Year 2 Common Exception Words Set 3

EYE is three letters long, and two of them are the same. A child sounding it out gets nowhere — there is nothing to sound out. It is a word you simply recognise, the way you recognise a face.

This third set of Year 2 common exception words from the DfE statutory list is a quietly mixed one. It contains a tidy double-S family, a small group where the OVE letters say “oov”, and a few genuine one-offs like HOUR and EYE that have to be learned whole. Taken together, the set is a good reminder that learning to spell is partly about patterns and partly about getting comfortable with words that have no pattern at all.

PAST · FATHER · CLASS · GRASS · PASS · PLANT · PATH · BATH · HOUR · MOVE · PROVE · IMPROVE · SURE · SUGAR · EYE

Patterns, and words with no pattern at all

There is a satisfying tidiness to part of this set. CLASS, GRASS and PASS all end in a double S after a short A — and the doubling is the same bodyguard from S32, protecting the short vowel from any suffix that might come along. PAST, PATH and BATH have the same long-ish A sound that turns up in FATHER, FAST and LAST (which appeared in the last set). It is a vowel that has shifted gently in southern England over the last century — in northern accents it stays short, in southern accents it stretches. Either pronunciation, the same spelling.

The other half of the set is harder to corral. MOVE, PROVE and IMPROVE share an OVE that says “oov” — different from LOVE (which says “uv”) and different from HOPE-style magic-E words. HOUR has a silent H and OUR inside it (with the same OUR from S58’s roots later). EYE is unique — a palindrome in shape, with a Y at the heart and an E on each side. SURE and SUGAR are the only common SU- words in English where the S says “sh”. Six children’s reading mysteries, gathered for one puzzle.

Five to notice while solving

1. EYE is its own picture. The two Es are the eyes; the Y in the middle is the nose. Ask your child to draw a face using the word EYE as the eyes. The image is unforgettable — the spelling becomes a tiny self-portrait.
2. CLASS, GRASS and PASS have bodyguards. Find all three and circle the double S. Same trick as in S32 — short vowel, double consonant. The pattern from a Stage 3 phonics puzzle is doing the same work in a Year 2 vocabulary list. Old learning, still on duty.
3. MOVE rhymes with neither LOVE nor STOVE. Write all three on the board. LOVE says “uv”, STOVE says “ohv”, MOVE says “oov”. Three different O sounds, three near-identical spellings — a small wonder of English, and a clear instruction: the eye must learn what the ear cannot decide.
4. HOUR has a silent H. Cover the H and read OUR. The two words sound identical (homophones, from S55). When your child finds HOUR in the grid, ask them to find an ordinary OUR too — both spellings exist in the list, doing different jobs.
5. SURE and SUGAR are an odd pair. Both start with S that says “sh” — the only common SU- words to do so. Tell your child: when in doubt, “sure” and “sugar” are the two SU-shush words. The whole class is. Naming them as a tiny gang makes them stick.

An unhurried way to use it

As a pattern-or-memorise starter. Three columns on the board: “double-S family” (CLASS, GRASS, PASS); “OVE = oov” (MOVE, PROVE, IMPROVE); “just memorise” (HOUR, EYE, SURE, SUGAR, plus the rest). Children sort before searching. The starter divides the set into chunks the brain can actually carry — three small piles instead of fifteen scattered words.

As a SU-shush pair hunt. Pairs find SURE and SUGAR in the grid and add any others they can think of — there are only a few in English (SURE, SUGAR, INSURANCE, MEASURE, sometimes ISSUE). The tiny family is the lesson: irregular spellings can be small enough to learn as a closed set, not feared as a sprawling exception list.

One-to-one at home. For home educators, take this set to the bathroom mirror. BATH lives there. EYES are in the mirror. SUGAR is in the kitchen, SURE is what you sound when you say “I’m sure”. Walk the house pointing at each word’s real home, your child spelling it aloud at each stop. Vocabulary that maps onto rooms is vocabulary that gets revised at every doorway.

What comes next

• Year 2 Common Exception Words Set 4 — silent letters and the COULD/SHOULD/WOULD trio
• Year 2 Common Exception Words Set 2 — the previous set
• All spelling word searches — the full Series A, B and C collection

Free for classroom and home use. If you find this useful, linking back rather than reuploading helps keep the site free for everyone.