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Fourth grade spelling words

Words get long this year and the useful unit stops being the letter. Eighty words in eight units, built around endings, roots, and the handful that simply have to be memorised.

One word per line, or paste a comma-separated list. Numbering and bullets are stripped. A sentence after a pipe is read out with the word.

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Grade 4 spelling words — Unit 1 — -tion

Name ____________________ Date ____________

Listen to each word and write it on the line. Put your name at the top first.

Grade 4 spelling words — Unit 1 — -tion

Name ____________________ Date ____________

Look at the word, cover it, write it, then check. Repeat any you get wrong.

  1. actionThe story is full of action.
  2. stationWe waited at the station for an hour.
  3. motionThe rocking motion made her sleepy.
  4. nationThe whole nation watched the final.
  5. sectionAnswer every question in this section.
  6. questionPut your hand up if you have a question.
  7. directionWe set off in the wrong direction.
  8. attentionPay attention to the spelling pattern.
  9. inventionThe printing press was a great invention.
  10. educationA good education opens doors.

Spelling certificate

Awarded to

 

Grade 4 spelling words — Unit 1 — -tion

Score ______ out of ______

Date ____________

Every word in Grade 4 spelling words

80 words in 8 groups, grouped by pattern.

Unit 1 — -tion

Say "shun", write t-i-o-n. The commonest ending in academic English.

  1. action
  2. station
  3. motion
  4. nation
  5. section
  6. question
  7. direction
  8. attention
  9. invention
  10. education

Unit 2 — -sion and -ture

The other two "shun" and "chur" endings, side by side for contrast.

  1. division
  2. decision
  3. mission
  4. vision
  5. picture
  6. future
  7. nature
  8. capture
  9. mixture
  10. adventure

Unit 3 — Double consonants in the middle

Two syllables, and the join is doubled.

  1. better
  2. happen
  3. letter
  4. dinner
  5. summer
  6. follow
  7. pretty
  8. little
  9. middle
  10. bottom

Unit 4 — ough and augh

Four different sounds from one spelling. English at its worst.

  1. thought
  2. through
  3. though
  4. enough
  5. rough
  6. caught
  7. taught
  8. daughter
  9. laughter
  10. naughty

Unit 5 — Roots: port, dict, spect

Carry, say, look. Learn three roots, unlock thirty words.

  1. import
  2. export
  3. report
  4. transport
  5. predict
  6. dictionary
  7. verdict
  8. inspect
  9. respect
  10. spectator

Unit 6 — -able and -ible

A whole word before it usually takes -able. Usually.

  1. comfortable
  2. valuable
  3. reasonable
  4. enjoyable
  5. possible
  6. terrible
  7. horrible
  8. sensible
  9. visible
  10. flexible

Unit 7 — Plurals of -y and -f words

y becomes ies, f becomes ves, and neither is optional.

  1. countries
  2. families
  3. stories
  4. berries
  5. babies
  6. shelves
  7. thieves
  8. halves
  9. loaves
  10. scarves

Unit 8 — The words everybody gets wrong

No pattern. These are the ten worth over-practising.

  1. because
  2. friend
  3. believe
  4. receive
  5. beautiful
  6. favorite
  7. necessary
  8. probably
  9. February
  10. library

What the practice modes do

Generated by the same code the buttons run, on the first few words of this list, so what is printed here is what you will get.

Word Letter scramble Missing letters Spelled out loud
actionintcoaact__nA, C, T, I, O, N
stationiastntost_t_onS, T, A, T, I, O, N
motionimoontm_ti_nM, O, T, I, O, N
nationinotannat__nN, A, T, I, O, N

Syllables replace sounds as the working unit

Up to third grade a child spells by moving through a word sound by sound. That stops working at education and adventure, which are too long to hold in one pass. Fourth grade is where the unit of attention has to become the syllable: ed-u-ca-tion is four small problems rather than one large one.

The practical technique is to clap or tap the syllables before writing, then write them in chunks with a gap between and close the gaps at the end. It looks slow and it removes most of the errors that come from a child running out of working memory two-thirds of the way through a word.

The shun endings, and how to tell them apart

-tion is by far the commonest way of writing the /shun/ sound and is the right default when nothing else is known. -sion turns up after l and n, and where the base word ends in d or s: divide becomes division, decide becomes decision. That last connection is the one worth teaching, because it turns a memory problem into a derivation.

-ture is the same trick with a different sound. Picture, future, capture, mixture — it sounds like "cher" and is never spelled that way. Naming the mismatch out loud is what heads off picher and natcher.

ough, augh, and giving up gracefully

Unit four is the worst pattern in English. ough has at least six pronunciations, and thought, through, though, enough and rough between them cover four. There is no rule, there has never been a rule, and pretending otherwise wastes a child’s effort on a search that cannot succeed.

Teach it honestly as a memory unit and lean on shape rather than sound. Grouping by rhyme — though and dough, rough and tough, thought and bought — gives visual memory something to hold, which is the only route that works here.

Roots, and the first payoff from Latin

port means carry: import, export, transport, report. dict means say: predict, dictionary, verdict. spect means look: inspect, respect, spectator. Ten words on this list are really three ideas, and a child holding the three can spell — and often define — words they have never met.

This is the first year that teaching roots returns more than it costs, and it keeps returning for the rest of school. The test to apply is whether the root explains the spelling as well as the meaning. port does, which is why these ten are worth the time and why a list of unrelated long words is not.

Common questions

How do I know whether a word takes -able or -ible?

The rough guide is that -able follows a complete English word — comfort and comfortable, enjoy and enjoyable — while -ible tends to follow a Latin fragment that is not a word on its own, as in terrible and visible. It holds about eighty per cent of the time, which makes it a good first guess rather than a rule.

Are spelling rules worth teaching at all, given the exceptions?

The ones that hold most of the time are, because a good default beats a guess. Doubling, soft c and g, and plural -ies all repay memorising. The ones with as many exceptions as cases — i before e is the famous example — cost more than they return.

Why is February so hard?

Because almost nobody says the first r. The word is stored from speech as "Feb-you-ary", so the spelling asks for a letter the child has never heard. The fix is deliberate mispronunciation while writing — Feb-ROO-ary — which is the standard technique for every word with a swallowed sound.

Should fourth graders be using spellcheck?

For final drafts, yes. But it cannot catch a real word in the wrong place, which is exactly the error that starts appearing now — their for there, then for than, quiet for quite. Teaching a child that spellcheck has one specific blind spot is more useful than banning it.

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