OVERVIEW

Hello! You've arrived at the Bonus Content hub for your book, Spelling Words for Year 6: 2,000 Words Every Child Should Know.

This page brings together extra materials that we hope will help you get even more out of your book:

• How To Use This Book I: Core Strategies
• How To Use This Book II: Further Suggested Activities & Strategies
• A Note on Dictionaries, Definitions, Duplications, and Word Difficulty
• A Guide to the Spelling Patterns & Spelling Rules in the Lists
• An Expanded Table of Contents
• A Glossary of 100 Selected Words
• Four Bonus Word Lists
• Free Printable Companion Resources
• What’s Next?

We recommend you bookmark this page so it is easy to find again. It is not listed publicly and search engines will not find it for you, so if you close the tab you will need to rescan the QR code in your book or come back via the book's product page on our website.

A Note on the Second Printing (with corrections)

From September 2026, new copies of this book carry a QR code that leads to this bonus content. We also took the opportunity to rename two of the lists: The Root Of The Matter I (p. 18) has become Pesky Prefixes I, and The Root Of The Matter II (p. 32) has become Pesky Prefixes II In the Index, the heading 'Word Roots' has become 'Advanced Prefixes', and we have corrected a small typo ('Close' is now 'Closed' compound words). Everything on this page and in the downloads uses the new names, with the old name in brackets where it helps. The lists themselves, and their page numbers in the printed book, are unchanged. (If your copy has no QR code on its About This Book page, you have the first printing, and the two lists will appear under their old names.)

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK I ~ CORE STRATEGIES

This book is designed for adults to use with their children or students: a study resource to be worked through together, a little at a time.

There are no wrong ways to use this book. You know how your child learns new words and spellings best, so we leave it up to you to decide which strategies and activities will be most helpful. These are suggestions, not prescriptions.

As the introduction to the book makes clear, every list is self-contained. This means the book gives you the freedom to work in a way that best suits you and your child.

Structured Progression

You could work through the lists in order. This is a systematic approach, and it lets you and your child track their progress. If you do this, bear in mind that the lists have been arranged to provide variety, switching between the more obviously educational, the topical and the just-plain-fun.

Targeted Support

Alternatively, you could dip into the book to practise or explore one particular area. That area could be a spelling pattern, like doubled consonants, or a spelling rule, such as using the prefix im- (not in-) when the base word begins with m, p or b.

Or you could use the book to support a particular topic: if your child is studying geography, for instance, the Mapping The World list (p. 10) could give them extra help.

Remember that the Index on p. 40 tells you which spelling rule, pattern or theme each list covers, to help you find your way around. We have also prepared an Expanded Table of Contents, which you will find on the Bonus Content page and as its own PDF. It follows the order of the book's Contents and adds the Index entry for every list, in case that makes it easier to find what you are looking for.

Word Banks

Another benefit of the themed nature of the lists is that they make excellent word banks for your child's creative writing projects.

Say, for example, your child is writing a piece for Halloween. They might be writing about a witch who is grumpy because her familiars are disturbing her sleep. If so, they might find the words listed in Abracadabra! (p. 23: Witches and Witchcraft), Grrrrrr! (p. 28: Annoy) and Zzzzzz… (p. 39: Sleep) helpful.

Another way to use the word banks for creative writing is to let the topics themselves provide the inspiration. So, to revisit the previous example, if your child has to write a short, Halloween-themed piece, they might look at the topics in their book and decide that their witch uses a strange mix of herbs (Sage, Rosemary & Thyme, p. 21) and spices (Spicing Things Up, p. 20) to make everyone in her village laugh in different ways (LOL!!!, p. 13).

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK II ~ FURTHER SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES & STRATEGIES

If you are looking for other ways in which to use the lists in your book, you might be interested in trying one (or all!) of the following with your child:

Search for Suffix Patterns

While the book contains six Happy Endings lists (pp. 10, 14, 19, 25, 30 and 34) that are explicitly devoted to suffixes, there are lots of other words across the book that use suffixes as well. Choose a list that isn't about suffixes, like V Is For Vile (p. 39), and ask your child to look at how the words end. Can they spot any suffixes they recognise? How many different suffixes does the list use? Can the words be sorted into groups by suffix – and how many words are in each group? Looking at suffixes is a good way to focus on word formation – on affixes and how they change a word's meaning – and it helps with spelling work too.

