step 1 of 6
You already keep little tricky words by sight, like said and because. Bigger tricky words you can crack: find the trick and the word stops surprising you. Zara meets a big one in her book: knowledge.
What is the trick in knowledge?
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Decoding unfamiliar words
Read Y3-4 exception words with unusual spelling-sound correspondences, applying growing knowledge of morphology and etymology to decode unfamiliar exception words
What a learner can do afterwards
- Read exception words from the Y3-4 statutory word list accurately (e.g. 'business', 'caught', 'knowledge', 'different')
- Identify unusual letter-sound correspondences in exception words and explain why the word does not follow common GPC rules
- Use growing knowledge of morphology and etymology to attempt unfamiliar exception words (e.g. recognise the root 'know' in 'knowledge')
1 · Read
Some words break the usual reading rules. You cannot always sound out every letter and get the right word. These are called exception words. The best way to read them is to spot the tricky part, and remember it, or work out why it is spelled that way.
Try it together
Look at 'knowledge'. It has a silent k at the start, because it comes from the old word 'know'. If you know that 'know' has a silent k, you can guess 'knowledge' does too. 'Business' hides the word 'busy' inside it: busi-ness. That is why business has an i where you might expect a y.
Try it together
The word 'caught' uses the letters 'augh' to make an 'or' sound, an old spelling pattern you also see in 'daughter' and 'taught'. You cannot sound out each letter here. You just have to remember that 'augh' says 'or'.
When a word looks strange, work through three tries in order. First, look for a smaller word hiding inside it, because the small word often explains the odd spelling. Second, think of similar-looking words you have already read, since a strange pattern in one word usually turns up in a family of them. Third, when neither of those works, learn the tricky part by heart. That last step is not giving up. It is what exception words are for.
Exception words break the rules, so look for a hidden root word, spot spelling patterns you have seen before, and remember the odd bits.
More to read
Deconstructing and constructing words
Have you ever found a big word you did not know? Do not give up! You can be a word detective.
Lots of words are built from smaller parts. There is a root, which is the main part of the word. There can be bits added to the start, called prefixes. There can be bits added to the end, called suffixes.
When you see a hard word, break it into parts. Think about what each part means. Then put the meanings back together.
Look at the word knowledge. Can you spot the little word know hiding inside it? If you know what know means, you are already close to reading the whole word.
Try it with unhappy. Break it into un and happy. The part un means not. So unhappy means not happy. You just read a new word all by yourself.
Some words are tricky and do not follow the normal sound rules. Words like caught, business, and different break the usual letter sound patterns, so word detectives learn those odd parts by heart. For the rest, use the parts inside the word to help you. The more you practice, the easier it gets.
2 · Watch
به انگلیسی3 · Play
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Take it off screen
Print a worksheetA4 with an answer key page for grown-ups. No screen, no internet.
Where it sits
Optional connections
This opens up
Then practise
24 questions wait behind this lesson, each with its answer explained. Every answer feeds the sky: stars light as they are learned, and dim when it is time to come back.