Year 2 spelling words

By Year 2, the weekly spelling list is part of the routine in most Australian schools. The words get longer, and the focus moves from short vowels to letter teams: the vowel teams that write long sounds, the silent-letter teams like kn and wr, and the several ways English writes /er/. Most lists still come home at the start of the week with a quick test at the end, alongside more common exception words like could, people and because.

Below are the 10 Year 2 lists built into Phonogram Fun, ten words each, in a typical phonics order. Use them as they are, print them for the fridge, or keep them for the weeks when no list comes home. If your school sends its own list, use that one instead: you can photograph it into Phonogram Fun and the week's words turn into sound-it-out practice. Either way, the ten-minute routine further down works with any list.

The Year 2 list, week by week

The coloured tile on each card is that week's focus phonogram. All ten weeks print on one A4 page.

Year 2 spelling words, weeks 1 to 10 · free to print from phonogramfun.com/learn

What the words have in common

Week 1 is oa saying /ō/: boat, coat, road, goat, toast. In all ten words it sits in the middle, with consonants either side. Float and throat add blends at the start, and roast and toast end in st.

Week 2 is igh saying /ī/, and every word ends in -ight: night, light, right, bright, flight. Three letters, one sound, so night is night. Once your child spells one, they can spell all ten.

Week 3 is kn, which says /n/ at the start of a word: know, knot, knock, knee, knit. The k used to be said out loud centuries ago, and the spelling kept it. Knight joins this week's kn to last week's igh: knight, six letters and three sounds. In know and known, ow says its second sound, /ō/.

Week 4 is wr, saying /r/: write, wrote, wrap, wrist, wrong, wreck. Two extras to point out: in wrestle the t is silent too, and write and wrote both end in a silent e that makes the vowel say its name.

Week 5 is ph, saying /f/: phone, photo, graph, phonics, pharmacy. Most of these words came into English from Greek, which is where ph spellings come from. Philip and Ralph are names, so they start with a capital letter. In pheasant, ea makes its second sound, /ĕ/, as in head.

Weeks 6, 7 and 8 are three ways to write the same sound, /er/: ir in bird, girl, first, shirt, er in her, term, fern, verb and ur in fur, burn, turn, nurse. No simple rule says which spelling a word takes, so learning them a week at a time, then mixing them up, is the way through. A few bonus patterns hide inside: circle and circus use both sounds of c (/s/ before i, /k/ before l or u); serve, nerve and curve end in e because English words don't end in v; and in merge the e makes g say /j/. One local note: in Australian English clerk is usually said "clark", so it doesn't rhyme with perk. It's worth pointing out, so your child doesn't think they've misheard.

Week 9 is aw, saying /aw/: saw, jaw, draw, straw, claw, then crawl, shawl, drawn, prawn. aw is the spelling that can end a word. Its partner au, as in author, never does.

Week 10 is oi: oil, boil, coin, point, noise, voice, choice. The list is called oi and oy, but all ten words use oi, because oi never ends an English word and every one of these has a letter after it. Its partner oy is the one at the end: boy, toy, enjoy. In voice and choice, the c says /s/ because an e follows it.

How to practise a Year 2 list in ten minutes

Three or four words a night is plenty. Take them one at a time through these five steps.

1. Look, say, sound. Read the word together, then say it sound by sound while pointing at each phonogram: flight is /f/ /l/ /ī/ /t/, four sounds from six letters. In Phonogram Fun, tapping a word splits it into coloured phonogram tiles and plays each sound.
2. Name the tricky part. Ask which part of the word is hardest to remember, and why: the silent k in knee, the ph in phone, ir rather than ur in bird. Naming it is half of remembering it.
3. Cover, write, check. Cover the word, have your child say the sounds as they write it, then uncover it and check together, one phonogram at a time. Word Climb in the app does the same job as a game: one letter disappears, then two, then the whole word.
4. A dictation sentence. Say a short sentence with the word in it and have them write the whole thing: The goat ate the toast. Sentences catch the words children can spell in a list but not yet in their own writing.
5. Mixed revision. On the er, ir and ur weeks especially, mix in words from the other two weeks and sort them into three columns. Old words that keep coming back are the ones that stick.

The longer version, with what to do when a word goes wrong and how to spread a list across the week, is in How to practise spelling words without tears.

Before and after Year 2

The year before is covered by Year 1 spelling words (short vowels, sh, th, ch, ay, ee, ck and ng), and the first year of school by Prep and Kindy sight words. In the app, Year 3 has six more lists and Years 4, 5 and 6 have a challenge list each.

Year 2 is also when children start meeting the rarer letter teams. The record holder is ough, with six sounds: The ough words, explained. For what's normal at this age, see Phonics for 7 year olds.

Questions parents ask