Devise Your Own Mnemonics

Pick a word from That Doesn’t Look Right (p. 16), the list of commonly misspelt words, and come up with an amusing sentence that highlights what makes the spelling tricky. For example, you might come up with ‘necessary has one cookie and two sweets’ (one c, two s’s). The sillier and the more personal the sentence, the more likely it is to stick.

Come Up With Silly Sentences

Choose five pairs of homophones from Head-Scratchers (p. 5) and see how many silly sentences you and your child can come up with that include both words, e.g. ‘In the Hansel and Gretel hotel, the most popular suites are full of furniture made out of strawberry-flavoured sweets’; ‘The giant enjoyed the coarse cactus he ate for his second course.’ Again, the sillier the sentence, the more likely your child is to remember which spelling goes with which meaning.

Build a Vocabulary Intensity Scale

Pick five words from one of the synonym lists, such as Greased Lightning (p. 16), A Snail’s Pace (p. 17), As Big As An Elephant (p. 28) or On Edge (p. 31), and ask your child to arrange them along a scale from mildest to most intense. There are enough words in each list to do this several times over. Alternatively, your child could create three ‘buckets’ – gentle, moderate and strong – and sort words from across the list into them.

Draw A Word Map

Ask your child to choose a word they find particularly striking from one of the topic lists, such as Tutankhamen & Co. (p. 30), Save The Planet (p. 25) or What Was That Noise? (p. 22), and write it in a bubble in the middle of a blank sheet of paper. Now ask them to think of at least three things they associate with the word and write those around it – then keep going from each new word. When the paper is full, look together at the words furthest from the centre. What connections did your child make between words? Why those ones?

Do Dictionary Work

Use a physical or an online dictionary with your child to look up the meanings of words they are unsure of, or that they haven't met before. Children are more likely to remember things they have found out for themselves than things they are told, so you may even want to hand this activity over to your child to do on their own. You could decide which words they look up, or let them choose.

Look, Cover, Write, Check

The classic routine still works: look at the word, cover it, write it from memory, check it against the list. Rather than trying to learn twenty-five or thirty words in one go, divide the list into manageable chunks, e.g. ten words at a time. To help you with this, we have designed a range of customisable sheets that you can download here. Our sheets use a slightly extended version of the routine – Look & Say, then Look, Say & Copy, then Cover & Write, then Check – because saying a word aloud and copying it out both help spellings stick. You are, of course, free to ignore the extra steps if your child is used to doing this exercise the traditional way.

A NOTE ON DICTIONARIES, DEFINITIONS, DUPLICATIONS, AND WORD DIFFICULTY

Dictionary Differences

While dictionaries generally agree with each other, they do occasionally differ. Six areas where you might notice this are:

• the use of capitals
• the use of hyphens with certain prefixes
• open, closed, and hyphenated compound words
• the choice between -ise and -ize endings (Oxford dictionaries prefer -ize; most other UK dictionaries use -ise)
• the acceptance of some US spellings
• the classification of prefixes and combining forms

Definitions

This book, and indeed the entire 2,000 Words series, was deliberately designed not to include definitions, as we wanted the focus to be placed squarely on the spellings in a fun and colourful environment that children would enjoy spending time in, and which would allow them to concentrate on the words themselves.

Word Duplications

Occasionally, you might find a word used in more than one list, or in two different forms in separate lists (e.g. correspond and correspondence). This is deliberate.

A single word can often illustrate a spelling pattern in one list and belong to a theme in another. For example, arctic appears in Greeks Bearing Gifts (p. 37) as a word of Greek origin, and again in As Cold As Ice (p. 7) simply because it is an ice word.

Similarly, a word might belong to more than one theme. For example, fennel is both a spice and a herb, so it appears in Spicing Things Up (p. 20) and in Sage, Rosemary & Thyme (p. 21).

We have tried to keep these duplications to a minimum, but sometimes they are unavoidable. When you do come across them, the duplication is worth highlighting as evidence of the richness of the words themselves.

Word Difficulty

When compiling the lists in this book, we have made a point of selecting words that are directly relevant to Year 6 children, the Year 6 SATs, and the topics that they are likely to have covered at school.

We have also chosen words that children will enjoy spending time with, and some that will give them a bit of a challenge. These are deliberate choices, made to help children grow their vocabulary – and, we hope, to pass on our own love of words.

