Homophones KS2 – 9 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…
- by Teachwire
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.
Year 3 and 4 homophone worksheets
These homophone worksheets for Year 3 and 4 cover the rules of homophones, show children their uses, check their understanding and gets them to apply their learning too, plus there are challenge worksheets available to test their knowledge once you’ve finished.
Find a similar Year 2 homophones resource here.
Year 5 and 6 homophones worksheets
We’ve also done the same for teaching homophones in upper-KS2 – find the Y5/6 homophones spelling worksheets here and the challenge worksheets here.
Make a Match grammar game
This make a match game for Year 3 and 4 pupils involves matching word cards to definitions and pictures and will help children to expand their understanding of vocabulary.
Play it in small groups or as a class or use it in interventions to revisit key knowledge.
There’s also a Year 2 version available.
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.
View the whole SPaG LOLZ programme here.
Tots Daycare Centre homophone tasks
Find all the incorrect homophones in this poster for a daycare centre. The download contains a multiple choice version of the poster, and a version that only features the incorrect homophones.
Homophone word mats
This PDF resource from Mr MC features three homophone word mats for you to download.
Download complementary flash cards here.
SPaG Test
This PowerPoint file is a baseline SPaG test for Year 7 students from the always-excellent Ms Cole, 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.
Homophones for Years 3-6
Alternatively, if you want something to cover a wider range of young learners, this homophones 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, stimulating and encourages child interaction throughout.
50 homophone puzzles
The ’50 homophones puzzles’ PowerPoint presentation on this page 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.
Browse more Year 5 and 6 spelling list resources and SPaG games.
