Improve your spelling skills – ‘Look, say, cover, write, check.’
Class 5 Spring term week 3: Words with silent letters
12
13
14
15
Word
1 doubt
2 island
3 lamb
4 half
5 rhythm
1 st try
6 calm
7 government
8 scissors
9 design
10 listen
Now you hunt for 5 examples which also have silent letters:
11
2 nd try 3 rd try
22.01.16

Some guidelines to help with spelling these words correctly:
Silent letters are the letters in words that are not pronounced but make a huge difference to the meaning and sometimes the pronunciation of the whole word. Most of these silent letters were pronounced for centuries then they became silent but the spelling was already fixed with these spellings, and now they show the history of the word.
The good news is there are some rules about what letters are silent before or after certain letters ( but like all English spelling rules there are exceptions to the rule).
Silent letters aren't there to mess with your brain – honest! They're there for a reason so identifying and understanding them will definitely help your spelling and confidence. They often show the origins and history (etymology) of a word.
1. They help the reader to distinguish between homophones (homophones have the same sound but different meaning and different spelling and there are loads of these nightmare words in English) in/inn, be/bee, to/too/two, know/no, whole/hole, knot/not…
2. A silent letter can help us work out the meaning of the word and it also can change the pronunciation even though it's silent - sin/sign
3. Magic 'e' - if you add 'e' at the end of short vowel sound words it elongates the sound - rid/ride, cop/cope, hat/hate, tap/tape, at/ate, mat/mate
4. Sometimes people might pronounce certain letters or they might not depending on their accent, for example the t in 'often' can be pronounced or not.
5. H is silent in a lot of UK accents. H is silent in some words from French - hour, honest, honour, heir.