🔤 Tricky words: the list from age 5 to 11 and 6 ways to remember them

“I know them all now!” And then the next day, the spelling test comes back with becos, freind and peeple. Tricky words are one of the few things in primary school you can’t work out: sounding them out leads straight into the trap, so the only way is to fix the picture of the word in your mind.

The good news is that these words stick quickly — as long as you do more than read the list the night before. Here you’ll find the list of tricky words by age, from 5 to 11, the main traps to highlight, and six tips to try this evening.

What exactly are tricky words?

A tricky word (teachers also say common exception word or sight word) is a word that doesn’t follow the usual spelling patterns, or uses a pattern your child hasn’t learned yet. “said” should rhyme with “maid”; “was” should rhyme with “has”; “one” starts with an o but sounds as if it started with a w.

Here’s a quick test to show your child: sound the word out letter by letter. If the result isn’t the word, it’s a tricky word. s-a-i-d gives “sayd”, not “sed”: tricky. c-a-t gives “cat”: not tricky, the rules are enough.

The lists handed out at school usually mix two kinds of words:

• Very frequent little words: the, was, said, you, they, are, of, one, some, come…
• Longer words with one unexpected part: because, friend, people, beautiful, Wednesday, necessary…

Every school has its own list, but they overlap a lot, because the same words come up in every piece of writing. That’s why it pays to learn them well: they appear in every story and every spelling test.

Why tricky words are so often misspelled

1. Listening doesn’t help. For almost all these words, the trap is a letter you can’t hear or a sound spelled in an unusual way: the silent i in friend, the o that sounds like “u” in some and come, the ai that sounds like “e” in said. A child who writes what they hear gets it wrong. They need to remember the look of the word, not its sound.

2. Alphabetical lists make no sense. Learning again, always, among, answer, any in a row asks the brain to hold five unrelated words. There’s nothing to connect them.

3. Reading isn’t learning. Looking at the list three times gives a nice feeling of “I know it” — but it’s an illusion. Until your child can write the word without seeing it, it isn’t learned.

Tricky words by age, from 5 to 11

Here are the words most often found at each age. The lists build up: a nine-year-old should also know the words of the earlier years. Always start with your child’s own class list.

Age 5-6: the first tricky words

the, a, I, to, no, go, into, he, she, we, me, be, was, you, they, all, are, my, her, said, have, like, so, do, some, come, little, one, were, there, what, when, out.

Age 6-7

door, floor, poor, because, find, kind, mind, behind, child, children, wild, climb, most, only, both, old, cold, told, every, everybody, great, break, pretty, beautiful, after, fast, last, father, class, grass, hour, move, sure, sugar, eye, could, should, would, who, whole, any, many, clothes, busy, people, water, again, half, money, parents.

Age 7-9

address, answer, appear, believe, bicycle, breath, build, caught, centre, certain, different, difficult, disappear, early, earth, eight, enough, February, favourite, fruit, group, guard, guide, heard, heart, height, important, island, knowledge, library, minute, often, opposite, perhaps, popular, possible, potatoes, probably, promise, question, remember, sentence, separate, special, straight, strange, surprise, though, although, thought, through, weight, woman, women.

Age 9-11

accommodate, according, achieve, amateur, ancient, apparent, appreciate, available, awkward, bargain, bruise, cemetery, committee, conscience, conscious, curiosity, definite, desperate, dictionary, embarrass, environment, especially, exaggerate, excellent, familiar, foreign, forty, government, guarantee, immediately, interrupt, language, leisure, lightning, marvellous, mischievous, muscle, necessary, neighbour, nuisance, occur, opportunity, persuade, physical, privilege, pronunciation, queue, recommend, restaurant, rhyme, rhythm, secretary, shoulder, signature, sincere, soldier, stomach, sufficient, temperature, thorough, twelfth, vegetable, vehicle, yacht.

