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Spelling.Live

Spelling words as they sound

Sounding a word out and writing what you hear works for most regular words. Some common words break that rule, though, and a child who spells them by sound alone gets them wrong in a predictable way. The fix is to spot the one part that doesn't match the sound.

Example words

Practise this pattern

Dictation sentences

Read each one aloud and ask your child to write it down.

  1. My friend said she would come because it was sunny.
  2. Once there were enough people for a game.
  3. Could you pass me the beautiful blue book?

Quick check

Can they spell these without help?

  • people
  • again
  • enough
  • once

Keep going

Teaching this pattern

See which patterns your child finds hard

Spelling.Live matches every mistake to the pattern behind it and shows you the rule, not just the score.

Start practising free

More patterns: Suffixes and word endings · Prefixes · The unstressed vowel (schwa) · Silent letters · Same sound, different spelling · Vowel digraphs · Soft c, soft g, dge and tch · Double letters · Doubling before an ending · Long vowel sounds · Plurals · Apostrophes · Homophones · Word families · Root words and word origins · Words from other languages · Exception words · Look-alike letters