Year 6 Spelling

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 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

Year 6 have a spelling list this week.

These are some homophones that Year 6 need to learn – remember it’s not the spellings that are tricky but knowing when to use them. This means you need to practise using them in sentences correctly.

There’ll be no test next week. Instead we’ll see how our homophone learning is going, identify some we’re finding more difficult and then we’ll be tested on them the following week.

15 September 2017

This week, we’re going to recap some old spelling rules which we learnt many years ago as people often make silly errors with these in their everyday 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 (hurry) before you then think about how to change it for adding the suffix (change the y to an i).

08 September 2017

This week, you have a spelling activity which is due back on Thursday 14 September.

There will be no test on Friday 15 September. Instead, we’ll review what you’ve found out from this activity. It focuses on words ending in …ible and …able and being able to recognise which one to use.

Find out words with …ible and …able endings and create the word family for them.

adorable: adorably – adoration – adore – adored – adoring

09 June 2017

This week’s spelling activity has us making up words again and is due on Thursday 15 June.

We all know Roald Dahl’s wonderfully odd made-up words. Create a dictionary of eight words that we could try and use in class this half-term (obviously without offending anyone). Think about the most sensible way to spell them, how their meaning might link to their root words, how you could use Latin and Greek roots to create them and what word class they are.

Here’s my suggestion (and how you should lay your dictionary out):

stulty – (adjective) a bit stupid

Stultus is Latin for idiot which is what gave me the idea for the word and we could use it in class if somebody suggested a ‘stulty’ idea.

19 May 2017

This week’s spelling activity aims to build the children’s understanding of where words in the English language have come from and how this has contributed to spelling being difficult to master. This activity is due on Thursday 25 May.

Using these Greek and Latin roots and their meanings, create your own animals where their name gives you an idea of their appearance and/or behaviour.

For example, punctata quadrocornisbiped (a dotted, four-horned, two footed animal).

Create at least five different names and then choose one to draw and write a paragraph informing us about it.

28 April 2017

This week, the children have a list of spellings to learn and they’ll be tested on them on Friday 05 May. I’ve chosen spellings which have odd spelling patterns or might have been learnt way back in Year 3 and 4 and, therefore, could have been forgotten.

It is a fair old list, but the children will only be tested on 20 of them.

• height
• forty
• vague
• hindrance
• business
• amateur
• colleagues
• halved
• peculiar
• stomach
• grey
• whistle
• excellent
• monarch
• synchronise
• rhyming
• chauffeur
• moustache
• seized
• tongue
• equipped
• symbol
• awkward
• leisurely
• weird
• cymbals
• queue
• calendar
• twelfth
• thorough
• library
• island
• cemetery
• lightning

24 March 2017

This week’s spelling activity focuses on common word endings, particularly when it’s tricky to decide which ending a word should have. Take note of the tricks and tips it gives you as these are really useful.

Do I use …tion, …cian or …sion?

Is it …tial or …cial?

Also think about when you use …ence or …ance as this is something we’ve struggled with and we’ll share some tips next week.

There’ll be a test of 20 spellings on Friday 31 March; all of the spellings will have these tricky endings to choose from.

17 March 2017

This week’s spellings all have unstressed vowels in them. This means that you don’t hear part of the spelling when you say it: animal (we don’t really hear the ‘i’ when we say it).

Create some tips for us to share on how to spell these words accurately which we’ll share with each other on Thursday 23 March.