ou Words: Year 6 Spelling Patterns

Year 6 KS2 SATs spelling list: 18 words with the ou grapheme, each with a dictation sentence. Printable PDF for spelling tests, homework and intervention.

One-page A4 PDF from the Tiger Shark Education spelling bank. Each numbered word is followed by a sentence using it in context, with the word in bold. Sorted by the four sounds ou makes: account, country, shoulder and group. Numbering restarts under each heading.

What sounds does ou make? This sheet sorts ou words by four sounds: ‘ow’ (account), ‘u’ (country), ‘oh’ (shoulder) and ‘oo’ (group). ou is one of the most variable graphemes in English, so seeing the groups side by side is useful.

Common mistakes and tips: Children write ‘acownt’, ‘cuntry’ and ‘shoalder’. Encourage them to read each group aloud and notice the sound before they learn the spellings. Country and young are among the words most often misspelt by Year 6 pupils.

In the KS2 SATs, the spelling paper has 20 words read aloud in sentences, and many of them come from patterns like this one. The National Curriculum appendix for Years 5 and 6 lists these patterns, so a confident grasp of them supports both the test and children’s independent writing.

Teaching ideas: read the word, the sentence and the word again, exactly as in the test. Use the list for paired testing, look-say-cover-write-check, or as a word bank for writing. Pick small groups of words for children who need more support and the full list for those ready for a challenge. Revisit the same pattern a few weeks later to check that it has stuck.

Supporting children who find spelling hard: start with the most common words on the list and only a handful at a time. Multisensory approaches work well, such as tracing, saying the letters aloud or building words with letter tiles. Highlight the tricky part of each word rather than the whole word, and revisit the same words little and often rather than in one long session. For confident spellers, the less common words provide challenge, and they can hunt for more words with the same pattern in their reading books or write their own dictation sentences for a partner.

Read the word, the sentence, then the word again, as in the KS2 SATs spelling paper. Use it as a word bank: pick 10 to 20 words for a weekly test, dictation, an intervention group or homework. Also suits Year 5.

Part of a set of 40 grapheme-organised sheets covering all 1,164 words in the spelling bank.