Spelling

Marking Criteria - Spelling

0/6 - no conventional spelling 

1/6 - few examples of conventional spelling

• • • • limited evidence (less than 20 words written) 

2/6 - correct spelling of

• • • • most simple words

      • some common words (at least two) 

[errors evident in common words ]

3/6 - correct spelling of 

• • • • most simple words

      • most common words (at least 20) 

4/6 - correct spelling of 

• • • • simple words

      • most common words

      • some difficult words (at least two) 

[incorrect difficult words do not outnumber correct difficult words]

5/6 - correct spelling of

• • • • simple words

      • most common words

      • at least 10 difficult words 

[incorrect difficult words do not outnumber correct difficult words]

6/6 - correct spelling of all words AND

• • • • at least 10 difficult words and some challenging words, OR 

      • at least 15 difficult words if no challenging words 

[allow for a very occasional minor slip (one or two)]

SIMPLE WORDS 

• words with two letters (an, be, it, on, up, my)

• single-syllable words with 

- short vowel sounds (cat, men, fit, not, fun) 

- consonant digraphs (shop, thin, much, chips) 

- consonant blends (clap, drop, grab, bring, must, help, left) 

- double final consonants (egg, will, less) 

- high frequency (all, day, feet, food, you, park, bird, her, good, for, how, our)

• high frequency short two-syllable words - into, undo, going 

COMMON WORDS

• single-syllable words with 

- two two-consonant blends and/or digraphs (crack, speech, broom, drift) 

- three-consonant blends (stretch, catch)

• common long vowels (sail, again, away, mean, light, fly, shiny, broke, only, close, hurt, use, chair)

• multi-syllabic words with even stress patterns (litter, plastic, between)

• common homophones (too/two, there/their, write/right, hear/here, brake/break) 

• common words with silent letters (know, wrong, comb) 

• single-syllable words ending in ould, ey, ough

• suffixes that don’t change the base word (jumped, sadly, adults, happening)

• most rule-driven words: drop e, double letter, change y to i (having, spitting, heavier, easily)

 DIFFICULT WORDS

•  uneven stress patterns in multi-syllabic words (chocolate, mineral)

• uncommon vowel patterns (drought, hygiene)

• difficult subject-specific content words (disease, habitat, predator)

• difficult homophones (practice/practise, board/bored)

• suffixes where base word changes (prefer/preferred, relate/ relation)

• consonant alternation patterns (confident/confidence) 

• many three- and four-syllable words (invisible, organise, community) 

• multi-syllabic words ending in tion, sion, ture, ible/able, ent/ant, ful, el/al, elly/ally, gle (supervision, furniture, powerful, sentinel, brutally, rectangle) 

CHALLENGING WORDS

• unusual consonant patterns (guarantee)

• longer words with unstressed syllables (responsibility)

• suffixes to words ending in e, c or l (physically, changeable, plasticity)

• foreign words (lieutenant, nonchalant)