Silent letters and unstressed vowels

Discover how to spell words that contain silent letters or unstressed vowels.

Spelling patterns and the -y rule

An English article on how to spell words correctly by recognising patterns and applying the -y rule.

Which words use the 'ough' sound?

Learn how the letters 'ough' are pronounced differently, depending on the word they're in. Which words use which?

Which words end with -cious and -tious?

Find out how the 'shus' sound is used for descriptive words and can be spelt two ways, -cious and -tious.

How to spell the 'shun' sound

The 'shun' sound at the end of a word can be spelt in different ways. Find out about words ending in -tion, -cian, -sion and -ssion.

When is the 'sh' sound spelt with 'ch'?

Find out about words like chef and machine, where the 'sh' sound is spelt with the letters 'ch'.

When is the 'i' sound spelt with a 'y'?

Find out about words where the 'i' sound is spelt with the letter 'y'.

When is the 'uh' sound spelt 'ou'?

Find out about words like country and cousin, where the 'uh' sound is spelt with the letters 'ou'.

When is the 's' sound spelt with 'sc'?

Find out about some words that have a silent letter 'c'.

Which words end with -ture and -sure?

Find out about the different spellings of the -sure and -ture sound at the end of words.

Spelling quiz

Ready for the Bitesize Primary spelling quiz for KS2? Have a go and see if you can get a top score.

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The Regenerators Green Lessons

BBC Teach: KS2 English

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Education Quizzes

• April 27, 2022

Spectacular spelling activities for KS2

Does the thought of spelling practice make you shudder? With crumpled spelling books to sift through and seemingly endless word repetition, you’re not alone!

Luckily, there are lots of fun spelling activities that you can use to liven up your child’s learning. These ideas are perfect for children in KS2 (Years 3-6) — why not take a look?

Fun spelling activity ideas for KS2

1. rainbow words.

With spelling, repetition is key. But rather than writing out the same word lots of times on a piece of paper, why not use a colourful rainbow?

This activity is specifically designed to encourage daily practice, making it a great way to learn tricky words.

• Print out an image of a rainbow on a piece of A4 paper. Or, encourage your child to draw their own, leaving enough space in between each band of colour to easily write words.
• Encourage them to take a few minutes each day to fill in a band of colour by writing out the word they’re learning, starting with red.
• They’ll write the word fewer times each day as they work through the rainbow. Once they’ve completed their rainbow, challenge them to spell the word without looking!

2. Spelling scramble

This activity is perfect for more confident spellers. To get started, write out lots of letters onto squares of card or paper — or, for speed, you could hijack a game of Scrabble and use the letters from it!

Once you have a large collection of letters, ask your child to see how many words they create using them. You could also set them additional tasks for each word to explore them further, such as:

• Can you spell a word that rhymes with this one?
• How would you spell the plural version of this word?

For a further level of challenge, you could also include capital letters, hyphens and apostrophes in your mix of letters.

3. Use DoodleSpell

With DoodleSpell, you can instantly transform your spelling lists into sets of interactive exercises.

Simply copy and paste your list of words into Doodle’s easy-to-use online hub and watch them appear in the DoodleSpell app !

Alongside this, the app also creates sets of personalised sets of exercises for each child to enjoy, ensuring progression in spelling.

Why not download the app and try it for free today?

Find out more about DoodleSpell

4. Spelling staircase

This method is ideal for children learning a word for the first time or for breaking down more challenging spellings.

Ask your child to write the first letter of the word they’re learning. On the line below it, ask them to write the first letter followed by the second, and so on until they’ve written out the whole word. For example:

5. ‘What am I?’ quiz

This game is great for those who love puzzles. Challenge your child to not only spell a word correctly, but to also guess what it is through the use of clues!

We recommend giving three clues as to what the word could be. For example, if your word was ‘bell’, you could say:

• It’s an object that makes a noise
• Lots of people have them on their front doors at home
• It rhymes with ‘smell’!

Reward them with a point for guessing what the word is and another for spelling it correctly.

