Homophones, prefixes and tricky words

Homophones and near-homophones

Homophones sound the same but have different meanings and spellings: steal and steel, aloud and allowed, guessed and guest. Near-homophones sound almost the same: accept and except, affect and effect, desert and dessert.

Sounding out can't help here. The only way to choose is through meaning, which is exactly why the SATs spelling paper reads every word in a sentence. Children need to listen to the sentence before deciding which word they've been given.

• The bike was made of steel.The metal.
• Don't steal my bike!To take without permission.
• We were allowed to read aloud.Permitted / out loud.

-ice or -ise? The noun and verb pairs

A few pairs differ only by one letter and their word class. In British English, the noun takes c and the verb takes s:

Advice and advise also sound different, which gives children a way in: if advice and advise follow the pattern you can hear, practice and practise follow the same one even though they sound identical.

Prefixes: add, don't change

A prefix never changes the spelling of the root word, and the root never changes the prefix. That simple rule explains double letters that confuse many children:

• misspellmis + spell.
• dissatisfieddis + satisfied.
• unnecessaryun + necessary.
• disappeardis + appear: only one s, because the root starts with a.

Some prefixes take a hyphen when the root begins with the same vowel, such as co-ordinate and re-enter. That's a style point worth mentioning rather than drilling.

The tricky words

The Year 5 and 6 statutory word list includes words with no reliable pattern: amateur, desperate, familiar, restaurant, separate, yacht, sincerely, rhythm. These are learned, not worked out, but there's a smart way to learn them: find the part of the word that causes the problem and focus there. Most children can spell separate apart from one vowel, so drill that vowel, not the whole word.

• separate: there's “a rat” in separate.
• desperate: say “des-per-ate” in three clear syllables.
• restaurant: the au in the middle is the hard part.
• yacht: a word to learn by sight; nothing about it is predictable.

In the SATs

The SATs spelling paper draws heavily on the statutory word lists, so the tricky words appear year after year. Homophones are a natural fit for a dictated test, because the sentence tells children which word is wanted. Prefix words such as disappear, misspell and unnecessary test whether children know the “add, don't change” rule.

Common mistakes

• mispellmis + spell keeps both s: misspell.
• dissapeardis + appear: disappear.
• seperateThere's a rat in separate.
• Can you advice me?Verb needs s: advise.

Teaching ideas

Picture the homophone

Pupils draw both meanings of a homophone pair and label each with the spelling. Desert (sand, one s) and dessert (pudding, two s, because you always want seconds) is a classic.

Prefix sums

Write dis + appear, mis + spell, un + necessary and ask pupils to write the answer. Making the join visible stops letters being added or dropped.

Hard-part highlighting

For each tricky word, children write it and highlight only the part they got wrong (or think they'd get wrong). They practise that part in the next few weeks rather than the whole word.

Sentence choice

Read homophone sentences aloud, as in the SATs, and pupils write only the target word. Then ask them to explain how the sentence told them which spelling to use.

Try it: five quick questions

SATs-style questions to use as a starter or a quick check. Tap to see each answer.

1. Which word? The teacher gave us good ___ (advice / advise).

   Show answer

   advice: a noun.

2. Which word? We had ice cream for ___ (desert / dessert).

   Show answer

   dessert

3. Add dis- to satisfied.

   Show answer

   dissatisfied

4. Which is correct? seperate / separate

   Show answer

   separate

5. Which word? The guests were ___ to swim (aloud / allowed).

   Show answer

   allowed