Year 3 Spelling Rules

By the end of Year 1 most children will have been exposed to and learnt up to the end of Phase 5 in phonics. The spelling and ‘sound’ knowledge learnt up to Phase 5 continues to be a solid foundation which children should use to help with their spelling.

During Year 2 and 3 children will: Continue to use phonics to segment and blend words for reading and spelling. Learn some spelling rules and patterns which occur frequently in the English language. Learn some exceptions to the spelling rules.

Phonic terminology Phoneme – a single unit of sound Grapheme – the written representation of a sound (letters) Digraph – 2 letters making one sound Trigraph – 3 letters making one sound

Vowels and consonants There are 26 letters in the alphabet – 5 of these are vowels, 21 of these are consonants. Some digraphs make ‘vowel sounds’ such as /ai/ay/ae/a _ e/ The letter y can also make a vowel sound though the letter itself is a consonant.

Word endings -le is the most common way of making the /l/ sound at the end of a word e.g. table, middle -el is a less common spelling of /l/ at the end of a word and usually follows an m,n,r,s,v or w e.g. tunnel, travel -al this is not a common spelling. It can be used as a suffix to create an adjective e.g. natural, or for some occasional nouns -il is a very rare spelling and it is better for these words to be learnt in isolation e.g. pencil, fossil, nostril

Suffixes Children learn how to add a suffix to a word by looking at the root word and following a spelling pattern. Root word – a word that has no prefix or suffix attached.

Vowel Suffixes -ing an action or process (continuous) -ed past tense -est most -er more/a person that does an action -y adjective (characterizing)

Consonant Suffixes -ful full of -ness noun -ly adverb -less without -ment action or result

Vowel suffixes ing ed est er y The letter y acts as a vowel by making the /ee/ sound at the end of a word. If the root word has a short vowel sound there must be 2 consonants before a vowel suffix can be added. e.g. swim swimming drink drinking Exception to the rule – x is never doubled e.g. mix mixer

Vowel suffixes ing ed est er y The letter y acts as a vowel by making the /ee/ sound at the end of a word. If the root word has a long vowel sound no change needs to be made to the root word before adding the suffix e.g. coach coaching dream dreaming

Vowel suffixes ing ed est er y The letter y acts as a vowel by making the /ee/ sound at the end of a word. If the root word ends with the letter e then the e must be dropped before adding the suffixes e.g. bake baking like liked

Consonant suffixes -ful -ness -less -ly -ment If a suffix starts with a consonant it is usually added on with no change to the root word. e.g. enjoy enjoyment sad sadness Exceptions – argument If the root word has 2+ syllables and ends with a consonant followed by a y then the y is changed to an I e.g. happy happiness