6. The speediest speller

Finally, here’s a game that’s perfect for groups of two or more children. Give every learner a whiteboard and, when everyone’s ready, say a word out loud. The first child to spell the word correctly earns a point.

Gradually increase the difficulty of words as you go, and make sure to show the correct spelling of the word at the end of each round. Be sure to celebrate everyone’s hard work and determination at the end of the game!

Learn spellings with DoodleSpell

DoodleSpell is the personalised learning app revolutionising the way children learn spellings.

Rather than simply teaching spellings, DoodleSpell helps children to understand the meaning behind words and how to use them in sentences, giving them a solid foundation to build on in school.

Plus, it’s filled with thousands of interactive exercises, educational games and virtual rewards, ensuring that spelling practice is always fun and engaging. And most excitingly, you can try it for free!

Or view DoodleSpell for schools

More spelling activities for KS2

• Fun ways to learn spellings
• 10 easy spelling strategies for KS2
• How to support your child’s spelling at home

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• Year 5 And 6 Spelling List Words The Best Worksheets And Resources For Ks2 Spag

Year 5 and 6 spelling list – Best worksheets and resources

Make sure your upper KS2 students have a firm grip on spelling with these excellent ideas, activities, lessons and more…

Delve into the Year 5 and 6 spelling list with these comprehensive spelling worksheets and resources for UKS2. We discuss effective strategies and common pitfalls in teaching spelling in KS2, and provide guidance on supporting pupils who are falling behind…

(If you’re looking for  Year 3 and Year 4 spelling lists , we’ve also got you covered.)

Year 5 and 6 statutory spelling word list

Spelling worksheets for ks2, year 5 spelling resources, year 6 spelling resources, more year 5 and 6 spelling list resources, how not to teach spelling in ks2, what to do when pupils fall behind.

There’s nowhere better to start than the actual list of 100 common exception words that are statutory for Year 5 and 6 students to know how to spell, right?

Presuming you haven’t got them committed to memory, from ‘accommodate’ to ‘yacht’, we’ve created simple PDF, editable Word document and PowerPoint versions of the spelling list for Year 5 and 6 .

100+ free worksheets

This extensive pack of ready-made  spelling games worksheets  for KS2 features a huge number of activities, including for prefixes, suffixes, spelling patterns for sounds, homophones and near- homophones , and ‘spot the spelling mistakes’ games.

Year 5 and 6 spelling revision worksheets

These free KS2 spelling worksheets cover all of the Y5/6 statutory spelling words across five challenging worksheets, each containing three different types of spelling check challenges, including anagrams and cryptic clues.

Year 5 spellings SATs practice papers

This pack from literacy resources website Plazoom contains six practice SATs papers for KS2. These SATs spelling tests are perfect for assessment at the end of each half term of Year 5.

Each Year 5 spelling test worksheet contains 20 questions and an answer sheet, and a question overview list indicates which spelling patterns are covered by each question, so that you can easily see which spelling patterns need further support.

Year 5/6 spelling bingo

This spelling bingo resource pack for Year 6 is a fun way to support children in practising key spelling patterns. It revisits spelling patterns from Lower Key Stage 2 as well as Year 5 and 6 spelling patterns, and can be played as a class or in small groups. There’s also a Year 5 pack.

Multiple Year 6 spelling word lists

These downloadable lists of Year 6 spelling words are sorted into various groups. There’s a high-frequency words list, one for words that are nouns and verbs, as well as most misspelled, silent letters, double letters and more.

Custom word lists

At SpellingFrame you pick a year group, then a spelling rule, then get a word list to either view, print or test yourself with online.

So, for example, you can choose from adding suffixes beginning with vowel letters to words of more than one syllable, words with the /s/ sound spelt sc, homophones and near-homophones, and more.

In the interactive tests, children can opt to have the entire sentence read out, or just the word they need to spell.

Year 5 and 6 spelling word search revision pack

Help children to master all of the words from the Year 5 and 6 spelling lists with these word search activities from Plazoom.

There are seven different word searches in this pack which together cover all of the Year 5 and Year 6 spellings on the English curriculum.

