Tricky Words

Fifth Grade Writing

Your students won’t be tricked when they discover digital tools that help them spell homophones and plurals
correctly. Your students will also learn about times when they shouldn’t take an automatic spelling suggestion
on their devices!

Learning Objectives

Students will spell challenging words such as homophones and irregular plurals.
Students will use digital and print resources, consulting references to spell words.

Materials and preparation

Class set of Spelling Squiggles worksheet

Index cards (one per student, labeled with one
challenging homophone or plural on each card)
Class set of individual whiteboards and
whiteboard markers
Chart paper with selected homophones and
plurals written on it, in the form of a list
Small brown paper bag or basket
Online document with a two-column table and
one row per group of students. (On each row,
type a sentence with an incorrectly spelled
homophone or plural word).
One electronic device per small group of
students OPTIONAL:
Word Wizards worksheet for enrichment
Pondering Plurals worksheet for support

Attachments

Spelling Squiggles (PDF)

Word Wizards (PDF)
Pondering Plurals (PDF)

Introduction (5 minutes)

Invite students to sit in a circle.

Distribute an individual whiteboard and whiteboard marker to each student.
Walk around the circle and ask each student to pull out one word card.
Challenge the students to use that word in a sentence, writing it on their individual whiteboard.

Explicit Instruction/Teacher modeling (5 minutes)

Tell the students that some words are tricky because they have irregular or unique spellings. Emphasize
the importance of using context to know how to spell certain words. Show the students the difference
between common plural spellings (such as adding an -s to the word book to make books) and more
complex plural words like changing octopus to octopi (and not adding an -s).
Show the students two word lists of homophones and irregular plurals. Tell the students that they can use
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 word banks such as these to aid in spelling or they can use digital tools to spell these words correctly.
Using an interactive whiteboard, show the students how you can type a sentence in an online document
using an incorrectly spelled homophone or plural. Draw their attention to the squiggly line that appears
under misspelled words and show them how to correct the spelling.
Tell the students that sometimes they will need to decide whether to change the word using the
suggestion and sometimes they need to override the suggestion. Explain that some words may be
marked as incorrect because of the way the program is written. This is especially true with names,
acronyms, and slang. The squiggle shows the user that the computer does not recognize the word.
Model this process again, as needed.

Guided Practice (5 minutes)

Divide the students into small groups with one device per group.
Tell the students that they will be working together to determine how their sentence needs to be
changed. Should they follow the digital suggestion or override the change and keep the spelling?
Share the document with the table of sample sentences and show the students how to access it. Ask
them to work as a group and decide on how the sentence should be changed.
Invite students to think of words that are similar to the ones listed on the table. Challenge students to
write new sentences on the whiteboards and share their thinking with the rest of the class. What did they
choose to change or leave unchanged?

Independent working time (10 minutes)

Ask students to complete the Spelling Squiggles worksheet.

Circulate the room and assist students as needed.

Related books and/or media

BOOKS:

Feet and Puppies, Thieves and Guppies: What are Irregular Plurals? by Brian P. Cleary
If You Were a Plural Word by Trisha Speed Shaskan
Plural Soup by Linda Lee Ward
How Much Can a Bare Bear Bear? What are Homonyms and Homophones? by Brian P. Cleary

Differentiation

Enrichment:

Challenge your students with some more difficult plural forms and homophones. Ask them to complete
the Word Wizards worksheet.

Support:

If students have difficulty associating regular and irregular plurals with matching nouns, ask them to
complete the Pondering Plurals worksheet.
Invite students to create word ladders for words that they continually struggle to spell. Ask the students
to write the first letter on a line. Then, on the next line, ask the students to write the first letter plus the
next letter. Continue adding a letter to each line until they have written the whole word.

Technology Integration

Invite students to use a document or other form of media to color code the unique letters in tricky words.
For example, in the word “children,” students can keep the letters “child” black but change the last part
of the word, “ren” to a different color.
Instead of having students write their sentences on individual whiteboards, create a separate column on
the document and ask students to type additional sentences in the space next to each column.

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Assessment (5 minutes)

Write several tricky words on the board -- some spelled correctly and some spelled incorrectly. Allow
students to use individual devices or word banks to correct spelling.
As you point to each word, ask students to stand if the word is spelled correctly. If the word is spelled
incorrectly, invite students to remain seated and write the correct spelling on their whiteboards.

Review and closing (5 minutes)

Invite students to participate in a spelling race with some tricky spelling words.
Divide students into groups of five or more.
Ask each group to sit in a row and put the paper at the left end of the row.
Tell the students that when you call out a word each student will write one letter and pass the paper and
pen. If there are more letters than students, the paper will go back to the first person and rotate until the
word is written. Whichever student completes the word stands up to show that they word has been
written.
After playing the game, invite students to reflect on how they can use tools to spell words correctly.

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 Name:________________________ Date:_______________

Spelling Squiggles
Look at the underlined word in each sentence. Decide if the spelling needs to be changed. If it needs to be
changed, write the correct spelling on the corresponding line. If the spelling does not need to be changed write
the word, “correct” on the line.

Example: When it rained the creak began to rise. creek

1. When we got on the bus we had to pay a bus fair.

2. As Kayla climbed the attic stairs the boards began to creak.

3. At the county fair, Mrs. Wilson was selling handmade scarfs.

4. The majestic eagle sword high above the crowd as the

people watched in amazement.

5. A group of woman went on a shopping trip together.

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 Name:________________________ Date:_______________

Spelling Squiggles
Look at the underlined word in each sentence. Decide if the spelling needs to be changed. If it needs to be
changed, write the correct spelling on the corresponding line. If the spelling does not need to be changed write
the word, “correct” on the line.

Example: When it rained the creak began to rise. creek

6. The firefighters that saved the children from the burning

house were true heros.

7. Yesterday, the optometrist told my mother that I needed

glasses to correct my vision.

8. When the cows were hungry, they mooed for more food.

9. During the hurricane, the winds blew a tree across the road.

10. My mom saw an advertisement for a set of knifes

and I decided to get them for her birthday.

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 Name:________________________ Date:_______________

Word Wizards
The English language has some words that are challenging to learn because they don’t follow common patterns
(like some plural forms) or because there are words that sounds the same but are spelled differently.

For each pair of words, write two different sentences, showing how each word can be used in a different context.

Example:
bare bear

Sentence #1: At the national park, we saw a bear and her cubs.

Sentence #2: When it is summer I love to walk on the grass in my bare feet.

spy spies

Sentence #1:

Sentence #2:

antenna antennae

Sentence #1:

Sentence #2:

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 Name:________________________ Date:_______________

Word Wizards
The English language has some words that are challenging to learn because they don’t follow common patterns
(like some plural forms) or because there are words that sounds the same but are spelled differently.

For each pair of words, write two different sentences, showing how each word can be used in a different context.

Example:
bare bear

Sentence #1: At the national park, we saw a bear and her cubs.

Sentence #2: When it is summer I love to walk on the grass in my bare feet.

board bored

Sentence #1:

Sentence #2:

larva larvae

Sentence #1:

Sentence #2:

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 Name:________________________ Date:_______________

Pondering Plurals
Use the word bank in the space below. Find and match the plurals with the corresponding word. Write the
corresponding plural next to each word.

babies thieves lives halves

kangaroos leaves tomatoes wolves
pennies children shelves loaves

Example: half halves

1. child

2. thief

3. baby

4. wolf

5. life

6. loaf

7. penny

8. kangaroo

9. tomato

10. leaf

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