A GUIDE TO SPELLING PATTERNS & SPELLING RULES IN THE LISTS

While we have given fun titles to the lists to make them much more approachable for children, the lists themselves have been designed to be educationally useful.

Indeed, 21 of the 70 lists target a specific spelling rule, spelling pattern or word-origin group from, or closely related to, the curriculum.

These are all flagged in the Index, but the entries there are necessarily brief, so we thought you might find it helpful to have an overview of each of these rules or patterns.

Jump to a list: Head-Scratchers – Mamma Mia! – Im- The Impossible – Joining Forces I – Happy Endings I – Double Trouble – In- The Incorrect – Silent, But Deadly – Happy Endings II – That Doesn't Look Right – Il- The Illegible & Ir- The Irresponsible – Pesky Prefixes I (The Root Of The Matter I) – Happy Endings III – Bouquets Of Flowers – When In Rome... – Happy Endings IV – Happy Endings V – Pesky Prefixes II (The Root Of The Matter II) – Happy Endings VI – Joining Forces II – Greeks Bearing Gifts

Head-Scratchers (p. 5)

This is a list of common homophones.

Homophones are words that sound the same but are spelt differently, e.g. suite and sweet, coarse and course.

Unfortunately, these are words that simply have to be learnt. No rule tells you which spelling goes with which meaning, and – since the whole point of a homophone is that it sounds like another word – sounding them out is little help.

Bear in mind that in some accents a few of these pairs are only near homophones, or not homophones at all. Sort / sought, for example, sound different if you pronounce the r.

* * *

Mamma Mia! (p. 6)

This is a list of words that have Italian origins.

Almost all of these words end in i, a or o, which makes them easy to spot; the only exceptions are balcony, bandit, ducat and quarantine.

See also the other two lists of words from other languages:

• Greeks Bearing Gifts (p. 37)
• When In Rome... (p. 24)

* * *

Im- The Impossible (p. 6)

This is a list of words that take the im- prefix.

The prefix adds the sense of ‘not’ to a word and is used instead of in- when the base word begins with the letter m, p or b.

See also:

• In- The Incorrect (p. 12)
• Il- The Illegible & Ir- The Irresponsible (p. 17)

* * *

Joining Forces I (p. 8)

This is a list of closed compound words. Compound words are words that are made up of two shorter words that have been joined together.

For example, rain and bow join to make rainbow. Importantly, neither of the two shorter words is changed. This makes learning how to spell these words easier than their length might initially suggest.

Note

There are two other kinds of compound words: open compound words (two words that stay separate, e.g. black ice, p. 7; sleeping bag, p. 15) and hyphenated compound words. For hyphenated compound words, see Joining Forces II (p. 36) below.

* * *

Happy Endings I (p. 10)

This is a list of words that end with a shus sound, spelt either -cious or -tious.

The general rule is that if the base word ends with -ce, it takes -cious.

• grace → gracious
• malice → malicious

If the base word ends with -tion, it takes -tious.

• ambition → ambitious
• caution → cautious

See also: Happy Endings II (p. 14)

* * *

Double Trouble (p. 11)

This is a list of words that contain doubled consonants, specifically l, m, and n.

One reason doubled consonants are tricky – and so often misspelt – is that you can't hear them: they sound like a single letter.

Unlike run → running, where a rule tells you to double the consonant before -ing, the words in this list follow no rule your child can apply, so they need to be learnt in the same way as homophones.

There are reasons for the doublings, but they lie in the words' histories, which is beyond the scope of this guide.

* * *

In- The Incorrect (p. 12)

This is a list of words that use the Latin in- prefix.

Like im-, the prefix in- means 'not' and it is used with words of Latin or French origin that begin with vowels and most consonants.

The consonants that you don't use in- with are l, r, m, p, and b.

See also:

• Im- The Impossible (p. 6)
• Il- The Illegible & Ir- The Irresponsible (p. 17)

* * *

Silent, But Deadly (p. 13)

This is a list of words that contain a range of silent letters.

As with doubled consonants, there are historical reasons why these letters fell silent, but no clear-cut set of rules for children to learn. So these too are words that have to be learnt by heart.

* * *

Happy Endings II (p. 14)

This is a list of words that end with a shul sound, spelt either -cial or -tial.

The general rule here is that -cial is used with words where the letter immediately before the suffix is a vowel.