Tips for remembering silent letters

This short BBC Teach video has some handy advice for remembering the silent ‘n’ in words like ‘hymn’ or ‘autumn’, and the silent ‘t’ in ‘hustle’ and ‘wrestle’ among others. It’s well worth a watch.

Spelling crime scene investigators

This proof-reading resource is suitable for Y5/6 children and focuses on grammatical, spelling and punctuation errors.

The PDF includes a report about a class trip to a museum. There are 19 spelling mistakes to spot, as well as eight punctuation errors and five grammar slip-ups.

‘-ent’ and ‘-ence’ endings

This free six-page resource is from Keen Kite’s Ready, Steady, Practise! – Year 6 Spelling series. There are question and answers plus guidance for pupils.

Modelling invented words in spelling lessons? Teaching spelling ‘rules’? Saying that letters are ‘silent’? No, no, no, says Charlotte MacKechnie…

If you allow a child to spell ‘he’ as ‘hee’ or ‘they’ as ‘thay’, they’re going to practise misspelling these words.

They’ll become so familiar with their invented spellings that they may struggle to unlearn the inaccurate sound-spelling correspondences. I use ‘invented spelling’ because the notion of ‘phonetically plausible’ spelling is flawed. All spellings are phonetic. If a word wasn’t ‘phonetic’, you wouldn’t be able to say it.

Anything that is spoken can be represented with various combinations of the 26 letters in the English alphabet. English language spelling has been standardised since the 1700s, yet pronunciation is constantly evolving.

While many different words are certainly complex to spell, they are not phonetically irregular.

Spelling strategy

Unfortunately, it appears to be common practice for EYFS and KS1 teachers to model ‘phonetically plausible’ (ie invented) spelling. The rationale? Depending on where you are within your systematic teaching sequence, there will be parts of code that you haven’t taught yet.

The misconception that teachers should model invented spelling likely comes from the Early Learning Goals for writing in EYFS which state that:  “Children use their phonic knowledge to write words in ways which match their spoken sounds. […] Some words are spelt correctly and others are phonetically plausible.”  The key word here is ‘children’. Pupils use their phonic knowledge for spelling; sometimes they misspell words or misapply a spelling rule, but their attempts are phonetically plausible.

This doesn’t suggest that teachers should model invented spelling. Instead, we should provide the parts of the code that haven’t been taught yet.

Here are some more ‘dos and don’ts’ for teaching spelling:

Don’t…

… introduce only one correct spelling of a vowel sound.

It’s particularly important not to encourage children to use this one spelling whenever they write that sound. You’ll be reinforcing illogical positioning of alternative spellings. For example, the ‘ay’ spelling is rarely used before the sound ‘l’ (there’s no ‘snayl’, ‘tayl’ or ‘whayl’, for example).

… replace phonics with spelling rules at the end of Y1

Phonics  is  reading and spelling. It takes a minimum of three years to teach the alternatives of the English alphabet code, and phonics/phonetic spelling should continue to underpin spelling beyond KS1. Here are some alternative spellings to work on in Y5 and 6, for example:

• ‘ie’ sound – island
• ‘ee’ sound – deceive
• ‘t’ sound – doubt
• ‘m’ sound – climb

… teach spelling ‘rules’ such as ‘i before e except after c’

English spelling doesn’t obey rules. If you take this approach you’ll probably spend more time teaching the exceptions (‘seize’, ‘feisty’, ‘foreign’…).

… use ‘look, cover, write, check’ for spelling instruction

This whole-word memorisation ignores the fundamental construct of the alphabet and the research into eye movements in the context of how we read. Similarly, don’t encourage children to look at ‘word shapes’ or to ‘look and say’.

… refer to letters as ‘silent’

Take a moment to listen carefully to the letters in this sentence – every letter is silent. Letters do not make sounds – we do. Why do we accept ‘k’ as silent in ‘know’, but we don’t question the ‘w’? Teach ‘kn’ as a spelling of the sound ‘n’ much like you would teach the spelling ‘funny’ or ‘gone‘: it’s as simple as that.

