Teaching same sound, different spelling
Aim: Choose the right spelling when a sound can be written more than one way.
How to explain it
Many sounds have more than one spelling. /f/ can be f, ff or ph (phone). The 'or' sound can be or, aw, au or augh (caught). Question words start with wh even though most people say a plain w. There is no single rule, so group the words by the spelling they use and learn each group as a family: all the 'augh' words together, all the 'ph' words together.
Starter (5 minutes)
Say a sound and ask children how many ways they know to write it. Collect the spellings on the board with one example each.
Main activity
Sound sort: give a mixed pile of words that share a sound (fish, off, phone, laugh). Children sort them by spelling into columns, then add one more word of their own to each column. Keep the columns on the wall and add to them through the week.
Dictation sentences
- The elephant in the photo was eating.
- Where is my daughter's phone?
- She caught a cold on the way home, which was unlucky.
Watch out for
- Spelling it as it sounds (fone, cort, wen).
- Mixing up which 'ough' sound goes with which word.
Quick check
Ask children to spell these without help:
- dolphin
- naughty
- whisper
- tough
Example words
- phone
- photo
- elephant
- dolphin
- caught
- taught
- daughter
- when
- where
- which
- enough
- though