Spellings

Spellings play a fundamental part of the 11 Plus journey. As part of the English paper students will be given sentences or passages of text and asked to find spelling mistakes.

The sooner you start to get into good habits and regularly encourage your child to practise spelling at home, the wider their vocabulary and the quicker and more accurately spelling will become. Here are some tips on how to improve your child’s spellings.

Some spellings may be tricky to spot and a good way to check is to write the word out and ask yourself “does it look right?”

Other ways to practise spellings are:

 Encourage reading.
 Spell the word out loud.
 Keep a list of those difficult to spell words on display.
 Play games to practice i.e. hangman, scrabble, boggle & Bananagrams are great fun to play and they’re also brilliant for practising spelling and developing vocabulary.

Statutory Spellings

The Government prescribes over 100 words for children to learn during Key Stage 2. We believe knowing these are an absolute must if your child is studying for the 11 Plus Entrance Exam.  The lists include a mixture of words pupils frequently use in their writing and those which they often misspell. To find out what the words are for each year group click on each of links below:

Spellings ‘must know ‘ word list for Years 3 and 4

Spellings ‘must know’ word list for Years 5 and 6

A great way to see how many they know is reading them out (in sections) and see if they can spell them.  If they make mistakes, it just indicates that they may need a little practice. 

If you want to find out more about what is expected of children in Year 4, 5 and 6 for spelling, the national curriculum details everything you need to know.