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Homophones KS2 – 10 of the best SPaG resources for English

Do your primary class need help with words that sound the same but have different meanings? These SPaG worksheets, activities and ideas will have them separating their 'there' from their 'they're' in no time...

Teachwire

Added: 14th March 2019

What is a homophone?

Homophones are words that have identical pronunciation (or near identical) but that have a different meaning. They can have the same spelling or a different spelling. For example:

English homophones list

there/their/they’re
here/hear
see/sea
bare/bear
one/won
sun/son
to/too/two
be/bee
blue/blew
night/knight
aisle/isle
aloud/allowed
altar/alter
ascent/assent
bridal/bridle
cereal/serial
practice/practise
farther/father
guessed/guest
heard/herd
morning/mourning
past/passed
descent/dissent
draft/draught
principal/principle
profit/prophet
stationary/stationery
steal/steel
who’s/whose

National Curriculum English programme of study links

Pupils should be taught to spell by distinguishing between homophones and near homophones.

1 | Year 2 homophones spelling worksheets

While this isn’t a KS2 resource, these Year 2 worksheets might be a good place to start with young children.

It covers the rules of homophones, shows children their uses, checks their understanding and gets them to apply their learning.

Get it here

2 | Year 3 and 4 homophone worksheets

You can also get the same style resource for lower-KS2 too, plus there are challenge worksheets available to test their knowledge once you’ve finished.

Get the homophones spelling workout sheets here and get the homophones challenge sheets here.

3 | Year 5 and 6 homophones worksheets

Yep, you guessed it, we’ve also done the same for teaching homophones in upper-KS2.

You’ll find the Y5/6 homophones spelling worksheets here and the challenge worksheets here.

4 | learn different homophones through jokes with Beano SPaG LOLZ

The Beano‘s SPaG LOLZ programme for primary schools covers six key spelling, punctuation and grammar topics with six curriculum-based lesson plans each for KS1 and KS2.

These lesson plans focus on joke-writing techniques taught through SPAG; designed to help each learner hone their comedy skills and inject some fun into literacy lessons.

The first lesson in the series focuses on homophones, and you can download them here for KS1 and here for KS2.

Or, the whole SPaG LOLZ programme is free to download at school.beano.com.

5 | 55 homophone worksheets

That’s right, 55 worksheets. 55! All in one PDF.

Most of them ask students to choose the correct homophones, others ask them to fill in the blanks choosing from common homophones like to, too and two.

Grab this PDF here.

6 | Homophone word mats

This PDF resource from Mr MC three homophone word mats for you to download.

Click here to get these and download complementary flash cards here.

7 | SPaG Test

This PowerPoint file is a baseline SPaG test for Year 7 students from the always-excellent Ms Cole (educatedminds.co.uk), so it can obviously be used for your Year 6s without too much trouble.

There are 32 slides covering spelling, punctuation, preposition, and most importantly for this of course, homophones.

Download it here.

8 | Homophones for Years 3-6

Alternatively, if you want something to cover a wider range of young learners, this PowerPoint presentation provides a great visual to help children in their learning and understanding of what a homophone is and how a word which sounds the same can have other spellings and meanings.

It is colourful and stimulating for literacy teaching which encourages child interaction throughout.

Get it here.

9 | Homophone challenge

This PDF features three quick exercises for students to try. The first is to think of as many homophones as they can in five minutes. The second asks them to pick out all the homophone pairs in a poem. And the third gets them to pick out any other words in the poem that could also be a homophone.

Click here to download.

10 | 50 homophone puzzles

This PowerPoint presentation runs through 50 homophones by first giving clues like ‘the cat that joins’ for students to guess the homophone. If they can’t, it then puts up pictures of a lynx, and some chain links, before revealing the answer.

Click here to download.