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Year 3 Spelling Words: A Spellwood Quest with Quill

Year 3 Spelling Words: A Spellwood Quest with Quill

Learn Year 3 spelling words and why each is spelt that way by tapping letters, building words and typing them from memory in Spellwood.

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What you'll learn

  • Why ou spells the 'uh' sound in young, touch and double
  • How prefixes like dis- and mis- join a root word unchanged
  • When to change y to i before adding the suffix -ly
  • The doubling rule: forgetting and beginning, but gardening
  • How to choose between homophones such as hear and here
  • Memory tricks for statutory words like believe, separate and February

What's inside

  1. Echo Cave
  2. Builder's Bridge
  3. Suffix Lab
  4. Twin Town
  5. Treasure Tower
  6. Crown Challenge (12 questions)

About this adventure

Year 3 Spelling Words is an interactive game that teaches children aged 7–9 to spell the must-know words and spelling rules from the Year 3 and 4 national curriculum, by understanding why each word is spelt the way it is.

Guided by Quill the owl, children tap the letters that make a sound, stick prefixes onto root words, feed words into a suffix machine and clap syllables to find the stressed beat. They meet key ideas such as root words, prefixes and suffixes (word parts added to the front or end), homophones (words that sound the same but mean different things) and silent letters.

Every instruction is spoken aloud with short captions. Children then type words from memory using look, say, cover, write, check, and a Word Vault holds all 100 statutory words with a tip for each.

Questions and answers

What spelling words should a Year 3 child know?

In England, the national curriculum gives one statutory list of 100 words for Years 3 and 4 together, including believe, February, island and separate, to be secure by the end of Year 4. Year 3 children also learn rules for prefixes, suffixes and homophones.

What are homophones, in simple words?

Homophones are words that sound the same but have different meanings and spellings, like hear and here, or piece and peace. You pick the right one by thinking about the meaning, and tricks help: you hear with your ear.

When do you double the last letter before adding -ing?

Double the last consonant when the final syllable is stressed and ends in one vowel then one consonant, so forget becomes forgetting and begin becomes beginning. If the stress comes earlier, as in garden, just add -ing: gardening.

What age is this spelling game for?

It is made for children aged 7 to 9, in Year 3 or Year 4, and also suits older children revising tricky words. Every instruction is read aloud, which helps children who are still building reading confidence.

What does the spelling game include and how long does it take?

It has five chapters, an optional warm-up of Year 2 ideas, a 12-question final challenge and a Word Vault with all 100 statutory words. Playing everything takes about 45 minutes, and the vault works well in short daily sessions.

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