Tricky Word Spelling Strategies

Some words are tricky to spell because they don’t follow phonics rules or have silent letters. It is important to come up with creative strategies to memorise such words. It can really improve spelling results.

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Spelling strategies for tricky words are easy to use. Many exist already and you can make up your own acronyms or creative ways to remember the letters.

For this activity:

Choose a tricky word to focus on. You will find a comprehensive list of tricky words on the downloadable document accompanying this activity.
Try to identify any smaller words hidden within the larger words – for example, inside ‘friend’, is the word ‘end’.
Decide on an acronym for any tricky string of letters – for example, the last four letters of ‘could’ are difficult, so remember the sentence, ‘Oh you lucky duck’. to represent the letters.
Come up with your own creative ways of learning tricky words!