… approach the complex code (one sound: different spellings) in a systematic way

Introduce the frequent and consistent spellings first, then introduce the less frequently encountered spellings in successive cycles. For example:

• EYFS: play, rain
• Y1: cake, they, great
• Y2: vein, eight, straight
• KS2: gauge, ballet

… insist that children say the sounds when they are writing the words

The integration of sensory input (auditory and visual) and the motor output (writing the spellings) helps embed sound-spelling correspondences and reinforces the link between sound and spelling.

… have realistic expectations for each speller

If you’re teaching the basic code, is it realistic to expect students to attempt to write words with complex spellings, or polysyllabic words? Are students ready to write independently, or would it be more beneficial to lead a shared writing session?

… teach students to spell high-frequency words by drawing attention to the spellings which are exceptions

Remember, an exception word is simply a word with sound-spelling correspondences that are beyond the systematic teaching sequence. Find the first 100 and next 200 high-frequency words organised by sound  here .

Charlotte MacKechnie is a Sounds-Write trainer and reading development lead for STEP Ahead Teaching School Alliance. Read her blog  here . Follow her on Twitter at  @c_mackechnie .

We can’t assume prior spelling teaching has been retained – we must look back to move forward, says Michelle Nicholson…

Despite a greater focus on spelling, some children are still struggling to demonstrate that they are writing at the expected standard for their age because of gaps in their spelling knowledge.

It seems there are pupils who are unable to retain and apply what has been taught, especially when it comes to the content of the Y5/6 spelling expectations.

I would argue that these children do not have the firm foundations of the previous year groups’ spelling content on which to build. They do not seem to see any analogies between words, or patterns that appear across words. Instead, they view each word as a new and unique entity.

Conversely, we can all think of children who just know how to spell a word after first exposure to it — they even seem able to spell words they have never met before.

One might question whether these children are visual learners with a phenomenal memory for individual words or whether they have actually got a very efficient scheme for sorting, grouping and storing words in their long-term memory.

With thousands of words to assimilate and remember, perhaps all children need to be taught the most efficient way to organise their spelling knowledge, ready for access ‘on demand’.

Gentle reminder

Connections to existing knowledge should be supported by reminding children of what they already know.

For example, if pupils are secure with the Y1 knowledge that the digraph ‘oy’ is found at the end of syllables such as ‘boy’ but that the same phoneme is spelt ‘oi’ when in the middle of a syllable like ‘coin’, they can also spell ‘destroy’ as well as ‘embroiled’.

If a child can articulate this knowledge, there is a good chance that she or he can apply it to unfamiliar words.

It is feasible that children who are confident spellers are creating a schema in their minds: new learning is assimilated and stored within the appropriate section.

If a child is supported to remember the pattern or convention pertaining to a section, they have fewer facts to remember than if they are trying to remember each word individually. However, frequent recall of that pattern is essential to build this into the long-term memory.

Linking to prior learning

Connection building shouldn’t stop with KS1 phonics. At a glance, the Y5/6 spelling list seems to be a random collection of unconnected words, but can they be linked to prior learning in order to add to a child’s internalised spelling schema?

Let’s take the first word on the list: ‘accommodation’.

If you give children this word to learn, they may well remember it for a test on Friday. Teach pupils a mnemonic such as ‘there is room for two c’s and two m’s in accommodation’ then they may well be able to recall the correct spelling when they need it.

But, how often will they need it? Will the mnemonic be forgotten by the time the word is next employed?

You could, however, teach children that a single consonant is generally doubled if it appears immediately after a short vowel sound. Then a pupil will not only know how to spell this word, but over 20 more that use this convention in the Y5/6 list alone, as well as hundreds of others.

Regular revisiting

The ‘doubling after a short vowel’ convention is a handy trick to have up your sleeve.

The words that apply this principle range from two syllable words ending in ‘y’ such as ‘happy’ or ‘le’ such as ‘middle’, to adding suffixes for words such as ‘dropped’ or ‘swimming’, all the way through to multi-syllabic words such as ‘disappeared’.

When questioned, many children are unable to articulate the ‘rule’ of doubling and yet this is something that is taught in Reception, Y1 and then again in Y2.