• social (o)
• special (e)
• official (i)

On the other hand, if the letter immediately before the suffix is a consonant, the -tial suffix is used.

• essential (n)
• partial (r)
• confidential (n)

Not surprisingly, there are exceptions to the general rule. These exceptions include:

• initial (i with -tial)
• financial (n with -cial)
• commercial (r with -cial)
• provincial (n with -cial)
• spatial and palatial (a with -tial)

See also: Happy Endings I (p. 10)

* * *

That Doesn't Look Right (p. 16)

This is a list of words that are regularly misspelt, for a variety of reasons:

• Some contain a doubled consonant that sounds like a single consonant, e.g. 'according'
• Others contain two pairs of doubled letters, e.g. 'embarrass' and 'address'
• Several contain a schwa (a weak, unstressed vowel sound) that suggests the wrong vowel, e.g. 'desperate' sounds like 'desparate'
• Other words contain silent letters, e.g. 'vehicle'
• And some pose problems simply because they are long, e.g. 'individual' and 'determination'

Not surprisingly, this is another list of words that simply have to be learnt.

* * *

Il- The Illegible & Ir- The Irresponsible (p. 17)

This is a list of words that begin with the two prefixes il- and ir-.

These are the forms that in- takes when the base word begins with l or r.

This results in doubled letters at the start of the word:

• il + legal = illegal
• il + literate = illiterate
• ir + rational = irrational
• ir + responsible = irresponsible

See also:

• Im- The Impossible (p. 6)
• In- The Incorrect (p. 12)

* * *

Pesky Prefixes I (The Root Of The Matter I) (p. 18)

This is a list of words that use one of the following four advanced prefixes (or combining forms) – three from Latin and one, auto-, from Greek:

• ante- (before)
• aqua- (water)
• auto- (self)
• circum- (around)

Learning what these word parts mean, and how they are spelt, helps in two ways. It

• adds to a child's vocabulary, by giving them building blocks of meaning
• extends the range of words they can spell correctly

See also: Pesky Prefixes II (The Root Of The Matter II) (p. 32)

* * *

Happy Endings III (p. 19)

This is a list of words that end with the suffix -able, which means 'can be'.

Here, the spelling patterns and spelling rules below help, but they don't cover everything, so many of these words will still simply have to be learnt.

Spelling Patterns

The rule of thumb (it is not a strict rule) is that -able goes on base words that can stand alone as words in their own right:

• preventable = prevent + able
• enjoyable = enjoy + able
• washable = wash + able

Spelling Rules

Note that when the base word ends with a silent 'e', it is removed (as normal) before the suffix is added:

• achievable = achieve + able
• lovable = love + able
• adorable = adore + able

The exception is after c or g, where the e stays to keep the sound soft: changeable (change + able), knowledgeable (knowledge + able), manageable (manage + able). The one true oddity in the list is likeable, which keeps its e by convention.

See also: Happy Endings IV (p. 25)

* * *

Bouquets Of Flowers (p. 21)

This is a list of collective nouns: nouns that name a group of people, animals or things (a bouquet of flowers, a flock of sheep).

This list is slightly different to the other lists in this guide because the words do not fall into a statutory spelling category. Nonetheless, collective nouns are words that children are expected to have in their vocabulary and to be able to spell correctly.

* * *

When In Rome... (p. 24)

This is a second list of words with origins in another language – this time, Latin.

A useful thing to know about words from Latin is that they are usually built from a root plus prefixes and suffixes. So the more roots and affixes (i.e. prefixes and suffixes) your child knows, the easier they should find these words.

See also:

• Mamma Mia! (p. 6)
• Greeks Bearing Gifts (p. 37)

* * *

Happy Endings IV (p. 25)

This is a list of words that end with the suffix -ible, which also means 'can be'.

Here, the spelling patterns and spelling rules below help, but they don't cover everything, so many of these words will still have to be learnt by heart.

Spelling Patterns

The rule of thumb (again, not a strict rule) is that -ible goes on word parts that can't stand alone:

• audible = aud + ible ('aud' is not a word on its own)
• credible = cred + ible
• possible = poss + ible

There are, of course, exceptions, e.g. accessible (access + ible) and collapsible (collapse + ible).

