Spelling

By the end of Year 6, children will be able to:  

• use further prefixes and suffixes and understand the guidance for adding them
• spell some words with ‘silent’ letters [for example, knight, psalm, solemn]
• continue to distinguish between homophones and other words which are often confused
• use knowledge of morphology and etymology in spelling and understand that the spelling of some words needs to be learnt specifically, as listed in English appendix 1
• use dictionaries to check the spelling and meaning of words
• use the first 3 or 4 letters of a word to check spelling, meaning or both of these in a dictionary
• use a thesaurus

Grammar and Punctuation 

By the end of Year 6, children will be able to: ​​​​​​​

• develop their understanding of the concepts set out in English appendix 2 by:
  • recognising vocabulary and structures that are appropriate for formal speech and writing, including subjunctive forms
  • using passive verbs to affect the presentation of information in a sentence
  • using the perfect form of verbs to mark relationships of time and cause
  • using expanded noun phrases to convey complicated information concisely
  • using modal verbs or adverbs to indicate degrees of possibility
  • using relative clauses beginning with who, which, where, when, whose, that or with an implied (ie omitted) relative pronoun
  • learning the grammar for years 5 and 6 in English appendix 2
• indicate grammatical and other features by:
  • using commas to clarify meaning or avoid ambiguity in writing
  • using hyphens to avoid ambiguity
  • using brackets, dashes or commas to indicate parenthesis
  • using semicolons, colons or dashes to mark boundaries between independent clauses
  • using a colon to introduce a list
  • punctuating bullet points consistently
• use and understand the grammatical terminology in English appendix 2 accurately and appropriately in discussing their writing and reading