Spelling

13 October 2017

As it is the last week of this half-term, instead of being given a list of words to learn, you should revise all the rules we have focused on so far this year. You will be tested on these rules on Friday 20 October.

Evidence your revision on this page of your homework book.

So far this year, we have learnt about these three rules:

• ough – this letter string can be tricky because is makes many different sounds. For example, in the word plough, the ‘ough’ letter string makes a different sound to what it makes in the word tough.
• Double up – double up for a short vowel is a common rule in the English language. For example, the word butter has a double t because the u is a short vowel sound. Remember that there are exceptions to all spelling rules.
• -able or -ible – Our most recent spelling focus, choosing the correct suffix (-able or -ible) can be hard. We decided that in most cases, if you can see a root word and you are able to do it, use able (eg forgivable). If not, use ible (eg edible)

06 October 2017

This week, we’re focussing on the ew phoneme and its alternative spellings: boot, blue, move, few.

06 October 2017

This week’s spelling activity is an investigation. You need to find words that begin with the prefix ‘dis’. For example: disappear.

The prefix ‘dis’ is a negative or reversing force! How many words can you find? Can you spot any patterns? Can you show your words in a creative way?

We’ll discuss our investigation on Friday 13 October.

05 October 2017

The children have spellings to practise this week.

All of the spellings this week have ‘fer endings and we’re learning how to add a suffix to these words. There will be no test on Friday but you need to practise adding suffixes to these words correctly. Sometimes you need to double the ‘r’ and sometimes you don’t.

All children should be practising their spellings in their homework book, using the techniques suggested at the back which we also use in class.

• refer
• prefer
• transfer

• ed
• ing
• ence
• al

29 September 2017

This week’s spellings are all words where you need to drop the ‘e’ for an ‘ing’. If you’re not sure what any of them mean, find out. We may ask children to spell similar words that follow the same pattern. There are some easy words and some tricky words this week so make sure you continue to practise little and often.

Learn this pattern in preparation for the test on Friday 06 October.

29 September 2017

This week, we’re focussing on the o phoneme and its alternative spellings: Joe, snow, so, rode, toast.

Friday 28 September 2017

Able vs ible

This week’s spelling activity focuses on words ending in ‘able’ or ‘ible’ and recognising which suffix to use.

Children should find words that end in either ‘able’ or ‘ible’ and begin to identify any patterns/rules they can see.

Children should present their findings in their homework books. We will discuss this in class and children will be given a word list to learn next week. This activity should be returned by Thursday o5 October.

29 September 2017

This week is a spelling activity focusing on homonyms.

Read the chapter from Ann. M. Martin’s ‘How to Look for a Lost Dog’ which is all about homonyms. Rose (the main character) loves homonyms which include homophones and homographs.

Homophones are words that sound (phone) the same but are spelt differently: their, there, they’re.

Homographs are words that are spelt the same (graph) but sound different: bow, bow.

Rose creates lists of homonyms because she really likes them. How many groups of homonyms can you (ewe) create and can you (yew) then use them correctly in (inn) sentences. I wonder whether you can write a sentence with the whole (hole) group of homonyms in it?

Challenge – Rose can only think of one group of 4 homonyms. Can you think what that is? (Check Rose’s rules for homonyms in the chapter.)

There will be a test on Friday 06 October focusing mainly on the homophones the children learnt last week.

22 September 2017

We continue to explore our spelling theme: ‘drop the y for an i‘. This week’s spelling activity is an investigation. You need to find words where you would drop the ‘y’ for an ‘i’ and then add either ‘ier’ or ‘iest’. This makes either a comparative or superlative adjective. For example: funny > funnier > funniest.

We’ll discuss our investigation on Friday 29 September.

22 September 2017

We continue to recap the different vowel sounds and their alternative spellings. This week, it’s the i sound which be made in different ways: right, kind, cry, hide, lie.