Spellings for 8 year olds

The Basic Spelling Vocabulary List

By: Steve Graham, Karen R. Harris, Connie Loynachan

This list was created to help teachers know which spelling words should be taught to kids in grades 1–5. The list contains 850 words that account for 80 percent of the words children use in their writing — the ones they need to be able to spell correctly.

This list was devised to help educators know which spelling words should be taught to children. The list contains 850 words that account for 80 percent of the words children use in their writing — the ones they need to be able to spell correctly.

Mastering this relatively small corpus of words yields a high rate of return. For example, the most common 1,000 words are used 13 times more frequently than the next most common 1,000 words. It also provides teachers flexibility in planning spelling instruction, providing an opportunity to give children the "basics" while supplementing with other spelling words germane to classroom activities.

Grade level for each word was determined based upon difficulty, pattern of occurrence in children's writing across grades, and grade placement on current vocabulary lists and spelling materials.

Words that children have difficulty spelling correctly are marked with an asterisk.

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Graham, S. , Harris, K.R. and Loynachan, C. (1993). The Basic Spelling Vocabulary List. Journal of Educational Research 86(6) 363-368.

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Spelling in Year 4 (age 8–9)

In Year 4, your child will continue to develop their spelling. They will write and read more, learning more complex spellings as they go. They will use dictionaries to check words they are unsure of.

Read on to discover the National Curriculum expectations for spelling in Year 4, and to find out how you can support your child at home.

What your child will learn

Take a look at the National Curriculum expectations for spelling in Year 4 (age 8–9):

Using more prefixes and suffixes

Suffixes are morphemes (groups of letters that mean something on their own) that are added at the end of a root or root word to change the meaning. Prefixes are morphemes added at the front of a word. Over the course of Year 4, your child will learn about lots of prefixes and suffixes to spell longer words and change the meaning of those words.

Spelling more homophones

Homophones are words that are spelled differently and have different meanings, but are pronounced in the same, or almost the same, way. They are often confused in children’s writing. In Year 4, your child will learn the difference between:

accept/except, affect/effect, ball/bawl, berry/bury, brake/break, fair/fare, grate/great, groan/grown, here/hear, heel/heal/he’ll, knot/not, mail/male, main/mane, meat/meet, medal/meddle, missed/mist, peace/piece, plain/plane, rain/rein/reign, scene/seen, weather/whether, whose/who’s

Spelling words that are often misspelt

The National Curriculum in England provides a word list for Year 3 and Year 4 children of words that are often misspelt. Children will be taught to spell these words at school.

Practise spelling these words with our Spelling word list for Year 3 and Year 4.

Using the possessive apostrophe with regular and irregular plurals

Apostrophes are used to show possession (who or what something belongs to). These are different depending on whether there is one person or thing (singular) or more than one (plural).

When showing singular possession, an apostrophe and an -s are often added (for example, ‘Paul’s bike’ or ‘the girl’s voice’). If an -s is already at the end of a word to show a plural, the apostrophe is added after the -s (for example, ‘the girls’ voices’).

Singular possession: ‘the horse’s field’ (one horse).

Plural possession: ‘the horses’ field (more than one horse).

When a word ends in an -s, but isn’t a plural (for example, ‘Chris’ and ‘diplodocus’), the apostrophe can be added with or without the -s (‘the diplodocus’ swamp’ or ‘the diplodocus’s swamp’ – both are correct).

Some plural words are irregular, meaning that they do not end in an -s (for example, ‘children’, ‘team’). Here, an apostrophe and an -s are added after the final letter (‘the children’s toys’ or ‘the team’s boots’).

Checking spellings in a dictionary

​In Year 4, your child will continue to check the spellings of their words using an age-appropriate dictionary. Find out more about how dictionaries can help your child learn on our Children’s dictionaries page.

How to help at home

There are lots of ways you can help your Year 4 child with spelling. Here are our top ideas.

1. Help with spelling homework

If your child is struggling with a spelling list they have been asked to learn, here are a few ideas to help:

• • Remind your child to regularly check through their writing for spelling errors. They need to develop a feel for whether a word looks right. They could underline words they are not sure of and then check with a dictionary.
  • Use over-pronunciation. So for Wednesday, encourage children to say Wed-nes-day as they write. There are lots of words which feature sounds that aren’t always pronounced clearly (such as words ending in -ed), and over-emphasising these while spelling them out can help fix the spelling in your child’s memory.
  • Ask your child to write down the words that they need to remember how to spell. The physical act of writing the words by hand helps to anchor the spelling in children’s memories and encourages them to think about the letters that represent the sounds in the word. Typing the words into a PC or tablet isn’t as effective.
  • Focus your child’s attention on the tricky bits in a word by asking them to highlight them. For example, show them that said has ‘ai’ in the middle and ask them to write the word, and then highlight or underline this part to help them remember. Few resources are more motivating than a highlighter pen for primary-aged children!