It stands to reason that regular revisiting of this convention would give children a much firmer foundation on which to add the Y5/6 statutory words that follow.

Clearly, to know whether to double a consonant or not is an essential piece of knowledge and that is why these conventions are introduced in KS1. Many of the early spelling statements are introduced in KS1 because they occur so frequently.

However, many spelling schemes seem to ignore (or at best give scant notice to) the very first statement in each national curriculum spelling appendix, which clearly states that children should revise work done in previous years.

Knowledge gaps

In general, most schemes focus on age-related expectations, assuming prior teaching has been retained for good. However, if you have a child in Y6 who is still spelling ‘hopeful’ with a double ‘l’, then the chances are that he or she has forgotten all about the Y2 programme of study.

Indeed, for some children, the Y2 programme of study may have eluded them altogether. Many of the suffixes such as ‘ment’, ‘less’ or ‘ness’ are requirements for children working at greater depth, so there is a good chance that some pupils may have never really been taught these conventions.

The 2019 GPS paper once again had a heavy focus on words from the Y3/4 programme of study, thus reinforcing the idea that prior learning needs to be revisited. However, if children have gaps in spelling knowledge pertaining to the Y2 programme of study, then even tracking back to Y3/4 may not be enough.

Revisiting previous content

There are few words that rely solely on one KS2 spelling pattern. For example, although the word ‘thoughtful’ was included with reference to the Y5/6 spelling words containing the letter string ‘ough’, children will also need to know the Y2 teaching of adding the suffix ‘ful’.

Similarly, the mark scheme refers to the Y3/4 suffix knowledge ‘ous’ for the word ‘generous’ but children will also need to know about the soft ‘g’ (/d3/) from Y2.

As the Y2 spelling programme of study seems to form the bedrock of spelling in KS2, it is wise to allow time to revisit it as much as possible.

Swift and confident progress

It seems to stand to reason that a systematic shoring up of the foundations of spelling knowledge, aided by strategies to secure retention, will help children with gaps in their spelling. Once these gaps are identified and closed, swift and confident progress should follow.

• Year 2 About to teach the sound spelt ‘ar’ after ‘w’ in words such as ‘war’ or ‘swarm’? Track back to prior teaching surrounding this sound, such as the graphemes or/ore/aw/au (for/more/saw/haunt).
• Year 3/4 Not many words use the grapheme ‘ou’ making the sound ‘uh’ (‘touch’, ‘young’, ‘double’, ‘trouble’, ‘country’). Before tackling this objective, start with a revision of this short vowel sound spelt ‘u’ in words such as ‘hunter’, ‘thunder’, ‘tumbler’, ‘jumper’, ‘Sunday’ and words where the consonant is doubled after a short vowel, such as ‘buzzer’, ‘hummed’, ‘sunny’ or ‘funny’. Next, revisit the short vowel pronounced ‘uh’ spelt ‘o’ before ‘th’: ‘other’, ‘another’, ‘mother’, ‘brother’, ‘nothing’ and before ‘ve’ and ‘me’: ‘love’, ‘above’, ‘oven’, ‘come’, ‘some’. Practise the commonly used words ‘Monday’ and ‘son’.
• Year 5/6 Words ending in ‘cial’ and ‘tial’ link beautifully to the prior teaching in Y2 surrounding adjectives ending in ‘al’, such as ‘magical’ or ‘comical’. Before looking at words ending ‘cially’ and ‘tially’, track back to the Y3/4 teaching of adding ‘ly’ to words such as ‘sad’ and ‘secret’. Explore what happens to words like ‘magic’ and ‘comic’ that end in ‘ic’.

Michelle Nicholson is a primary English adviser for Herts for Learning Ltd, supporting schools around the county. Visit  hertsforlearning.co.uk  for ‘Steps to Spelling’ resources. Browse more  SPaG games .

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Spelling Activity Sheet

Subject: English

Age range: 7-11

Resource type: Game/puzzle/quiz

Last updated

15 March 2020

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This sheet has 16 spelling activities included on it to help children learn their words at home (but can also be used in school!). There are a wide range which should be able to be used across different year groups, as well as (hopefully!) being fun.