If your child is struggling with their age list, don’t hesitate to go back a step: a nine-year-old who still writes “becos” needs to master the earlier list first.

The table of the trickiest words

Out of a list of thirty words, about ten cause most of the mistakes. For each one, your child needs a clue, not just another copy.

These short memory hooks are exactly what we have gathered in The Big Book of Memory Tricks: one trick for each word that trips children up, ready to review in two minutes.

Learning tricky words in families: the real breakthrough

Before revising, do this: rewrite the teacher’s list in a different order, grouping the words that share the same unusual pattern. Five minutes of your time, and a big part of the work is already done.

• -ould: could, would, should.
• -ight: night, light, right, might, bright, fight.
• o that sounds like “u”: some, come, love, other, mother, brother, money.
• silent letters: know, knee, write, wrong, climb, lamb, island.
• -ough, the famous rebel: though, through, thought, enough — one sound per word, so one card per word.

Second quick win: learn words in pairs that share a pattern: old/cold, kind/mind, who/whose, hour/our. One effort, two words remembered — and if your child hesitates on one, they’ll recall the other.

Six tips to try this evening

1. Spell it out loud, silent letters included

Your child spells the word, clearly naming the tricky letter: “f-r-i-e-n-d, with the i you don’t hear”. Naming the silent letter creates a sound marker where there wasn’t one.

2. The tricky letter in colour

Write the word in pencil and the trap in red: friend, said, Wednesday. That contrast is what your child will picture during the test. Stick to one colour, always the same, or the effect is lost.

3. Look, say, cover, write, check

Look at the word for a few seconds and say it, cover it, write it, then check letter by letter. If it’s wrong, try once more, not ten times. Copying a word over and over only trains the hand: by the third line, your child is copying without reading.

4. The three-word lightning test

Two minutes, standing in the kitchen: you say three words, your child writes them on a whiteboard. Over a school week that’s about fifteen words, spread out far better than cramming the night before the weekly spelling test.

5. Silly sentences for the worst offenders

For the few words that resist everything, a silly sentence works wonders — the sillier, the better:

• “Big Elephants Can Always Understand Small Elephants” gives the letters of because.
• “Oh U Lucky Duck” gives the -ould of could, would and should in one go.

If your child enjoys learning this way, our collection of memory tricks for ages 6 to 11 has plenty more, and our article on English spelling tricks explains “i before e” and the magic e.

6. Make it a game: three two-minute games

• Word of the week: one tricky word written big and stuck on the fridge. Your child sees it several times a day without effort; swap it for a new one every Monday.
• Word hunt: in the bedtime story, your child spots three words from their list and points to them.
• Teacher for a turn: your child tests you on two words and corrects your deliberate “mistakes”. Spotting someone else’s errors is great practice.

The three-words-a-day routine

The best routine takes two minutes and doesn’t depend on your evening mood. Here’s what we suggest for a list of ten to fifteen words a week:

• Monday: sort the list into families and highlight the traps (five minutes, together).
• Tuesday to Thursday: lightning test of three words, picked from anywhere in the list.
• Friday: two dictated sentences containing four or five words from the list.
• The following weekend: three words from last week’s list. This delayed review is what turns short-term learning into real knowledge.

That last step is the one everyone forgets: a word reviewed a week later sticks far better than one practised five times in a single evening.

Tricky words: calm, long-term learning

Some confusions come back in every piece of writing from age 7 to 11: “there” and “their”, “where” and “were”, “to” and “too”. These are homophones as well as tricky words: our article on homophones gives the swap test for each one.

If you want to go beyond the weekly list, The Big Book of Memory Tricks brings together the spelling, grammar and maths tricks that help most, from age 6 to 11: short, easy tips to read together in the evening, with no preparation needed.

The rest is all about tiny regular habits: three words, two minutes, every day. And to keep things fun, the 31-Day Adventure, completely free, offers a new adventure workbook every day, matched to your child’s class.