Spelling Rules

As with -able, a silent e at the end of the word part is dropped before the suffix is added:

• collapsible = collapse + ible
• reversible = reverse + ible
• forcible = force + ible

See also: Happy Endings III (p. 19)

* * *

Happy Endings V (p. 30)

This is a list of words that end with the suffix -ance. This suffix belongs to the group of suffixes that turn verbs or adjectives into nouns.

Here, the spelling patterns and spelling rules below help, but they don't cover everything, so many of these words will still simply have to be learnt.

Of all the suffixes in the book, -ance and -ence are the two most complicated, because several different things decide which one a word takes.

Spelling Patterns

(I) One rule of thumb here is that a verb will generally take the -ance suffix if the verb ends in one of the following ways:

• -ate tolerate → tolerance
• -ear appear → appearance
• -ure assure → assurance
• -y (after a vowel) annoy → annoyance

(II) If the sound just before the ending is a hard c or a hard g, the word takes -ance:

• significant → significance
• elegant → elegance

Note that vengeance is an exception to this.

(III) Similarly, the adjective will generally take the -ance suffix if it ends with -ant:

• ignorant → ignorance
• radiant → radiance

Spelling Rules

(IV) If the base verb ends in an ordinary consonant (e.g. w or r) or a consonant blend (e.g. st), just add the suffix:

• allow → allowance
• clear → clearance
• assist → assistance

(V) If the verb ends in a consonant + y, the y changes to an i before the suffix is added (if a vowel comes before the y, it stays: annoy → annoyance):

• ally → alliance
• defy → defiance
• rely → reliance

See also: Happy Endings VI (p. 34)

* * *

Pesky Prefixes II (The Root Of The Matter II) (p. 32)

This is a list of words that use one of the following four advanced prefixes (or combining forms) from Greek:

• hyper- (over)
• macro- (large)
• micro- (small)
• poly- (many)

As with the Latin word parts in Pesky Prefixes I, learning these helps in two ways. It

• adds to a child's vocabulary, by giving them building blocks of meaning
• extends the range of words they can spell correctly

See also: Pesky Prefixes I (The Root Of The Matter I) (p. 18)

* * *

Happy Endings VI (p. 34)

This is a list of words that end with the suffix -ence. Like -ance, this suffix belongs to the group of suffixes that turn verbs or adjectives into nouns.

Once again, the patterns and rules below help, but they don't cover everything, so many of these words will still have to be learnt by heart.

Of all the suffixes in the book, -ence and -ance are the two most complicated, because several different things decide which one a word takes.

Spelling Patterns

(I) One rule of thumb here is that a verb will generally take the -ence suffix if the verb ends in one of the following ways:

• -ere interfere → interference
• -fer refer → reference

(II) If the sound just before the ending is a soft c or a soft g, the word takes -ence:

• adolescent → adolescence
• negligent → negligence

(III) Similarly, the adjective will generally take the -ence suffix if it ends with -ent:

• patient → patience
• obedient → obedience
• silent → silence

Spelling Rules

(IV) If the base verb ends in an ordinary consonant (e.g. d) or a consonant blend (e.g. st), just add the suffix:

• depend → dependence
• insist → insistence
• exist → existence

(V) If the base verb ends with a silent e, the e is dropped before the suffix is added:

• reside → residence

See also: Happy Endings V (p. 30)

* * *

Joining Forces II (p. 36)

This is a list of hyphenated compound words. Compound words are words that are made up of two shorter words that have been joined together.

As with closed compound words, the parts of a hyphenated compound word keep their own spelling. Here, though, the hyphen itself is part of the correct spelling. Without their hyphens, these words are misspelt.

Notes

While a large number of the words in this list are adjectives, some can also be used as nouns (e.g. four-by-four, high-definition).

Remember also that there are other kinds of compound words: open compound words and closed compound words.

For closed compound words, see Joining Forces I (p. 8).

* * *

Greeks Bearing Gifts (p. 37)

This is a list of words that have Greek origins.

While these words simply have to be learnt, there are a few patterns worth spotting in this list:

• ch sounding like k in architect, chrome, chrysalis, epoch
• y as a vowel in chrysalis, eucalyptus, symbol
• ph for f in amphibian, catastrophe, demographic

See also:

• Mamma Mia! (p. 6)
• When In Rome... (p. 24)

EXPANDED TABLE OF CONTENTS

All 70 lists are shown in the order they appear in the book. Beside each title is its entry from the Index on p. 40. The third column gives a one-letter key – C (curriculum), T (topic), S (synonyms), A (antonyms), W (writing) – so you can see at a glance what each list focuses on. C covers the Index's 'Curriculum-Based Words' and its 'Words from Other Languages' groups.

