Year 3 English · Spelling patterns · Summary
Year 3 English Spelling patterns: summary and key words
Part of the Year 3 English spelling patterns chapter. Chapter overview · whole chapter on one page
Chapter summary
| Skill | Method |
|---|---|
| The y that says i (in the middle) | gym, myth, pyramid, mystery, symbol, system, typical, Egypt, syllable, crystal, sympathy, synonym |
| The ou that says u | young, touch, double, trouble, country, couple, cousin, southern |
| The ay sound: ei, eigh, ey, aigh | vein, weigh, eighty, neighbour, they, grey, obey, prey, sleigh, straight |
| Greek, French and Latin spellings | echo, chorus, chemist, orchestra; chef, chalet, machine, brochure; league, vague, catalogue, unique, antique, technique; science, scene, scissors, descend |
| Statutory word list, part 1 (accident to important) | accident(ally), actual(ly), address, answer, appear, arrive, believe, bicycle, breath(e), build, busy, business, calendar, caught, centre, century, certain, circle, complete, consider, continue, decide, describe, different, difficult, disappear, early, earth, eight, enough, exercise, experience, experiment, extreme, famous, favourite, February, forward(s), fruit, grammar, group, guard, guide, heard, heart, height, history, imagine, important |
| Homophones and near-homophones | except/accept, affect/effect, bury/berry, fare/fair, grate/great, heal/heel, knot/not, mail/male, main/mane, missed/mist, piece/peace, plane/plain, whether/weather, whose/who’s, meet/meat, seen/scene |
Can you…?
- I can spell words with y that says the i sound, and ou that says the u sound
- I can spell the ay sound with ei, eigh, ey and aigh
- I can spell ch, gue, que and sc words from Greek, French and Latin
- I can spell the first half of the statutory word list, from accident to important
- I can use the tricky part of a word to check its spelling
- I can choose the right homophone or near-homophone by its meaning
Key terms
- vowel letter
- one of the letters a, e, i, o or u (y is sometimes a vowel)
- consonant letter
- any letter that is not a vowel letter
- statutory word list
- a list of words that pupils should be able to spell correctly by the end of Year 4
- homophone
- a word that sounds the same as another word, but has a different spelling and meaning
- near-homophone
- a word that sounds almost the same as another word, with a different meaning
- silent letter
- a letter that is written in a word but not said, such as the w in answer
- tricky part
- the letters in a word that do not follow the usual sound rule