This was adapted from a ‘Spelling Menu’ resource on TES. All activities are from this, but cut down and presented on just one sheet. Thank you whatmissdiamonddid for your original idea!

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30 Spelling Activities for ANY List of Words

• March 6, 2020

We work hard to teach our students the correct way to spell words.  We spend countless hours creating spelling practice activities that are fun and not just writing the word multiple times.  Are you ready to get some of those hours back?!  Take a look at these fabulous EDITABLE Spelling Activities we have created for your students to practice their word lists.

Our Spelling Activities are super simple to use!!!

• Enter your spelling list into the first page of the packet.
• Choose the activities you want to use that week.  (We have 150+ different pages  to choose from!)
• Print those activities.

These spelling activities can be sent home as homework, used in a word work center, or as independent practice. You can find all of our editable spelling activities, (general, seasonal, and holiday-themed) on Education to the Core Premium. Join today as a monthly or annual member for instant access to this resource and thousands more.

* Spelling Activity Line-Up *

1. spelling list.

This is the page where you will type in your spelling words (up to 15 words).  It can be sent home for students to study during the week, as well as for parents to cut apart and use as flashcards.

2. MAGIC WORDS

Write each spelling word in white crayon, then color over with a marker to watch them “magically” appear.

3. ALPHABETICAL ORDER

Write each spelling word in ABC order.

4. RAINBOW SPELLING

5. WRITE A SENTENCE

6. SECRET CODE

7. ROLL A SPELLING WORD

Roll the dice to see which way you are going to practice your spelling words.  Which number did you roll the most?

8. WORD ILLUSTRATIONS

Students choose 4 different spelling words to illustrate. As an extension, can they write a sentence to go with the picture?

9. TRACE WORDS

Practice each word as you trace it with different writing tools.

10. EMOJI SPELLING

11. PATTERN BLOCK SPELLING

12. VOWELS AND CONSONANTS

13. SCRABBLE SPELLING

14. SPIN IT — SPELL IT

15. SPELLING MAZE

16. SPELLING SPIRAL

17. SPELLING WORD SYLLABLES

Students practice separating their spelling words into syllables. Count on fingers, clap your hands, or stomp your feet to see how many syllables are in each word. Then circle the corresponding number.

18. SILLY WRITING

19. PYRAMID SPELLING

20. SPELLING RHYMES

21. SPELLING COLORS

22. WORD SEARCH

For your higher-level kiddos, this word search is great! They write their words either across, down, or as a challenge, diagonal on the grid. Then place random letters among the words. Share with a partner to see if they can find all of your “hidden” words!

23. WORD ART

24. CREATE A STORY

How many spelling words can your students include in a story? Write a short story that makes sense and illustrate it.

25. KEYBOARD WORDS

26. STAMPING SPELLING WORDS

Everybody loves dot markers! Grab a few different colors and stamp your spelling words as you read them.

27. SYNONYMS AND ANTONYMS

For a more challenging activity, connect spelling practice with vocabulary work by finding a synonym and antonym for each spelling word.

28. SIGN LANGUAGE SPELLING

29. How Many Sounds

30. Tic-Tac-Toe Spelling

Perfect for partner spelling activities. Your students can each take a color and play tic-tac-toe with their spelling words.

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Home » Spelling » Year 6

Spelling Year 6

Spelling Year 6 KS2. Support on spelling for kids with Super Brainy Beans. Primary homework help with worksheet downloads and online games.

Pick a level

If you find the spellings difficult in your year then try starting with spellings from the year below. It's ok to work lower than the year you are on and fill the gaps rather than struggling at your level without understanding the basics.

Take the Year 6 Spelling Test

Check what your spelling level is with our Year 6 spelling test.

Start Year 6 Spelling Test

Download all Year 6 spelling worksheets

Download and print out our spelling worksheets for Year 6. 360 words especially selected for kids in Year 6, KS2.

• Uses the Look, Say, Cover, Write, Check method.
• Covers all the essential words to learn in Year 6.
• Print at home.

Download Year 6 Spelling Worksheets

Learning spellings

Practice your spellings for four days then get someone to test you on the fifth day without looking at the words first.