A GLOSSARY OF 100 SELECTED WORDS

As we explain in our note on dictionaries and definitions, this book, and the entire 2,000 Words series, was deliberately designed without definitions, to keep the focus squarely on the spellings.

Nonetheless, we thought you and your child might find it helpful to have age-appropriate definitions for some of the most challenging words in the book.

To make the glossary as easy to use as possible, we have arranged the 100 words in three ways:

• I. in alphabetical order
• II. by word class
• III. list by list, in the order of the book's Contents

Only Glossary I appears on this page. Glossaries II and III are in the downloadable 3-in-1 Glossary PDF – the button is just below Glossary I.

Glossary I: A to Z

• alfresco adv. in the open air
• amateur n. a person who does something for pleasure, not for money
• ankh n. an ancient Egyptian cross with a loop at the top
• antagonise v. to make someone angry on purpose
• antechamber n. a small room leading to a bigger one
• antedate v. to come before in time
• apace adv. quickly
• aquaplane v. to skid on a film of water on a wet road
• beldam n. an old woman, especially an ugly or wicked one
• bewilder v. to puzzle or confuse
• brainteaser n. a puzzle that is hard to solve
• cauterised v. burnt to seal a wound
• chortle v. to laugh with pleasure
• circumflex n. a mark shaped like a little hat, placed over a vowel (it looks like this: ^)
• circumnavigate v. to sail all the way around
• circumscribe v. to limit; to draw a line around
• colonnade n. a row of columns
• conjuror n. a person who performs magic tricks
• conservatoire n. a college for music
• controversy n. a public argument involving lots of people and strong opinions
• dawdling adj. moving slowly and wasting time
• decimation n. the destruction of a large part of something
• deride v. to laugh at someone in a cruel way
• diacritic n. a mark added to a letter to show how it is said
• disconcerted adj. being unsettled and confused
• dishevelled adj. being untidy and messy
• ducat n. a gold coin used in Europe in the past
• dulcet adj. being sweet and soothing to hear
• ectoplasm n. a substance said to come out of a ghost
• elephantine adj. being huge and clumsy
• exasperate v. to annoy someone greatly
• familiar n. an animal that helps a witch with her magic
• firebug n. a person who starts fires on purpose
• flummox v. to confuse someone completely
• forefather n. an ancestor
• foretell v. to predict what will happen in the future
• fretful adj. being worried and unable to relax
• fusillade n. a burst of many shots fired at once
• gawp v. to stare in a stupid, open-mouthed way
• guffaw v. to laugh loudly
• guzzle v. to eat or drink greedily
• haltingly adv. in a slow, hesitant way
• heedless adj. not paying attention to a warning or risk
• hindrance n. a person or thing that is getting in the way of progress
• humungous adj. being enormous
• hypercritical adj. finding fault far too quickly
• hyperventilate v. to breathe much too fast
• icebound adj. being stuck in ice
• idiolect n. the way one particular person uses language
• immobilise v. to stop something from moving
• imperil v. to put in danger
• imprudent adj. being unwise
• inconstant adj. changing often
• incorporeal adj. having no body
• inflammable adj. able to catch fire easily (it means the same as flammable)
• irk v. to annoy
• irreverence n. a lack of respect
• jocular adj. being fond of jokes
• lapis lazuli n. a deep-blue stone used in jewellery
• leisure n. free time for enjoyment
• lenience n. mercy when punishing
• Lilliputian adj. being tiny
• lily-livered adj. being cowardly
• macrocosm n. the whole universe, or any very large system
• mastaba n. an ancient Egyptian tomb with a flat roof and sloping sides
• mystify v. to make something impossible to understand
• nuisance n. a troublesome person or thing
• octet n. a group of eight musicians
• palaeontology n. the study of fossils
• perplex v. to puzzle
• phantasm n. a ghost, or something seen only in the mind
• poky adj. being small and cramped
• polyglot n. a person who speaks several languages
• polymath n. a person who knows a lot about many subjects
• ponderous adj. being slow and heavy
• porthole n. a small, round window in the side of a ship
• prejudice n. an opinion that is not reasonable or fair
• privilege n. an advantage that not everyone has
• prow n. the pointed front of a ship
• quadruped n. an animal with four feet
• quaff v. to drink eagerly in big gulps
• ramshackle adj. being badly built and about to fall down
• rankle v. to keep annoying someone for a long time
• revenant n. a person who has come back from the dead
• rime n. a thin coating of frost
• scrutinise v. to examine extremely closely
• séance n. a meeting where people try to speak with the dead
• shipshape adj. being neat and tidy
• slothful adj. being lazy
• smoulder v. to burn slowly without a flame
• sweetmeat n. a small sweet or sugared treat
• timorous adj. being fearful and shy
• timpani pl. n. the large drums played in an orchestra
• tinder n. dry material that catches fire easily
• titter v. to laugh in a quiet, nervous way
• tombola n. a game in which numbered tickets are drawn from a drum to win prizes
• tundra n. a cold, flat land with no trees
• vermicelli n. very thin pasta, like threads
• vexatious adj. being annoying
• wraith n. a ghost, or a ghostly image of a person

