Spelling

11 November 2016

This week’s spelling activity is all about 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 which sound (hence, ‘phone’) the same but are spelt differently: their, there, they’re.
• Homographs are words that are spelt the same (hence, ‘graph’, as in autograph) but sound different: to bow, the bow and arrow.

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 four homonyms. Can you think what that is? (Check Rose’s rules for homonyms in the chapter.)

04 November 2016

Here are the spellings for this week. They will be tested on Friday 11 November.

04 November 2016

04 November 2016

For this week’s spellings, we recap learning from earlier years as we focus on plurals – more than one of a noun. Children should practise spelling these words in preparation for a test on Friday 11 November.

Children will be tested on 10 of these words (but should know them all).

I have given the singular version. Children should learn the plural version. For example:

• one bus / two buses
• one baby / two babies

Please remember what we discussed at parents’ evening: “It is much more important that children learn the rules than simply the correct spellings.”

4 November 2016

This week, we’ve been looking at the Year 5/6 spelling list from the National Curriculum and finding spellings that we can think of tricks and tips for remembering them. The children have chosen their own ten spellings to practise and will be tested on them on Friday 11 November.

Look at the full list of National Curriculum Year 5/6 spellings (page 23).

21 October 2016

It’s half-term, so there’s no homework. Enjoy the holiday instead: hunt down a collection of chestnuts on a walk at Roundhay Park, enjoy a cinema trip on a damp day, go further afield and visit somewhere new…

Whatever you do, have a good break.

14 October 2016

The spellings for this week are revision from this half term.

-s, -es, -er,  -ing  -ed suffixes
– you need to remember two rules for this:

• double up for a short vowel sound (‘swimming’ not ‘swiming’ because the i makes an short ‘i’ sound, not a longer ‘i’ sound as in ‘site’)
• drop the e for ing (and ed and er, too!)

un- and dis- prefixes

14 October 2016

14 October 2016

This week, we’re going to recap some old spelling rules which we learnt many years ago as people are making silly errors in their writing. Here are some key spelling rules. In your book, practise adding suffixes to words (and not just simple ones) and there will be a test next week. The example words below are not a spelling list; the words tested will require these rules to be applied. Remember, you need to think about how to spell the root word (eg hurry) before you then think about how to change it for adding the suffix (change the y to an i).

drop the y for an i

• countries
• diaries
• hurried

double up for a short vowel sound

• accommodate
• immediately
• embarrass

drop the e

• advising
• evaporating
• practising

i before e, except after c

• ceiling
• receive
• believe

07 October 2016