Year 2 Common Exception Words Set 4

There is a silent L hiding in the middle of COULD, SHOULD and WOULD. You cannot hear it. The child cannot hear it. And yet leave it out and the word is wrong — which is exactly why these three are among the most misspelled words in Year 2.

This fourth set of Year 2 common exception words from the DfE statutory list is heavy with silent letters and hidden sounds. It opens with the COULD / SHOULD / WOULD trio, moves through the silent W of WHO and WHOLE, and ends with everyday words like PEOPLE and CLOTHES that children use constantly but rarely spell correctly. The word search brings all fifteen together for one concentrated practice session.

COULD · SHOULD · WOULD · WHO · WHOLE · ANY · MANY · CLOTHES · BUSY · PEOPLE · WATER · AGAIN · HALF · MONEY · PARENTS

The trouble with letters you can’t hear

This set is dominated by silent letters, and it is worth helping children understand that a silent letter is not a mistake — it is a fossil. The L in COULD, SHOULD and WOULD was pronounced six hundred years ago. The W in WHO and WHOLE has been silent for nearly that long. The L in HALF and the silent letters in CLOTHES are similarly historical. Modern speech has dropped these sounds; modern spelling has kept them. Telling a child the history makes the word stop feeling random and start feeling old.

The other words in the set have different challenges. ANY and MANY have an A that says short E — “enny”, “menny” — with no pattern to predict it. BUSY has a U that says short I. PEOPLE is one of the strangest spellings in primary English — five letters for two sounds, with an EO doing the work of a single short E. PARENTS, AGAIN, MONEY and WATER all have everyday meanings but tricky spellings. The honest framing for this set is: ears cannot help with any of these. The eyes have to do the work, supported by the kind of repeated friendly exposure a puzzle provides.

Five to draw attention to

1. COULD, SHOULD and WOULD share a ghost. Find all three and circle the L in each. Tell your child: this letter used to be heard. People once said “kould” with an L in it. Then we got lazy. The spelling kept the record.
2. WHO and WHOLE both start with a silent W. Ask your child to say each word — “hoo” and “hole” — and find the letter that says nothing. Same family as WRITE and WRECK from S45; same silent W doing the same nothing.
3. PEOPLE has an EO that no other word uses the same way. Cover the EO and ask your child to read PLE. Then uncover — the EO says short E. There is no other common English word where EO behaves like this. PEOPLE just has to be known.
4. ANY and MANY rhyme. Have your child find both. Say them together: enny, menny. The A is doing the same lying job in both — and it is the same A that lies in EVERY from the last set. A small family of A-lying-as-short-E words, hiding in plain sight.
5. HALF has a silent L too. Find it in the grid, then ask your child to spot the silent letter. The L is not pronounced in modern English, but it was once. Same fossil pattern as COULD — another reminder that spelling carries history that speech has discarded.

Putting it to use

As a silent-letter detective starter. Write five grid words on the board (COULD, WHOLE, HALF, CLOTHES, KNOWN — the last is from S44, slipped in as a refresher). Children identify the silent letter in each. Then a twist: write five words with no silent letters (PEOPLE, BUSY, MONEY, WATER, AGAIN — where the trickiness is elsewhere) and ask children to identify what makes those tricky instead. Two types of difficulty, made visible.

As a fix-the-mistake pair task. Pairs are given a paragraph riddled with misspellings: “I cood see meny peeple in the watter, and I shood not have went in the cloths I had on.” Eight errors. They correct each one using the grid as their reference. Editing wrong sentences targets exactly the words children themselves are most likely to misspell — and the corrections feel like winning.

One-to-one at home. For parents teaching at home, this set is full of words children will write in their own letters and stories. Have your child write a one-paragraph thank-you note (real or pretend) using at least four words from the grid: “Dear Grandma, thank you for the new CLOTHES. I WOULD like to see you AGAIN soon. Lots of love, [name].” Real writing, real spellings, real audience. A note grandparents would treasure regardless of the spelling lesson hiding inside.

What comes next

• Year 2 Common Exception Words Set 5 — the compound tricky words: EVERYTHING, ANYWHERE, SOMETHING
• Year 2 Common Exception Words Set 3 — the previous set
• All spelling word searches — the full Series A, B and C collection

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