If you have a child in primary school, you may have heard them talking about the common exception words, tricky words or exception words, and they may have brought home a list of words to learn throughout the year. It's common for these lists to be handed out at parents' evenings or at the start of the year.
What are common exception words and why are they important?
In 2013, a new national curriculum was published and by 2016, the English part of it was statutory in primary schools. This is the same curriculum that is in effect today.
The document acknowledges that pupils may find spelling to be more difficult than reading, and so children are taught to read first using phonics, sounding out the individual graphemes (sounds written down) in words then blending them together. Some words don't follow the same use of sounds, and these are sometimes known as 'tricky words' or, as they are referred to in the curriculum, 'exception words.'
Teachers will spend time actually teaching these words individually, for reading and for spelling. When children start writing words, they record the sounds they hear: 'wot ar you dooing' would make perfect sense to a child at the stage where they have learnt the individual letter sounds, plus the /ar/ as in 'car' and the /oo/ as in 'poo.' (Apologies for the poo reference but children love it! That's why Read Write Inc introduces the sound as 'oo poo at the zoo!').
The next step is to learn the anomalies, the ones that don't follow the rules, and these make up the lists of words in the national curriculum, divided into four lists: year 1, year 2, years 3 and 4, and years 5 and 6.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/425601/PRIMARY_national_curriculum.pdf From page 49, accessed 2.1.23
Strangely, these words are often referred to as 'common.' The curriculum document states that:
'...almost all those listed as ‘exception words’, are used frequently in pupils’ writing, and therefore it is worth pupils learning the correct spelling.' (ref as above).
Hmm. I agree to some extent that these are common words. The lists include words like because, medicine, naughty, exaggerate, leisure, but they also include steak, reign and yacht, which might be less common in children's day to day writing. However frequently or infrequently they are used, these words provide teaching points and discussion about the words, similar spellings or patterns, and irregular spelling rules or choices.
There are also other words that are known as 'high frequency words' and these really are more common, though it might be considered that the list has aged a little over the years. Some of these words can be written using the sounds in the words, like 'but' and 'look' (once the /oo/ has been taught as making the /u/ sound) and they're useful to learn so that they will become automatic in children's writing, saving the hard work for new words they would like to write.
How can we help?
At the beginning, in reception and year one, children will meet words they have to learn to read on sight, by just looking at them. Take 'said,' for example: if we sound out s-a-i-d, then try to blend the sounds together, we don't get to 'said.' We need to know it says 'said' and this is how we introduce it to children, as one of the words that cannot easily be sounded out. We can then explain that it sounds more like s-e-d when we say it, but that the /e/ sound is written as /ai/.
Repetition is the key: a child needs to see a word about a hundred times to be able to recognise it on sight. Stick up a few words by the sink so that your child will see them when cleaning their teeth or washing their hands - the more they see them, the more likely they are to recognise them in texts, and then be able to recall the shape of the word when writing.
Understanding a little about how to break words down into chunks can help children significantly with spelling. Encouraging your child to break words into syllables (or beats) is one of the key skills they'll need, and often children reach key stage two or beyond without being able to do this.
Start with their names: Ben-jam-in, Sam-an-tha, E-liz-a-beth, clapping each one, e.g. Ben has one clap, where Benjamin has three. Move onto other words and then always whizz down the spelling list, clapping each word whilst saying the syllables. It's never too early to start this - even with babies, you will be building phonological awareness (awareness of sounds) through playing with words and sounds.
Within the syllables, you can then identify the tricky bits and focus on those. Take 'behind,' for example. Your child will already know how to spell 'be' by this point, and might know how to spell 'find.' 'Hind' is like 'find' and the tricky bit is the /i/ sounding like an /igh/ so focus on that part. Another example is 'through' where the /oo/ has the spelling /ough/. That forms the tricky part as the 'thr' part can be sounded.
When using spellings like 'ough,' there are lots of mnemonics (pronounced ni-mon-ic and not to be confused with pneumonic!) that might be helpful. Remembering the letters as 'Oh, you greedy horse' might work, or you can make up one that is meaningful for your child. For 'could,' you could try 'Oh, you lucky duck,' for the 'ould' in the word.
Your child's school might have sent home a word list or word mat with the common exception words for their year group and having this to hand when your child is writing at home can be useful to refer to. Teachers often model how to use the mat to refer to whilst writing, or it can be used afterwards to check two or three words. Keeping corrections to a small number will hopefully avoid children becoming disheartened by having lots of crossings out. On the other hand, avoiding using erasers and crossing out then writing words again can be turned into a positive experience as it shows the learning process. Lots of children struggle with this but it's really important to acknowledge mistakes and use them as future learning.
For children to be able to spell with more ease, it is helpful if they can say or hear the words clearly. Lots of children struggle to know if they need /f/ or /th/ because they may pronounce the other sound when saying the words. Emphasising sticking out your tongue for the /th/ words might help children to grasp the difference for spelling with words such as three, through and think.
Banking words from previous years of the curriculum, and trying to get these right from now on will help children to remain consistent in their spellings when writing. If a word has been on the spelling list recently and your child has begun to use the incorrect spelling for it, gently remind them that this was one of their spellings and use it as one of the corrections for a while. Some teachers might have a word jail where a word goes until it can be released when all children are using the correct spelling. Highlighting words in this way at home might be useful as children can keep the words in their simmering pot until they become automatic.
There's no doubt about it; spelling is difficult. Narrowing down to find the part of a word that is the tricky bit will help to lighten the load a little, and this is key with the common exception words.
There are other ideas and examples to help with spelling in previous blog posts on this website, and online lessons are available for primary-aged children to work on their weekly spellings or words from previous years of the curriculum, should they need to recap and build on prior learning. Contact wilburandflops@gmail.com for more information.
There are lots of phonics resources available to help at home but these (from Read Write Inc) will be really useful: https://amzn.to/3jKksaN If your child uses a different phonics scheme at school, avoid emphasising learning the picture side of each card and focus on the actual sounds made by the letter side. The Little Wandle version can be found here: https://amzn.to/3WVBxxj
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