Year 6 spelling words

Year 6 lists are the words adults still get wrong. They're long, often borrowed from Greek or Latin, and many contain a vowel you can't hear. Knowing where a word comes from is the most useful tool here.

Below are ten Year 6 lists, ten words each, in a sensible order. The challenge list is built into Phonogram Fun; the rest were written for this page. Use them as they are, print them for the fridge, or keep them for weeks when no list comes home. If your school sends its own list, use that: it's the one your child will be tested on.

The Year 6 list, week by week

Year 6 spelling words, weeks 1 to 10 · free to print from phonogramfun.com/learn

What each week teaches

Week 1, Tricky -OUS words: Courageous keeps the e so the g stays soft. Mischievous has no i before -ous, though many people say one.

Week 2, Homophones and near-homophones: The pairs that catch adults too. A memory hook for each: stationery is for envelopes.

Week 3, Greek and Latin prefixes: inter (between), super (above), anti (against), auto (self), sub (under).

Week 4, Greek roots: tele (far), micro (small), photo (light), graph (write), bio (life), geo (earth), phon (sound).

Week 5, -SION and -SSION: If the root ends in d or se (extend, expand), it's -sion; if it ends in ss or mit (discuss, permit), it's -ssion.

Week 6, Unstressed vowels: The vowel you don't hear clearly. Say the word in "spelling voice": sep-A-rate, def-I-nite-ly.

Week 7, Double consonants: Accommodate is big enough for two c's and two m's. Necessary: one collar (c), two sleeves (ss).

Week 8, -ARY, -ERY and -ORY: All three sound alike at the end. Jewellery is the Australian and British spelling (American: jewelry).

Week 9, Words with IE and EI: ie usually says /ee/; ei often says /ay/ (weigh, neighbour). Height, foreign and leisure follow neither rule.

Week 10, Challenge words: Long, commonly misspelled words. These are the ten in the app's Year 6 challenge list.

How to practise in ten minutes

1. Three or four words a night, not all ten.
2. Find the tricky part of each word together and say why it's tricky.
3. Cover, write, check, one part of the word at a time.
4. One dictation sentence using two of the week's words.
5. Mix in old words on Fridays: the words that keep coming back are the ones that stick.

Year 6 is the last year before Year 7 NAPLAN and high school. These are words children will meet constantly in secondary school writing.

The years either side: Year 5 spelling words. For a spelling bee, see Year 6 spelling bee words.

Questions parents ask