There are 44 (or 45) sounds of English, made up of 25 consonant sounds and 20 vowel sounds.

Watch the video to hear how these are pronounced and represented.

Vowels have power!

What is a syllable?

Silly Bull shows off some useful tricks for understanding syllables.

In open syllables the vowel says its letter name.

In closed syllables the vowel make a short vowel sound.

These letters are easily confused because they make similar sounds. Learning the correct mouth positions will help to tell the difference. 

'k' comes at the end of words and after an 'i' or an 'e'.

eg. kid, kiss, key, keep

Why does S never follow X? 

A word cannot end in 'v'.

'said' is a tricky word to spell ... not for long!

Never spell could, would, should wrong again!

oh u lucky ducky!

If a one syllable word has only one vowel, and ends in f, l, s or z - double the last letter. e.g. off, hill, mess, buzz.

'ck' follows a single short vowel. 

e.g. back, brick, luck, truck, neck, pick, duck

If short vowels are followed by /ch/ sound use 'tch'. 

e.g. catch, ditch, fetch, itch, snatch

If the vowel has a letter friend just use 'ch'

e.g. lunch, beach, perch, march, bench

Some common exceptions are rich, much, such, which and sandwich.

Silent 'e' makes the vowel sound before it, say its name e.g hat - hate, pin - pine, cut - cute.  Use your Spelling Fingers to sound out the phonemes.  Did you hear the vowel say its letter name?

When spelling we put 'ai' in the middle of a word and 'ay' at the end.  e.g. main, train, play, tray.

Watch Minky understand the rules of spelling and avoid the cave of doom! 

These vowel teams make a 'long e' sound.

These letter teams all make a 'long i' sound.

 Sing along and learn how to remember the spelling of 'ight' words! 

The letter ‘r’ changes the sound of the letter ‘a’ from a short sound to a different one. 

One R controls the vowel, but two change it back again to its short sound. 

Why do some plurals end in 's' and others in 'es'? 

REGULAR VERBS

The past tense refers to things that have already happened. Learn why 'ed' sends verbs into the past! 

Learn about adjectives, nouns and verbs. 

How do you change words into past tense? 

By adding -ed!  

IRREGULAR VERBS

You can't add 'ed' to all words to make them past tense - this rule doesn't work for irregular verbs! 

Are you confused about the -ly suffix?  

You won't be after watching this!

-le, -al and -el  all make the same sound at the end of a word. So how do you know which one to use? 

Watch this and you will find out!

Learn the 'l' rule when making compound words.

e.g. also, almost, although, altogether

What about words ending in 'l'?  e.g. until, beautiful 

They sound the same, but which one do I use?

When do you use an apostrophe?  You can use one when you contract two words into one.

e.g.  I have = I've, does not = doesn't

Learn why tion, cian and sion makes the sound /shun/.  The sticky i changes the sound of the following letters.