Silent letters and unstressed vowels

Silent letters are letters that can’t be heard when the word is spoken.

For example:

• the ‘w’ is silent in sword

• the ‘h’ is silent in ghost

• the 't' in castle

• the 's' in island

This can make learning to spell the words quite tricky!

Watch this short video to see some more examples of silent letter words.

In this Teacher Talk, Mr McPartlin shares some more examples of silent letters and unstressed vowels.

Listen carefully and join in with the activities. You’ll need a pen or pencil and some paper.

Highlight the silent letters in these four words.

Now see if you can get all five questions right in this quick quiz!

In this story, there are 20 spelling mistakes. Each mistake is missing either a silent letter or an unstressed vowel.

Can you spot all the mistakes? Make a list, with all 20 words correctly spelled.

The Silent Spook

On a dark, cold autum night, all was quiet in the haunted librry. The our was twelve.

In the freezing tempratures, only one gostly old knight was frightningly flitting between the shelves. He had come out of his tom and left his casle on a shadowy iland, to find his missing sord.

All was silent and the spook floated about without a sound. He was num with cold and his every spooky bone and musle ached, but he was desprate to know where his property had gone.

He looked with intrest along the shelves, searching for a book about old weapons. At last, he found a refrence, written in an old book, to a rusty blade. It had been found under a stone at a nearby scool.

The gost raised a thum and shattered the silence with a cackling laugh.

'Marvllous!' he croaked. 'I have found you at last, after a hole night searching!'

You can check your answers using this answer sheet.