Spell all 40 common words

Throughout Year 6 children are expected to learn how to spell the 40 new words which are commonly used in reading and writing.

Suffixes able & ible

Suffixes are groups of letters that can be added to a root word. Suffixes change the meaning of a word to make a new word.

Words ending in able or ible , shows something can be done.

break able fashion able like able reason able

poss ible vis ible incred ible terr ible sens ible

able or ible at the end of the word?

There is an easy way of working this out by taking away the ending and seeing if you have a root word. notice able Notice is a true word so we use able .

poss ible Poss is not a word so we use ible .

Suffixes cial & tial

Use cial in a word when it comes after any of the vowels.

spe cial offi cial so cial

Use tial in a word when it comes after a consonant.

poten tial essen tial par tial

Spelling games

Prefixes micro & mini

A prefix is a group of letters that are added to a root word. Prefixes change the meaning of a word to make a new word.

Words beginning with the prefix micro or mini , mean small.

mini bus mini beast micro chip

Words with ce

These words contain ce .

ce lebrate ce rtificate sacrifi ce

Words with ie or ei

These words contain ee sound spelt ie or ei .

bel ie ve dec ei ve c ei ling

Words with ou or ow

These words have ou or ow .

wind ow kn ow n sh ou lder

Homophones are words that sound the same but mean different things. It's important which spelling you should use.

advice / advise practice / practise device / devise

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KS2 Spelling Activities

Are you a teacher looking for KS2 spelling activities to use with your class? Well, you’re in luck! We’ve compiled a list of loads of fun ways to help your KS2 children embed tricky spelling words.  

Ordering letters

Giving children the letters from their chosen spelling words and challenging them to arrange them into the correct order is a great way to help familiarise them with the spellings. Depending on whether they are in lower KS2 or upper KS2, you may wish to only provide the letters contained in the word, or a range of letters the children must pick from. Here are a couple of fun ways to do this: 

• Provide children with letter tiles and challenge them to order the letters into the correct spelling. Scrabble tiles are great for this or you can use these free downloadable letter tiles . 
• Give each child a sheet of A4 paper displaying one letter from a particular word. Can the children arrange themselves so that the word is spelled correctly? 
• Play Bananagrams ! Similar to Scrabble (but much faster paced!), this involves children creating words out of letter tiles and connecting them in a crossword formation.

Make it memorable

Many KS2 children find it very helpful to have visual guides or other devices to help them with tricky spellings and homophones, such as this visual guide to the ever-problematic ‘there, they’re, their’ : 

Another great spelling activity to help make tricky words memorable is to create mnemonics. Some mnemonics take each letter in a word and assign a new word to each letter to make the spelling more memorable. For example: 

• BECAUSE: B ig E lephants C ause A ccidents U nder S maller E lephants. 
• RHYTHM: R hythm H as Y our T wo H ips M oving 

Why not challenge your class to create their own mnemonics to help them remember words they are struggling with? 

Here are some other helpful ways of remembering some of those commonly misspelled words: 

• ne C e SS ary: one C ollar and two S leeves
• ‘-ould’ words, like would, should and could: O U L ucky D uck! 
• ‘Never be lie ve a lie ’
• Said: S illy A nts I n D resses
• ‘A really good fri end stays right to the end ’
• ‘An island is land with water around it’ 
• Special: the CIA are spe cia l agents

Playing word games is a great KS2 spelling activity that will have them reinforcing words without them even realising they are working! 

• Boggle: create a 3x3 grid by muddling up the letters from any 9-letter word on a spelling list, such as ‘important’, ‘existence’, ‘guarantee’, ‘vegetable’ or ‘neighbour’. Challenge children to find as many words as they can from the nine letters (using each letter only once per word), with the added challenge of finding the nine-letter word. 