FOUR BONUS WORD LISTS

We thought it would be fun to see if the words in the book could be used to make even more lists! We also thought that you might find them a useful way to reinforce the spellings your child has learnt. Every word below is in the book; as an additional challenge, you might want to see if your child can spot or guess which list each word came from.

Bonus List 1: Phantasmal Ph

Every word in this list contains the letter string ph, said as f.

• amphibian
• autobiography
• autograph
• catastrophe
• cellophane
• demographic
• euphoria
• hemisphere
• hieroglyphics
• microphone
• phantasm
• phantom
• pharaoh
• pharmacology
• phenomenal
• phonetic
• photography
• physical
• physiology
• physique
• polygraph
• sarcophagus
• saxophone
• sphinx
• symphony

Bonus List 2: X Marks The Spot

Every word in this list contains the letter x.

• anxious
• circumflex
• examine
• exasperate
• excavate
• excursion
• exercise
• exotic
• expedition
• experiment
• exterior
• extinction
• extravaganza
• flexible
• flummox
• hex
• jinx
• luxury
• paradox
• perplex
• sphinx
• syntax
• tinderbox
• toxicity
• vexatious

Bonus List 3: I Before E... Or Is It?

Every word in this list contains the letter string ie or ei – a constant challenge for spellers.

• anxiety
• audience
• conscientious
• deceitful
• deity
• diesel
• disbelief
• eerie
• efficient
• freight
• glacier
• grief
• handkerchief
• leisure
• minefield
• neighbour
• obedience
• patience
• poltergeist
• reign
• review
• science
• sovereignty
• surveillance
• weights

Bonus List 4: Take Five

Every word in this list is exactly five syllables long.

• accelerating
• astronomical
• circumnavigate
• communication
• deforestation
• determination
• energetically
• environmental
• experimental
• extermination
• extravaganza
• hypocritical
• illegitimate
• immaterial
• imperceptible
• impersonated
• inappropriate
• incineration
• inconsiderate
• inefficiency
• inexperience
• irreplaceable
• irresistible
• mummification
• organisation

FREE PRINTABLE COMPANION RESOURCES

Our website has a wide selection of free educational resources and fun word games, across a range of topics for different ages.

Here are some of the Year 6 resources we think you will find useful:

The first half of the National Curriculum's statutory spelling word lists for Years 3 and 4 and Years 5 and 6.

• KS2 SATs Statutory Spelling Words, list 2. The second half of the National Curriculum's statutory spelling word lists for Years 3 and 4 and Years 5 and 6.
• 10-Minute KS2 Spelling Test. A quick multiple-choice spelling test: your child picks the correct spelling to complete each sentence.
• 50 Pairs of Commonly Confused Words (Years 5 and 6). A list of homophones and near-homophones. Pairs well with Head-Scratchers (p. 5).
• Linking Words and Phrases. A list of categorised conjunctions and adverbs that are commonly used to connect sentences and paragraphs. Pairs well with And Then...And Then... (p. 23).
• Spine-Chilling Synonyms (Halloween). A Halloween vocabulary sorting activity. Pairs well with What Was That Noise? and Abracadabra! (pp. 22 and 23).
• Word Wheel: Detailed. A word-building game.

WHAT’S NEXT?

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