Year 3 Spelling

Have a happy and healthy holiday

It’s the summer holidays at last, so there are no homework or spelling activities. Enjoy the holidays instead!

Does your child spend less time outdoors than prison inmates? A survey suggests three-quarters of children do, as the time spent playing in parks, woods and fields has shrunk dramatically due to lack of green spaces, digital technology and parents’ fears.

Research shows that playing outdoors promotes social skills, improves vision, reduces stress, increases attention span and provides vitamin D.

15 July 2016

The above spellings include a lot of words that we have learnt this year; some words that follow the spelling rules that we have focused on and some words that may be new to your child. Like the Year 3/4 spelling list, this represents the sorts of spellings Year 3 children are expected to spell confidently.

We have spent a lot of time in class discussing effective ways of practising spellings. Your child will be able to explain the following techniques:
~highlighting
~drawing around spellings
~spelling pyramids
~illustrating spellings
~letter colouring

Why not spend some time with your child trying out these different techniques?

Your child will be tested on eight of these spellings at the end of next week.

08 July 2016

This week’s spellings have all been taken from a recent spelling test we took as a class. The words are all “Year 3/4” words that pupils are expected to be able to spell (actually one isn’t but you will have to check the whole list which is in your child’s spelling book to find out which).

• favourite
• neighbour
• chemist
• expression
• week
• weak
• unique
• certain
• enough
• television

You may wish to discuss what spelling rules and patterns your child can see within these words. Do any spelling patterns apply to more than one spelling? (expression and television both have ‘sion’ suffix)

01 July 2016

As you know, we have had to close school on Friday 01 July – Shadwell Lane had its water turned off.  For that reason, and because two classes are out of school today, there hasn’t been chance to set homework or spellings for this week.

Even though there is no set homework or spellings, please remember there are lots of things that the children can be doing to reflect on their learning from this week.

Again, I would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused by the school closure.

24 June 2016

This week’s spellings all follow the double up for a short vowel sound rule and are from the Year 3/4 spelling curriculum.

accidentally
actually
business
disappear
different
difficult
occasionally
thousand
opposite
possession

Some of these spellings may seem familiar but it is essential that we keep revisiting the double up for a short vowel sound  rule. Within this list, there are examples where the double up rule isn’t always followed. Can you child spot these? There is also a red herring within this list. Can you spot it?

double up for a short vowel sound

In English spelling, we come across two types of vowel sounds – short vowel sounds like ‘a’ in apple and ‘e’ in berry and long vowel sounds like ‘a’ in change. Usually (but not always), the consonants after a short vowel sound are doubled. For example, opposite has a short ‘o’ at the start and is followed by a pair of ‘p’s.

17 June 2016

This week’s spellings have come about as a result of all the spelling learning we have done around the letter w.

wait
weight
went
where
were
woman
women
weather
whether
wrong

There are some homophones (two words that sound the same but are spelt differently), an irregular plural and some high frequency words that are commonly spelt wrong. Why not try encouraging your child to spot words within words to help memorise spellings (the response to “where?” could be “here!”)?

10 June 2016

This week’s spellings are brought to you by the letter ‘w‘. Here is a list of common ‘w‘ words. Go through these words  with your child and decide which spellings they already know and which spellings they think they need to focus on learning. A very common error in class is using ‘Wh’ instead of ‘W’ (whent instead of went). On Friday, your child will be assessed through a dictation activity. The following week’s spellings will be based on the whole class’s results in that assessment.

Can your child spot any of our school spelling rules (drop the ‘y’ for an i, double up for a short vowel sound, drop the ‘e’ for ‘ing’)? Can your child spot any words within words to help them remember a spelling (warm)?

Summer Half Term

In line with our Homework Policy, there are no homework tasks or spellings to learn next week because it’s the Summer half-term holiday. Of course, there are plenty of ways to help your child continue learning: get reading, go places, talk lots!

Have a happy and healthy holiday.

20 May 2016

The week’s spellings all link in with money week.

• penny
• pound
• amount
• pence
• currency
• Euro
• change
• budget
• charity

Your child has nine spellings to learn and must find their own money word that they will also be tested on.

13 May 2016

This week’s spellings are all common exception words. These are words that Year 3 children are expected to know. Lower down school they are often called tricky words because they don’t always follow expected phonetic rules. For example the ‘ar’ in forward makes an ‘uh’ sound.

• forward
• fruit
• grammar
• group
• guide
• heard
• heart
• height
• history

We’ve learnt some of these words before but they are still cropping up as errors in class.