• Word searches: create a word search with the spellings you want children to focus on. There are lots of websites, like this one , that will make the word search for you if you just enter the words you would like to include. 
• Board games: choose one of the boards from this Educational Games FreeBee Pack and give pairs of children dice and word lists. Taking it in turns, children to read one of the words to their partner. If the other child spells the word correctly, they can roll the dice and move that number of spaces. If not, they stay where they are. The winner is the first child to get to the end of the board. 
• Table tennis spelling: in pairs, children to imagine they are playing table tennis but they bat letters instead of balls! They take it in turns to ping pong each letter in a word in order to each other until they have spelt the word between them. 

Other ideas: 

Spelling Art : draw an overlapping wiggly line with space in each section you create. Choose one word for each sentence and challenge children to write the word as many times as they can within each section. 

Word rank : from a range of spelling words, ask children to rank them from what they think are the easiest to spell to the hardest. Try to identify why the words at the bottom are hardest and work on these first. Children could write them out, identifying the trickiest letters and making sure to write these letters larger than the others. 

Silly sentences : make up silly sentences that use all the words from a given list of spellings. What’s the silliest sentence you can make?!

If you’re looking for more English resources for your KS2 classroom, check out our full catalogue of KS2 English lesson planning packs , or English FreeBees . 

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Yet again this has saved me so much planning time that I can present these lessons to my class knowing that they are just what I need. Thank you.

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Fabulous creative upper case letters to encourage little ones to colour, seek out the hidden objects and name as many as they can. Highly recommended 👌.

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FREE Spelling Scheme of Work

Covers the national curriculum, year 1 - year 6 of appendix 1 covered, phonics approach throughout, powerpoints for all spelling rules, etymological & morphological approach, weekly planning for teachers, impact writing & year 6 sats.

Emile’s Spelling Scheme in combination with our Premium Resources has been shown to impact year 6 SATs results and  improve spelling in students’ writing again and again. 

EASY TO IMPLEMENT

Used in over 2,000 schools, Emile’s Scheme is easy to use, low workload and ready to go. 

The planning is done and all mapped to the Appendix to the National Curriculum.

Over 210 powerpoints with corresponding worksheets are ready to download and all are editable.

Lessons can be done in any order within a year as no prior knowledge has been assumed. 

ROBUST PEDAGOGY

With our ongoing work with both the University of Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan University, Emile’s Spelling Scheme of work is based on robust pedagogy and the latest education research.  

FUN for Students

The Premium Resources include online games for each of the lessons. The games are all assignable by our Task Codes with the outcomes automatically emailed directly to the teacher.

Run class Battles, take part in our National Spelling Competition or launch a school competition. 

There is NO need to purchase our Premium Resources to use the Emile’s Spelling Scheme of Work (we just ask for a link on your school website)   

PREMIUM RESOURCES

• an online Student Resource that links to the over 210 lessons and adapts to students’ spelling abilities featuring 100s of games,
• a Teacher Portal that automatically tracks pupils progress and highlights knowledge gaps that allows teachers to set work, create competitions and battles .  

There are 221 lessons each with a powerpoint, worksheets and games in the student app (premium resource). Each lesson has been carefully planned and makes use of phonics, morphology and etymology as and where appropriate.

The Scheme offers a 10 mins powerpoint including a short class activity to introduce and explain the spelling pattern.

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Spelling words with the suffix "-ed"

I can spell words using the suffix -ed when you just add -ed or remove the ‘e’ and add -ed.

Lesson details

Key learning points.

• A suffix is a letter or group of letters at the end of a word which creates another word.
• -ed is a suffix that can be used to create the past tense.
• Some root words just add -ed to create the past tense.
• Some root words lose the final e and add the suffix -ed to create the past tense.
• How to spell the curriculum word: circle.

Common misconception

Children can spell past tense verbs how they sound, ending them with 't', 'd' or 'id'.

Explicitly discuss the examples of words where the ending sounds different and remind pupils that the spelling is still -ed.

Suffix - a letter or group of letters added to the end of a root word

Past tense - shows that the action happened before now

Verb - a doing or being word

Root word - the base word from which other words are formed often by adding prefixes or suffixes

This content is © Oak National Academy Limited ( 2024 ), licensed on Open Government Licence version 3.0 except where otherwise stated. See Oak's terms & conditions (Collection 2).

Starter quiz

6 questions.