2. Play spelling games

Playing games can help children to learn about spelling in an enjoyable way. Watch grammar expert Charlotte Raby’s video ‘How can I help my child with grammar, punctuation and spelling?’ to see some fun and easy games:

Video playlist: How can I help my child with SPaG?

Charlotte Raby offers her expert advice for helping your child develop their grammar, punctuation, and spelling skills at home.

Online games such as Word worm can be motivating, and so can more traditional games like hangman. Making silly sentences can be great fun too. Challenge your child to write a silly sentence, including as many of the words on their spelling list as possible.

For example, your child may have to learn ‘room took hoop foot book’. They could make up a silly sentence such as ‘The boy took his book across the room but got his foot caught in a hoop’. Why not draw illustrations to go with the sentences?

3. Find the right resources

Learning to spell is a gradual process and mastering English’s complex spelling system can take time. All children are different: some pick up spelling quickly, while others take longer. Whatever their level, we have lots of free spelling activities to support them.

Year 3 & 4 spelling word list

100 words children are expected to be able to spell by the end of Year 4.

Copybooks for children - Print and circle!

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Here you can download all kinds of recipes for children and print them for free. Among them there are recipes for mathematics, recipes with capital letters, recipes for kids, recipes for preschoolers and primary school students: grades 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, etc. For children 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 years old.

Copybooks are a very important methodological material for children, as they teach a child's hand to write, stimulate the development of beautiful handwriting and develop a positive attitude towards learning. Children who at preschool age were not familiar with copybooks and did not study them regularly have big problems in elementary school - they hardly learn to write, their handwriting is far from ideal, and every word written in a notebook is perceived by them as the most difficult work, and sometimes real pain. Where, then, will the love for learning and the incentive to achieve school success come from?

Be sure to print out various recipes for your kids, starting from the earliest years, and you will not regret it - your child will always delight you with his academic efforts, good grades and excellent handwriting!

To delve deeper into preparing children for school, use our section on teaching a child to read, in which you will find a lot of useful educational materials with the alphabet, syllables, word processing, game aids and much more . ..

These recipes for schoolchildren of grade 1 and elementary school students will allow children to get the first skills in calligraphy and handwriting. Recipes can be used for self-study at home.

Help kids develop their fine motor skills with dotted or outlined tracing. Our tracing tasks and exercises for children aged 5-6 will help your little one prepare their hand for writing...

Your child knows how to pronounce the alphabet. Now it's time for him to start writing letters on paper. Children learn the basics of writing at school, but handwriting needs to be developed at home as well.

Here you can download Russian copybooks for children (printed letters) with tasks. Materials in the original size are posted at the bottom of the page in one file. Learning to write, the child will be able to learn not only how to write letters correctly, he will have a great opportunity to color pictures and perform various tasks.

In this material, you can download in the attachments at the bottom of the page the exercises for children "Circle the dots". Such tasks will serve as a great start for the baby while learning to write and help develop a beautiful handwriting in a child.

Here you can download tasks for kids "Circle the dots of the picture", where the child must first circle each depicted object along the contour, and then color the resulting pictures. Exercises will help you teach your child to write, and will also develop fine motor skills of the baby.

Here you can download eight exercises for preschoolers "Capital Russian letters" in one file, which will help your child form ideas about the correct combination of capital letters in words, and provide the child with the opportunity to practice writing some letters and words on his own.

Copybooks for children "Capital letters from A to Z" you can download in attachments at the bottom of the page in one file. These are indispensable activities for preschoolers who are learning to write. Timely teaching of children will certainly bring positive results during school hours, besides, a beautiful handwriting is gradually formed and developed in the child, the speed of writing letters is increasing, and there is also a desire and love for learning.

Here you can download the "Writing while playing" recipes, which consist of 33 worksheets for children from 5 years old. Performing simple and exciting sentences, your child: gets acquainted with the basic elements of numbers and letters, forms graphic skills, trains fine motor skills, develops attention and memory, learns to complete tasks independently...

Copybook for children capital letters is the best educational material for training a preschooler and younger students in writing. After all, it is capital letters that cause difficulties in primary school children.

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